2010 WINNING SCHEMES > Project Winners

 

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It’s not every day that a small pattern book of house types is proposed as a strategy for housing market renewal. But this is the credible ambition of these designs procured with Transform South Yorkshire’s help for a large estate in Sheffield.

Instead of decanting and temporarily housing residents while streets of homes are demolished and replaced, the aim is to pepper-pot these types in little clusters, sometimes just one or two at a time, throughout the predominantly council owned estate of Shirecliffe. Just 79 units in 16 different pockets are expected to turn round the impression of the neighbourhood for residents and outsiders in 35 hectares of 1940s housing. By placing many in visible key locations, such as road junctions, the hope is that the council can make the most impact for the least outlay.

The possibility that a pinpointed strategic investment will turn out to achieve quick results for a fraction of the price of a rolling area-wide regeneration programme is tantalising. It puts enormous pressure on the houses themselves to deliver. They need to make an impression, but not the common one of experimental social housing. Each of the gable-fronted variants has a prouder aspect than the traditional semis around them. A high percentage of the new homes will be semis but planned with a step in the building line which makes them almost as ‘separate’ as a detached, an aspiration underpinned by improved acoustic performance to the whole house and its vulnerable party walls. There are detached properties, linked by a ground-floor outrider storage room to create continuous frontage and shield back gardens.

The pattern book carries through to the use of a limited kit of parts for elevational details, repeated whether homes are 2-bed bungalows, 3-bed semis, apartments or duplexes. Hanging bay windows at first floor, to boost daylight and street surveillance in some duplex units, are the only element not repeated across the range. The rigour of almost no elevational variety is intended to help the impression that the different sites are all part of one thriving new neighbourhood.

The homes themselves will be built to Code Level 4 and will incorporate photovoltaic roof tiles in their simple roof pitches. This is probably the only expensive element in what is otherwise a cunning plan to get a lot for very little. With many councils - and the Treasury - watching, this project is one of the country’s most important.

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