"These homes are a reaction to the worst of sixties council housing," says John Burrell of project architect Burrell Foley Fischer. "We designed these homes as if they were for a private client. They look less institutional and we have learnt from past mistakes and eliminated deck access and communal refuse areas."
By building two and three-storey terraces based on the traditional back-to-back houses of nearby Kennington, the architect has managed to provide each house with its own front door at street level. The only shared staircases are in the 27 apartments where up to three units share one front door.
The architect has been in close consultation with the tenants and feedback sheets have helped the architect understand their needs. "The involvement of the community helped reinforce common-sense objectives. People's lives have been experimented with for too long," says Burrell.
Top of the list of tenant and council requirements was the need for large flexible spaces. Burrell found that by persuading Lambeth to use slightly more land he was able to squeeze in more space. "It's a juggle to get everything in but by increasing the length of the terrace by 500 mm we are able to achieve bigger rooms and wider corridors, which means we can install larger doors," says Burrell.
Further benefits are wider entrance halls, enabling wheelchairs to turn, and larger than average second and third bedrooms. "These days kids have PCs and TVs. They want a living space not just a bedroom," says Burrell.
Tenants have the option to create large open-plan kitchen and living areas as partitions are non-load bearing. Tenants in houses also have the choice of a ground floor shower room or an additional exit to the garden, and some top floor bedrooms have a galleried space into the roof. Removable floor panels allow tenants to install lifts in the wardrobe-space between bedrooms. There are also choices between kitchen units, worktops, wall colours, tiles, paving and door colours. There are floor-to-ceiling windows in bedrooms, long horizontal windows on landings and French windows on upper floor corridors that open onto louvres that act as sunshades. All windows are Velfac double-glazed units with a beech lacquer finish on the inside and an external grey polyester-powder coating.
The two, three, four and five-bed homes built by Higgins Construction will be completed by autumn 2001.
Source
Building Homes