Housing • Arklow Road

Turning technical constraints into opportunities: providing high-quality affordable homes.

The sensitive retrofit of an existing 1920’s warehouse in Lewisham, provided an opportunity to deliver a range of affordable apartments for first-time buyers and young professionals keen to get on the housing ladder. We collaborated with Pocket Living to ensure the design of the scheme focused on identifying opportunities rather than constraints. RCKa’s challenge was to reconcile the client’s efficient, well-established housing product with the eccentricities of the existing building fabric.

44 new affordable homes

Supporting families and young people keen to get on the housing ladder

Encouraging social cohesion

Honouring heritage and unlocking potential

The original scheme on Arklow Road was comprised of three separate re-developments, a four-storey 1920’s commercial building, a 1970’s office extension and a further seven-storey extension in 2006. Much of the original facade’s ornamental features have been retained and brickwork, concrete and stucco elements repaired. The extension design responds to local vernacular and the residing buildings on Arklow Road. Internally, the social spaces are separated from the circulation and lift cores which eliminated a requirement for costly and divisive fire separation systems.

Enhancing Social Cohesion

The layout at Arklow Road is designed to maximise and encourage social interaction with shared amenity spaces including a flexibly-designed resident’s lounge. This space provides sofas, kitchenettes and information boards and opens out onto a vast shared garden with carefully planted raised beds and an ecologically rich raised railway-siding. An active and open series of spaces a ground floor dramatically increases chances of interaction between neighbours. Innovative design solutions and shared amenities throughout the building ensure that moments of social interaction are available to all users and a new community is able to thrive.

 

Client
Pocket Living

Status
Completed, 2018

Location
Lewisham, London

Project Team
Philip Gibb
Tom Hart
Owen Jowett
Dieter Kleiner
Michael Pitman

Photography
Jakob Spriestersbach

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