2009 WINNING SCHEMES > Project Winners

 

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The Jesus Hospital Estate conservation area, containing Columbia Road flower market in London’s East End, survives to remind us of the comforting domestic scale of Victorian 2-storey terraces and narrow highways.

But this site is where it abuts the large blocks and open space planning of the 1960s, complete with buildings such as the 11-storey Yates House set back from the road behind a thin green strip to the immediate edge of the site. This development has been redesigned from an earlier proposal to match those 11 storeys with a new 10-storey tower, to a development that negotiates between the tower to the south and the terraces to the north.

Someone walking the pavement edging the new block would see six storeys stepping down to two storeys, all finished in a yellow stock flecked brick evoking that of houses in the conservation area. But behind and above the brickwork are a series of inventions which give this scheme a level of private amenity the Victorians would have grabbed at.

The middle section of five floors has a sixth-floor set back, allowing a communal roof terrace to span across most of the top floor. This stops short of the northern edge of the block, so as not to overlook the same roof terrace device on top of a similar but smaller set back spanning the houses. These houses, apparently two storey from the street, are 4-, 5- and 6-bedroom 3-storey townhouses with their gardens on their roofs.

The 5- and 6-storey brick facade gives some easier to read signs of the development’s other uncommon feature, 13 duplex apartments whose two storeys are announced with double-height apertures to the flying brickwork screen. The lower level of these have terraces, juliet balconies to the upper level offering full-height ventilation to bedrooms, and the facade is faced with a medium dark oak so that spaces have a warmth and texture that makes the outdoor space more like a study.

All ground floor dwellings are accessed from a patio garden which gives the scheme the active frontage admired in local Victorian streets, but with a privacy strip which all those back-of-pavement terraces would have been much improved by.

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