2010 WINNING SCHEMES > Project Winners

 

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Manchester’s potential for economic growth lies in its southern fringes around the airport and commuter havens such as Wilmslow. Being a mile or so to the east of the growth corridor and not as swanky, Stockport risked being bypassed. But an area-wide masterplan incorporating charming small interventions in the past five years has transformed the town centre (and turned it into a more regular winner of Housing Design Awards than its giant metropolitan neighbour).

Compstall Mills is another Stockport marvel, much larger than its neighbours and at the town edge fringing the green belt. It’s the reinvention of a clutch of cotton mills dating from the 1820s and 1830s separating the River Etherow from a reservoir. This river head was once exploited by the cotton mills, and the aim is to do it again with a hydro-electric power to supply enough clean electricity for the demands of all homes, offices and facilities due to arrive. Combined with a gas-fired communal heating system, the 121-unit scheme is a contender to be the country’s first large low-carbon development, and without doubt the first retrofit eco-neighbourhood in a conservation area.

The masterplan goes for a high quality public realm designed to attract people from Stockport and other areas to enjoy its proposed mix of daytime and evening shopping and dining, with most of these premises in the ground floors of converted mills towards the northern and western edges of the site, while a residential new-build zone is mostly to the south and east.

Division of large mill buildings typically throws up great floor to ceiling heights but the depths mean they tend to be single-aspect apartments. Here the proposal for the conversion of New Scotland Mill is to have a single corridor at second-storey access interlocking duplex apartments with the ground floor of the lower unit first and the top floor of the upper unit being dual aspect. The large 116 m2 units will sit over ground floor commercial units.

New build elements include terraces of 3 and 4-bed houses. Large 3-bed houses at 124 m2 integrate a garage within their ground floor, two bedrooms at first storey and kitchen-dining-living open plan spaces on the second storey, which have stairs leading up to a roof terrace which is the full size of the dwelling footprint. The design is set to become a great house type for a thrilling location.

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