Angell Town Estate.

In one of Lambeth’s most notorious housing estates since its creation in the 1970s, by the end of the 1990s this poorly planned pattern of blocks close to Brixton Road had become a crime hotspot. Local residents were pushing for a regeneration that would place the community at the centre of its plans, and we collaborated with architects Burrell Foley Fischer and the Local Authority to make this happen.

Location

London, UK

Client

London Borough of Lambeth

Architect

Burrell Foley Fischer

Project Value

£18 million

Status

completed 2000

Expertise

Structures

Throughout the process, the weekly meetings with residents were crucial in shaping the chosen design and construction methods. We aimed to renovate the buildings that were salvageable and create new blocks which would complement these. The residents wanted ‘bricks and mortar’ structures, and fresh new architecture that would not look like typical prefabricated council units.

Safety was also paramount: elevated walkways, isolated garages and dark corners were eliminated in favour of straightforward, low-rise blocks with dedicated stairwells, only providing access to several units at each level.

We were constantly considering the needs of the end-users, and designing from a building management perspective. The finished product needed to be aesthetically excellent, but also easy to manage and use. The services design, for example, was kept simple, running vertically to ensure that any problems could be pinpointed and tracked to residents living within the same cores. A rapid programme was implemented to minimise inconvenience to residents, who were temporarily re-housed during construction.

Instead of designing corner flat units, we made clusters of mews houses; this provided extra external space for the small families and couples that would have been using these large corner flats. By introducing a number of different types of space, we opened things out somewhat and provided squares and pedestrian access which gave the development some sense of identity. Home zone areas helped to slow traffic, yet routes connected into the existing street pattern and provided access to areas which had previously been isolated.