The family house could be staging a comeback, now that PPS3 has put a new emphasis on family accommodation. These three schemes demonstrate the issues involved in delivering them on brownfield urban sites.
Selwyn Street, Oldham — Great Places Housing Group
Project
Selwyn Street is the first housing project to emerge from the Oldham Rochdale housing market renewal pathfinder and is a trailblazer. The scheme comprises 18 contemporary-looking large family homes that have been slotted into a red stock brick Victorian terraced streetscene. The scheme was developed by Great Places Housing Group, working with TADW Architects, landscape architect Camlin Lonsdale and contractor Richardson Projects. The 18 homes offer a range of tenures: 10 are for rent, four for shared ownership, and four for market sale. Homes range in size from four to seven bedrooms, the latter to accommodate 11 people. The second phase of the £4m scheme was completed in December. Alongside the homes, a new pocket park is being created.
The brief
The new homes replace low-demand apartments and houses built in the mid 1980s and were designed to meet local demand for larger housing, particularly from the local South-Asian population. Matthew Harrison, deputy chief executive of Great Places Housing Group, says: “The fundamental factor was to remove the derelict housing. We needed to provide an appropriate level of choice in the area. As the area was mainly two-bedroom terraced houses, the obvious solution was to provide larger housing.” Homes are designed to EcoHomes’ Excellent rating for a very simple reason, Harrison explains: “Because it was the first scheme in the housing market renewal pathfinder, we chose to have housing with eco-features.” Density of development is 52 units to the hectare.
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The site itself posed the first constraints for Great Places – not only was it narrow, but it had significant changes in levels. Harrison says: “It was a difficult site physically. We had to construct an enormous retaining wall because of the awkward levels.” In order to create family houses on the narrow site, the company turned to a solution that had proved successful on its Islington Square scheme in East Manchester: the L-shaped housetype. Harrison says: “It makes the most of a narrow site where it can be difficult to achieve space standards.”
Although to passers-by Selwyn Street is, like its surroundings, a row of terraced homes, some of the homes have a considerable 1700ft2 of space and seven bedrooms. Harrison says: “If you looked at the site, you would not say that there were seven-bedroom houses there. We tried to do something that was sympathetic to the area.” Car parking is provided discreetly in integral carports.
Some houses are equipped with solar panels and rooftop wind turbines, and as this is said to be one of the highest sites in Oldham, it is the best location for the latter. The solar panels should provide 60-90% of hot water, reducing energy bills by 60%. Wind turbines should produce up to 1kW of power. The registered social landlord also considered grey water recycling and photovoltaics, but rejected them because of the protracted payback periods.
The houses themselves are of traditional masonry construction, with white render and timber elevations. The scheme has picked up plaudits for its design, including a gold standard in the Cabe Building for Life scheme, which is now calling for entries for the next round of awards. Often it is modern looking urban apartments that pick up awards, rather than family houses, but Cabe found many positives in the Selwyn Street houses. Dominic Church, senior policy adviser with Cabe, says: “The scheme responds to the existing street grid and offers a type of terraced house that is more than a two-up, two-down. The previous homes were too small for the quite large families living in the area. They [the project team] spoke to the local community and found that people valued space in the home more than in the garden. The gardens are quite small but people are fine with that. It is unconventional, but meets the residents’ needs.” A new pocket park adjoining the development provides extra play space.
A key lesson emerging from the scheme is, says Church: “To get in early in terms of developing a brief and consult well with the community. That doesn’t work unless the community is clear about what’s being offered.”
The end result, according to Great Places’ Harrison is: “Homes are environmentally sound and they look good, but they are not outlandish.” The scheme was the first to offer large family housing in the area and the open market homes sold rapidly off plan, with a five-bedroom home priced at £160,000. They will not be the last, however; Great Places is already on site to develop a similar scheme nearby.
What is worth repeating
The L-shaped housetype.
One point worth making
"Offering choice did capture a market for us."
Matthew Harrison
City Point, Brighton — Barratt
Project
On a former railway yard site beside Brighton station, Barratt is building 248 apartments and townhouses for private sale and affordable rent, alongside an 85,000ft2 Sainsbury’s supermarket, a hotel, a training centre and further residential in a mixed scheme called New England Quarter. Barratt is working with a range of partners to deliver the project, including: Quoin Estates & Development, The Raven Group, the Housing Corporation, Adenstar Developments and affordable housing provider, Moat.
Barratt bought into the project once planning consent had been obtained for a design by Chetwood Associates under a masterplan by Edaw. Also helping to deliver the scheme are project manager Watson Whittaker Partnership, structural engineer URS, civil engineer CEP, cost consultant Davis Langdon, acoustic consultant Sharps Redmore and landscaping consultant David Hutchison Associates. Construction work started just over a year ago, and the townhouses are coming to completion.
The brief
Raven Group and Quoin Estates & Development brought the project through its early phases. Raven Group director Clive Wilding explains the scheme’s objectives: “The aim was to create a mixed urban environment. We had a debate with the council about providing family accommodation. They were keen on it and we were keen to include some, because it widened the market potential.” The 27 four-bedroom townhouses for private sale are at the heart of the scheme, surrounded by apartments. All homes are designed to EcoHomes Excellent rating.
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The houses’ design is in line with today’s thinking on high-density living, having roof terracing and balconies to supplement small gardens. Over four storeys, the houses have two balconies and a roof terrace and almost 1,300ft2 of living space, a package that is being marketed in the buzzing Brighton market at a price of around £470,000.
When Barratt bought into the scheme, one of its first tasks was to review the internal layouts of the houses. Although the housebuilder was happy with the fundamentals of the design, it carried out redesign work on the houses’ internal layouts. Trevor Sawyer, managing director of Barratt Southern Counties, says: “We basically opened up the houses to make them more family-oriented. The homes were aimed partly at families and partly at those who wanted quite a lot of space in a city location.” They therefore had to be flexible enough to satisfy several target markets. As a result, the upper storey rooms are designed to be suitable for use either as workspace or as family bedspace. Sawyer explains how: “The rooms upstairs are very even in size and we have as many ensuites as possible.”
The houses are topped by paved terraces and sun rooms, the latter with aluminium barrel-vaulted roofs. The lightweight aluminium standing seam roof includes 250mm of compressed insulation to reduce heat loss in the EcoHomes Excellent rated homes. The houses have brick and block walls, and achieve a U value of 0.21 with the help of an insulated render system and 100mm of Rockwool insulation.
Out of the 14,600 homes Barratt produces each year, about half are houses, and PPG3’s demand for high density has inevitably meant a significant proportion of those are three- and four-storey townhouses. Townhouses pose a perennial design dilemma in how to distribute the living space. Often the formal living space is on the first floor, while the ground floor contains informal flexible living space and perhaps a garage.
Sawyer says that when developing townhouses, Barratt generally tries to keep the ground floor space as flexible as possible, even going so far as to design radiator-free partition walls so that there is the option of building walls or leaving them out. At City Point, the houses have all of their living space on the ground floor, albeit with a glazed atrium space to bring light into the space. “Generally we are finding that families are wanting more open plan living space,” says Sawyer.
Having found a ready market for the houses at City Point, the prospect of building more family housing is something Sawyer welcomes. He says: “The apartment market is good, but we need to be providing all the links in the housebuying chain.”
What is worth repeating
Sawyer says he would repeat the house design itself in a similarly urban location.
One point worth making
"It has been mostly single people, empty nesters or small families who have bought the houses. There are not many people with small children here. I think that is because of the city location. "
Trevor Sawyer
Kender Triangle, Lewisham, South London — Hyde Housing
Project
The Kender Triangle is not a single site, but an area-based programme to demolish and replace 1960s local authority estates in the New Cross Gate area in south London. Hyde Housing Association is working with the local authority and alongside initiatives such as New Cross New Deal for Communities. So far 190 homes have been delivered in a mix of apartments and houses.
Hyde is working with designer HTA Architects, contractor Geoffrey Osborne, consultant Calfordseaden, engineer Ellis & Moore and landscape architect Broadway Malyan.
The brief
The recently completed phase 2b of the project includes 35 three- and four-bedroom three- and four-storey houses alongside 72 apartments, 11 of the latter being for shared ownership. All homes on the scheme are designed to Lifetime Homes standard, the Housing Corporation’s Scheme Development Standards, an EcoHomes rating of Good, and Secured by Design. Under the agreement with the local authority, new homes must match the space standards of their predecessors, which were developed to the generous Parker Morris Plus 10%.
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Under the space standard agreement with Lewisham council, a four-bedroom house has 131m2 of space. And yet rent levels are low – rent for a four-bedroom house is set at £101.27 a week. Delivering space – and doing so on a tight budget – has been a key issue for housing provider Hyde. Ann Lander, principal development manager with Hyde, says: “Getting it to stack up financially has been the biggest challenge. We’re buying the land from the council and we have to negotiate hard to deliver. These are very low rents given the level of capital investment.” Phase 2b has a construction cost of more than £18m, which was part supported by £12m of social housing grant from Lewisham council.
Architect HTA tried to get as much usable space as possible out of the budget, and ended up creating more four-bedroom homes than anticipated. HTA project leader Colin Ainger explains: “We were trying to achieve uniformity in the roofline for efficiency and that produced an increase in the number of four-bedroom units. We have both mono and dual-pitched roofs and the monopitch roof was designed to produce storage space only, but it turned out to be large enough for a bedroom.” Internal layout of the homes is more akin to that of a terraced house, Ainger acknowledges, than of a townhouse, with all of the living space on the ground floor.
Homes were constructed from timber frame, with walls achieving U values of 0.3. The homes also have precast concrete/polystyrene Hanson Jetfloor ground floors and timber roof cassettes, modern methods of construction being chosen for speed of construction. The homes are, however, fronted in traditional brick. “Externally we wanted to create the exterior of a traditional London street,” says Ainger. “We thought stock brick was the most appropriate material, combined with elements of cladding – we’ve used cedar and pre-patinated brown copper on various elements of the overall scheme.”
Density of development through the programme ranges so far from 50 units per hectare to 75 units/ha. That may not appear high when compared to urban flatted schemes, but it was high enough to cause concerns among existing residents, Lander explains: “The density is higher than existing residents are used to and some find that difficult. So we have listened very closely to them, involved them in the design process and developed a consultation strategy.”
That strategy was developed once the programme was under way in response to resident concerns. It has involved “embedding” two residents in the ongoing design process, following a day of training at HTA. “It has been superb,” says Ainger. “On long-term projects like Kender, the team can become so used to working together, and used to the fact that they have tenant buy-in at the start. But tenants must be involved all the way through the process.”
But tenant consultation does not mean that the tenants will give every proposal a warm reception. For the next phase of homes, Hyde and its team looked at producing family housing in a different high-density form: as maisonettes with apartments above, somewhat similar to the 1960s built four-storey maisonette blocks being demolished on the site. The idea was rejected, Ann Lander says: “The residents didn’t like it and there was a feeling that we weren’t improving on what we were replacing.” Instead Hyde will be providing three- and four-bedroom terraced homes, possibly with south-facing roof terraces, and the residents are delighted.
What is worth repeating
“The way in which we consult with residents and ensure they are able to actively participate in the design process – we will certainly build on that inclusive process on future phases,” says Lander. Hyde is championing its consultation in its bid to win New Cross Gate council tenants’ vote in the stock transfer planned to come to ballot early next year.
One point worth making
"On long-term regeneration projects there is a danger you can get comfortable after a while and leave the residents behind."
Colin Ainger
Downloads
Selwyn Street - Floor plan for a five-bedroomed house
Other, Size 0 kbCity Point - Floor plan for a four-bedroomed house
Other, Size 0 kbKender Triangle - Floor Plan
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Source
RegenerateLive
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