Award Winner for Best Social Housing Development
SCHOOL'S OUT
Beaufort Court, Lillie Road, Fulham, London SW6
Boundary walls and the original school gate are all that remain to remind one of the Victorian school that stood on this site until it was demolished in 1998, but now there is a handsome new estate of 65 homes immediately adjoining an existing Peabody Estate whose five-storey blocks were built around 1900. The new housing is a mix of one- and two-bedroom flats, three-and four-bedroom maisonettes and houses, and some one-bedroom RSI units (Rough Sleepers' Initiative). The housing is split between shared ownership, key worker and rental, and there are four fully accessible disabled units.
The site is just over 1.3 acres (0.53 hectares) in area, so its 65 homes achieve a density of almost 50 dwellings per acre (123 per hectare), which is well over PPG3 requirements. Yet it has been achieved without anything higher than six-storey flats and two-storey houses. The two blocks of flats (Beaufort Court and Carmel Lodge) and the terrace of houses (Hermitage Villas) are arranged round three sides of a raised courtyard above a semi-basement car park, the fourth side being open to the adjoining Peabody Estate.
Most of the open space in the central courtyard is taken up by a sports playground with high mesh fencing The two blocks of flats have little private open space, except for the ground-floor flats in Beaufort Court, which have narrow fenced strips facing the courtyard, but the terraced houses all have back gardens. There is a children's play space at one end of the courtyard, and a tenants' meeting hall with seating outside.
The new housing is the first social housing project in the UK to use three prefabrication systems in one scheme: a steel loadbearing construction system incorporating large-scale cold-rolled panels, large-scale hot-rolled panels and three-dimensional modular construction. The light-gauge steel-panelled approach minimises structural weight, providing savings in foundation design, and also minimises transportation costs and difficulties of access to an inner-city site on a busy main road.
Residents, visitors and passers-by, however, will not be interested in the construction techniques but in the appearance and performance of the development. The full-height glazing, the visible steel structure, the terracotta blocks and grooved terracotta rainscreen cladding and high-level aluminium rainscreen cladding make Beaufort Court a high-quality block attractive enough for private sale (unlike much social housing). The structure has high thermal and acoustic performance, with maximum daylight, natural ventilation and even sedum roofs on the lower blocks. In effect, a green development on a brownfield site.
Homebuilder: PEABODY TRUST
45 Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JB
Tel 020 7021 4000 Fax 020 7021 4004
Website: www.peabody.org.uk
Contact: Dickon Robinson, Director of Development & Planning.
Email: pr@peabody.org.uk
Architects: FEILDEN CLEGG BRADLEY
Circus House, 21 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 8BA
Tel 020 7323 5737 Fax 020 7323 5720
Website: www.feildenclegg.com
Contact: Jillian Jones, Project Architect.
Email: jj@feildenclegg.com