The concrete basement provides a solid
foundation for the building and supports the
change in level across the site. The ground floor
thickness was kept to a minimum by using the
internal masonry walls as loadbearing structure
and its soffit left exposed.
The superstructure is six storeys of loadbearing
CLT panels, spanning up to 6.0m with various
voids for the stair and services. The roof is also
solid CLT panels, carefully balanced against
each other to form the open loft space. Cladding
all of this is a staggered masonry façade that is
decoupled from the rest of the building to allow it
to expand and contract separately.
Each of these materials serves a different
purpose; acting and moving in their own way
but with careful detailing, together they form the
seamless combination of structural form and
architectural vision. As a whole the building aims
to sit sympathetically within the roofline and
streetscape this side of the street.
Though it has a carefully proportioned balance
of openings within the brick façade, closer to
the Dutch gables ends of the adjacent school
than standard London streets it consciously
aims to be idiosyncratic with layers of detail and
form that are again closer to the Arts and Crafts
desire for the organic than Georgian neoclassical
order. This application of design and detailing to
varying scales is best described by Edward Ford’s
identification of ‘articulated’ and ‘autonomous’
details and the reciprocity of social spaces
an echo of Hertzberger’s social housing and
specifically Aldo Van Eyck’s idiom ‘tree to leaf as
city to house’.
This combined approach having the benefit of
providing coherent streets with the opportunities
for social interaction and illustrating how care
can make speculative residential developments
feel more like homes as opposed to a readymade
and identical white painted commodity.
• Senior Architect Amin Taha
• Area 635.0 sqm
• Manufacturers Beamish Blend, Egoin, DOLD