2010 WINNING SCHEMES > Completed Winners

 

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London’s Islington Council is building homes again, drawing on its own money and land. Since 2007 its own newly hired architects have been producing feasibility studies for land it owns across the borough. There may be no site more challenging than this.

In the shadow of Pentonville Prison, the 0.09 ha garages site was a buffer between the back gardens of existing local authority homes and Wellington Mews, the 6-storey Victorian prison officers’ block abutting it. Daylight and privacy issues ruled out most typologies but Islington’s objective of procuring homes suitable for families justified the selection of four 101 m2 courtyard houses.

The fronts of houses rise to 2-storey and the monopitch roof rakes towards a single-storey back of the house which forms a continuous line of accommodation along the wall to Wellington Mews. Daylighting is boosted with four lights in the roof pitch, two of them remotely controlled powered ones which open for ventilation. When the clouds part, daylight floods in.

As is common with the plan form, the courtyard house draws daylight from an amenity space to one side. Here the kitchen-diner and two bedrooms line two sides of the courtyard and a third wall is the blank gable forming the next house. The exteriors of the houses are finished in white render to reflect more light into these rooms. The courtyard is landscaped with a smart off-white paver, planted with a single silver birch and screened from the front with a pale timber slatted fence.

Houses have an upstairs of one double bedroom and a bathroom to the very front of the house. There is an additional bathroom and store to the back of the plan.

The cost per square metre of individual dwellings was relatively high because there are just four and all are designed to a high environmental performance. This includes heat and hot water from ground source heat pumps, green roofs throughout, rain water recycling for flushing toilets and high performance fenestration.

Houses have their own small green to the front, which is clearly loved and which residents from the existing Armour Close can also access from their back gardens. The shared space is controlled by a fob and entry phone system with bin stores neatly tucked away alongside the entry gate.

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