July 2010 Archives

Over the past few years my site visits have taken me to this site below, a small mixed use development in Shoreditch on the corner of Bateman's Row and French Place. When site visiting the finished development it came across as a well built, mixed use scheme with good cladding and a good mix of materials as well as variation in the fenestration which made it pleasing on the eye, but nothing too 'special'. Well, the project has now been shortlisted on the Stirling Prize, arguably the most prestigious architectural award in the UK, which shows just how much I know! Along with that in the past year it has also been awarded with the 'RIBA London Building of the Year 2010' as well as 'Mixed Use Regeneration Development' at The Daily Telegraph British Homes Awards 2010.

The building was designed Theis & Khan Architects, a married couple; Patrick Theis and Soraya Khan which now houses their practice as well as their home. The 200sqm two-storey industrial building they bought in 2000 was granted permission in 2007 for 400sqm of B1 space and 4 residential units.

The first floor is used for their architectural practice with the residential unit on second, third and fourth floor as their family home. A second commercial unit on ground and basement is now an art gallery. There are two further studio flats and a one-bedroom flat within the development.

Incidentally other nominations for the Stirling Prize include three museums and two schools. The museums include Zaha Hadid's MAXXI; the 'National Museum of XXI Century Arts' in Rome, David Chipperfield Architects with Julian Harrap Architects 'Neues Museum' in Berlin and Rick Mather Architects 'Ashmolean Museum' in Oxford, the oldest museum in Britain.

The two schools nominated are DSDHA's Christ College Secondary School in Guildford and dRMM's Clapham Manor School in south London.

If you were going to build a residential development in London and were told you could build it anywhere in the capital, where would you put it?

Here's my Top 5 "must-haves" for the site:

• Central 
• Riverside
• Near a world heritage site
• Views of famous things
• Good transport links

Sound like a tall order. How about this:

This riverside site lies immediately to the west of the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. Directly opposite on the south side of the river is HMS Belfast, the GLA building and Hayes Galleria. Visible from the west side of the site are the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and the London Eye. The nearest transport link is Fenchurch Street station, 5 minutes walk to the north.

The site description above relates to this building below:

 This is one of THE best sites in the capital and it's been like this for well over 10 years. This is the Three Quays site, and this is what it looked like yesterday:

..a great improvement already. But once demolition is complete, it's going to get better. Cheval Residences  is redeveloping the site and when it's finished it'll look like this:

(Look at the extreme right of the picture, that's how close The Tower is).

When complete the development will include 64 resi units, all private (thanks to a payment in-leu of £3,000,000 for the provision of off-site affordable housing) together with a 77 bed apart-hotel. The design (one of the more inventive on this side of the Thames for a while) is by 3DReid architecture who were also in the running to design the U2 Tower  (yes that U2, the one with Bonno and The Edge in it) in Dublin with this:

Only to be pipped at the post by a certain Baron Foster of Thames Bank  with this:

  all of which is a bit academic now seeing as the plug was pulled on the scheme in 2008. Thankfully the plug remains firmly in at the Three Quays which I recon should complete before the end of 2011, just in time for the Olympics.

Below is one of the Homes & Property's more interesting 'homes of the week'. A 1 bedroom barge docked in Poplar Dock Marina, the heart of Canary Wharf, they state it's ideal for a first time buyer, although you probably could add Canary Wharf crash pad to that. Here are some pictures of the barge, conveniently located close to the jubilee line, it comes with a fully fitted kitchen and unsurprisingly no ongoing chain. It could be yours for £99,950, rather a lot less than the cheapest studio flat in Pan Peninsula at £230,000 or even the £463,000 paid for the most expensive studio within that development, barely just up the road.

Waterways in central London over the past decade have been prime residential and mixed use development spots. The days when light industrial use classes dominated these inner city landscapes are diminishing as are the grubby derelict warehouse which epitomised canals in the 70's and 80's. As more and more people move back into the inner city and gentrify these places, canals and waterways instead of being derelict no-go areas are now becoming mixed use residential and leisure spaces.

Whilst scouring the Hackney planning pages for new applications I came across one for the corner of Kingsland Road and Downham Road, yet another for this part of town. The diagram below shows you just how much Kingsland Basin in Hackney, an inlet of the Regents Canal, has changed, in the past 10 years. The gentrification here has been rapid, although there's still a couple of years left until the whole basin will be surrounded by new development and a totally new landscape to one that was there a decade ago.

It's a similar story too around the City Road Basin, also part of Regents Canal, see recent blog post here, as well as Bow Common Lane and Thomas Road in Poplar, Tower Hamlets, which is part of the Limehouse Cut network.

EGi news ran the story yesterday about major plans to turn the area around Millwall's New Den ground into a 30 acre "major sporting and housing led regeneration" project. Urban regeneration group Renewal are behind the plans designed by Studio Egret West. The proposals will see as much as 2,700 homes planned as well as local sporting facilities. A cgi of the scheme is shown below, the full story can be read here.

Last week the new Labour Council of Southwark entered into a deal with Elephant and Castle developer Lend Lease. The new deal shows how keen the new council are in progressing with plans for the urgently needed development in the Elephant area. The Liberal Democrat Council which preceded it must be said dithered and delayed the project for 8 years. Now the new Labour administration have come in and over 8 weeks have rushed out a deal, which is a lot more promising and better for the area. SE1.com have a great interview with Peter John, the new leader of Southwark Council. In it he explains the main differences between this new agreement and the heads of terms the previous Lib Dem council and Lend Lease signed last November.

The main points that came across were these:

The new deal secures a minimum of 25% affordable housing, whereas the Lib Dem deal had no social housing built into their agreement they were prepared to sign. Labour have guaranteed social homes at Elephant & Castle against the Lib Dems who wanted a guaranteed profit in 15 years time. The new council believe they will still get profit out of the scheme and have taken the political decision to guarantee affordable housing over profit.

Southwark Council through this new deal also have a commitment from Lend Lease to underwrite any compulsory purchase order that the council has to bring against St Modwen to acquire the shopping centre. Peter John however, did state he was hopeful St Modwen and Lend Lease will reach an agreement before that has to happen, noting that the two developers have met 3 or 4 times since the 6th of May, a big change since before the elections, meaning the new council have brought new political impetus to the scheme.

The new labour leadership also considered a future for the leisure centre at the site, again something which the Lib Dems were not prepared to sign in their agreement. A short consultation on this will go out soon where they have changed the recommendations within the deal to specifically include a swimming pool within the plans.

The issues surrounding Tfl and the tube station upgrades remain ongoing; although they are confident they will soon reach an agreement.

Lend Lease and Southwark will work together over the next 18 months on a masterplan and planning applications, demolition should start to get underway towards the end of the year, and by 2014 the 're-birth' of the Elephant should be in full-swing. Another interesting point Peter John made was that the scheme will pull regeneration from the north of the borough, southwards and even more drastically pull the centre of London, southwards. For the full interview, follow this link. 

The new deal Southwark and Lend Lease have agreed too seems rather promising for Elephant & Castle with the new Labour council looking much more pro-active than their Lib Dem predecessors. Now lets hope they count for action rather than just words which is all it is at this stage; the people of Elephant & Castle deserve it. 

Here's another long neglected site on the cusp of resurrection. Go here for a brief history and images of what it used to look like. Stay here to see what it looked like last week...

Barratt are in the process of preparing this massive site for construction start. The development when finished will have 247 resi units together with a gym and an over 300 space car park. 

Last month the Estates Gazette carried a story about 20 Fenchurch Street (aka The Walkie-Talkie) the essence of which was that Land Sec had just entered into exclusive talks with Canary Wharf Group to jointly develop the site.

If you were to casually walk around it today nothing much appears to have changed. It's still boarded up with seemingly no activity on site. But the calm exterior is slightly misleading; shove a camera into one of the holes in the site boards and the resulting image, whilst not being a full blown construction start is certainly one of purposeful preparation....

A couple of weeks ago I attended the NLA conference on Delivering London's Homes. Various speakers were in attendance with a range of issues facing London's house building covered. Here are some key points that were brought up by some of the speakers:

David Lunts - HCA

• The short term affordable housing pipeline is strong and on target to deliver 50,000 by 2012.
• Completions will run at a significant level for the next few years.
• From 2011 new starts will fall significantly due to budget cuts.
• There will be a heavy dependence on East London for the bulk of new supply as this is where the available land is.
• 40% of new building work is in Newham, Tower Hamlets and Greenwich.
• Cuts will mean doing more with less and doing less.
• Greater emphasis on the private rental sector needed.

Marcus Dixon - Savills

• Mainstream London prices are behaving in a similar way to Prime markets. There is concern about some schemes pricing at over and above 2007 levels.
• Transaction levels are still hugely down and there has been a slow in activity in Q1 2010 compared to the end of 2009. Pointing to a market that is not fully functioning.
• The current deposit needed for a first time buyer is now 100% of annual salary, compared to 15% in the 1990s.
• Expect 6 to 9 years before levels of completions return to pre-downturn levels.
• Double dip recession is increasingly likely due to unsustainable growth.

Jennet Siebrits - CBRE

• Two thirds of new households find their home in the private rental sector.
• 75% of the market was owned by buy to let investors which has now plummeted. Institutional investment could fill the void left by buy to let investors.
• However, Government should create a level playing field on stamp duty and VAT as the costs will hinder the potential of this.
• Could create a separate use class for the private rental sector.

Peter Bishop - London Development Agency

• Royal Docks area is a key area with unique qualities for development.
• Currently 650 hectares with 100 hectares of water.
• Has capacity for 18,400 homes and 5,500 jobs.
• Need to cement LDA vision with London Borough of Newham and build an alliance of land owners.
• There is a great need to resolve the issue of river crossings in the area.
• Sites coming onto the market in the Royal Docks: Silvertown Quays, Thames Barrier Park, Barrier Park East, Royal Docks site, Albert Basin Sites.

Land Securities and Pocket Living

• 3 Pocket Living schemes have been developed and sold on an intermediate basis.
• The statistics show that 85% of key workers would prefer to buy a property outright rather than have shared ownership and this is why Pocket Living has appeal.
• Developments of 10 to 35 units with 1 beds at 38sq m net floor area.
• Land Securities and Pocket Living have been using S106 subsidies from Land Securities developments to develop the schemes off site.
• The key new development is in Fermoy Road in Westminster which will provide 32 intermediate Pocket flats instead of the 6 units already permitted on site.
• The aim is to improve the tenure mix in an area that is currently dominated by social rented units.
• Able to do this grant free and hope to transfer the scheme to other local authorities.
• Possible upgrade of the current 1 bed idea to development of 'plus' units for bigger households. However current planning constraints could hinder this.

One trend that seems to be appearing lately is the increase in consultation prior to planning submissions. One such 'pre planning' application that caught my eye this week is for the landmark Cherry Orchard Road site in Croydon.

A brief history of the site is that back in July 2009 the application for the site, which was recognised as a significant scheme in the regeneration of Croydon, was recommended for refusal by Croydon council. The reason being that Croydon council wanted the scheme to be fully integrated into the East Croydon Masterplan, which would also include the Stanhope and Schroder site at Ruskin Square. This let to the subsequent withdrawl of the application by the developer Menta.

The original application, designed by Make Architects, had 7 buildings and was set to provide 1,042 flats, 40,321sqm of office floorspace, 2,467sq m of retail floorspace and 1,338sqm and looked like this:

Most will agree that the plans were pretty distinctive and would have brought a fresh image to central Croydon, just what it needs.

However, the new pre application submitted this week would include only 4 buildings, less than half of the residential units originally proposed and no B1 office space at all. Oh, and it will look like this:

I know which design I prefer.

The pre submission is due to be discussed by the council on 8th July before a planning application is submitted. It is not yet known who is the architect for the new scheme but all is likely to become clearer when the East Croydon masterplan is released on 12th July.

Norman Foster, is arguably one of the most acclaimed and successful British architects with an international practice valued towards £500m and iconic buildings all over the world coming from his designs.

The list of his accomplishments is endless. He was knighted in 1990 and is only the second British architect to win the Stirling Prize twice, the first for the American Air Museum in 1998, and the second for 30 St Mary Axe, otherwise known as The Gherkin, in 2004. In consideration of his whole portfolio, Foster was also awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1999. 

The "starchitect" turned 75 this month and is still going strong. Over the years he has probably added to London's skyline arguably more than anyone else. In celebration of the great architect turning 75, I thought I'd remind us of his work, with a selection of his capital creations.

The Great Court, British Museum extension

The Millenium Bridge

The GLA Building, City Hall

8 Canada Sqaure, Canary Wharf

The Gherkin

Wembley Stadium

The Willis Building

Canary Wharf Tube Station