Bourbon Lane / Cartwright Pickard Architects

Architects: Cartwright Pickard Architects
Location: London, England
Completion: 2007
Area: 6,861 sqm
Client: Octavia Housing
Photographs: Courtesy of Cartwright Pickard Architects

This project was won in an international design competition to develop best practice in affordable housing. It has gathered many accolades and awards from the Riba, Civic Trust and Housing Design awards amongst others, and has achieved Gold Building For Life Standard. The scheme occupies a site between a massive retail development and mixed fabric of Victorian, Edwardian and later terraced housing.

The retail development is bounded by a seven storey ‘citadel’ wall forming the northern boundary to the site from which run a series of timber clad blocks, up to four storeys in height, providing a succession of mews spaces alternating with private gardens. The development encompasses 27 houses and 51 flats and maisonettes for rent or shared ownership. A pedestrian friendly access road, over-sailed by dramatic cantilevers, separates the housing from a landscaped parking strip.

The scheme creates a strong sense of place. Dwellings are organised around strongly defined semi-public open courtyard spaces in a contemporary interpretation of the “London Mews”. The new buildings are of simple geometric forms and at second and third floor levels the blocks are cut into to provide private roof gardens for upper level dwellings.