Commendation for best best social housing development
Four courts
The recently completed first phase of Peabody Trust’s regeneration of the Coopers Road estate in Southwark, replacing post-war mid- and high-rise concrete blocks of council flats, provides a model for sustainable urban regeneration. The master plan by ECD Architects, who have also designed the new buildings, marks a return to a street pattern on a more human scale, with clearly defined private, semi-private and public spaces.
When complete, there will be four courtyards, each enclosed by an L-shaped block of four-storey flats on two sides, with three-storey townhouses enclosing the other sides. The houses are located to the south-east and south-west of each block, allowing the maximum penetration of light and solar gain to the buildings and the central courtyard. There is a single, controlled entrance to the apartment blocks, whose upper floors are accessed by a return to walkways, which provide better security for residents.
The mix of family houses and flats has been designed to give flexibility in meeting future changes in living patterns. A sustainable services strategy has also been adopted, so that the development will be easily adaptable to future changes in technologies. A centralised plant room containing combined heat and power (CHP) provides hot water and space heating distributed through a communal heating system.
Across the site as a whole, a communal services ring will be provided, with spare capacity for future technologies such as grey-water recycling to be built into the development with the minimum disturbance and cost as they become available.
For the apartment blocks, the distribution of services is kept to the perimeter to allow for flexibility in future internal planning, and the wings of the apartment buildings have already been designed with low-pitched metal roofs to allow for the installation of solar photo-voltaic arrays.
All the new homes are designed to meet the Lifetime Homes standards developed in 1991 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, parts of which have subsequently been incorporated in Part M of the Building Regulations and in the Housing Corporation’s Scheme Development Standards. Phase 1, illustrated here, has 154 new homes for rent and shared ownership, all of which have achieved an EcoHomes rating of “Very Good.”
HomeBuilder: PEABODY TRUST
45 Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JB
Tel 020 7021 4000 Fax 020 7021 4004
Contact: Michael May, Director of Property Services
Email: michael.m@peabody.org.uk
Website: www.peabody.org.uk
in partnership with:
LONDON BOROUGH OF SOUTHWARK
Town Hall, Peckham Road, London SE5 8UB
Tel 020 7525 5000
Website: www.southwark.gov.uk
Architects: ECD ARCHITECTS
17-21 Emerald Street, London WC1N 3QN
Tel 020 7405 3121 Fax 020 7405 2878
Contact: David Turrent, Director
Email: turrent@ecda.co.uk
Website: www.ecda.co.uk