March 2012 Archives

The Clive Emson catalogue features as part of this week's Estates Gazette coming out tomorrow. Amongst the more standard fare, and the last lot of the day for the Sussex and Surrey auction on 16th April, is a bit of tempter for those seeking a change of pace in life.

A Grade II listed building dating from 1768. Looks appealing doesn't it? It gets better though...

This is The Mill at Birdham Pool Marina, apparently the last working tidal mill in Sussex. It was in use up until 1935, when the mill pond was made into a marina by Birdham Estates Limited. I don't imagine too many properties for sale through the auctions this year will come with their own peninsular.

It comes with plenty of historic interest too - it was used to build and repair naval boats in WWII, and a mill previously built on the site is even mentioned in the Doomsday Book.

The building's currently divided up as offices and storage space, but it's thought to offer potential for residential (either single home or divided) or possibly a restaurant/public house. All subject to planning of course.

How do you value something like this? Well in this instance it's been left to the market to decide. It's down as "Nil reserve" in the catalogue, online it's £5k plus.

Tempted by this one? Find out more details here. If you're in the market for something a little more conventional there are plenty of other options in their online catalogue.

At today's New London Architecture talk 'East Village: Designing a legacy for London', sustainability was perceptibly described as the heart of the influence behind the development of the Olympic Village. The key to designing the buildings was to ensure that the finer details of the buildings not only reflected the previous history and the current surrounding of the site, but also incorporated the future use of the site to ensure a lasting legacy is delivered.

Features around the site such as the proximity to the Lee Valley nature reserve and the flows of water, motivated architects to create buildings that existed in harmony with the surrounding natural environment, giving future occupiers a higher living standard. DSDHA architects, for example focussed the design of their building based on the large chalk bed beneath the ground of the site.

Image coutsey of DSDHA Architects

Perhaps another interesting feature is the colours used to distinguish different year groups of the Chobham Harris Academy School. Different coloured corridors not only bought a splash of colour and variety to the building but also reflected the colours of the Olympic flag.

 Olympic colour based floors, and coloured corridors of the Chobham Harris Academy (East Village).

We now have the exact location...drum role please...the address of the Apprentice House 2012 is...17 Porchester Terrace, W2. Here's the street view:

 Picture:Google Street View

Compare it to the picture on the telly we posted yesterday:

Picture:P Wellman

Special thanks to Laura for the assist! (@laurachop)

on the Apprentice always end up in the same greasy spoon. We can now reveal the exact location of the Bridge Cafe, it's on Westfields Road in West Acton:

Picture:Google Maps

And here's an interesting website called The Fry up Inspector where we found it.

Normal service resumed (well, sort of!)

Local blog The Deptford Dame reports that Convoys Wharf is to go back to the drawing board, even though the site benefits from a long standing outline planning consent. It lists a long line of opponents to the Hutchison Whampoa scheme including... 'the council's planning department, archaeologists and industrial historians, garden history experts, maritime heritage specialists, and MP Joan Ruddock to name but a few''. 

The developer has now enlisted the 'go to' starchitect for masterplans, none other than Sir Terry Farrell (Earl's Court, Thames Gateway, Paddington Basin, Greenwich Peninsula). Apparently Farrell's team have been invited to a 'listening exercise' to hear short presentations from the community, with Hutchison Whampoa regarding the event as the 'beginning' of the consultation process rather than the end of it, according to The Deptford Dame.

We can now reveal the location of the Apprentice 2012 (yes, it's that time of year again) house. It's a rather swanky town house in Bayswater, it'll look like this:

...and ... err ...that's it for the time being. We're still looking though. Educated guess, Chepstow Villas or Dawson Place. We found it! Go HERE for the details.

Picture: P.Wellman

Countryside Properties and Swan Housing are joint Developers on the Robin Hood Estate in E14, and are waiting with baited breath for a committee decision before 31st March, which has already been deferred by LTGDC until the committee on the 19th. It still has to go to Tower Hamlets as well. After reading the committee agenda for the LTGDC, I thought it was rather interesting that "the applicant has indicated that a decision needs to be made before the 31st of March 2012 to avoid having to pay the Mayor of London's Crossrail CIL." You certainly cannot knock Countryside and Swan for being honest! I thought I'd look into this further and also found out that Tower Hamlets actually own the site and created a "build now, pay later" package with this plot...

So if I understand this correctly, Countryside and Swan have managed to win a contract allowing them to construct a development of nearly 1,600 units and don't need to pay until it's complete? Furthermore, they want a decision before the end of March so they don't have to pay for CIL? Oh yeah, who makes the planning decision? Is it Tower Hamlets?

Robin Hood (Estate) really does live up to its name...

The Milanofiori residential complex in Milan has been announced as the winner of the 2011 WAN Awards residential sector. The cluster of homes, offices, hotels, restaurants and leisure facilities, famously exists in harmony with its surrounding area, creating a more tranquil living environment for its residents and users.

Picture courtsey of Milanofiori Residential Complex / Beirut Observatory

living in a building you can drive around in, a migrating skyscraper if you will. Something like this perhaps:

Link

Is this art or is it the council making preparations to remove a telephone box?

It's probably art as the telephone boxes in Broad Court WC2 have been used as art subjects in the pass, as can be seen here and here and here.

...a 30 storey hotel in 15 days, yes that's right 15 DAYS! Below is how they did it:

The former Allied Carpets building in Tottenham was one of the many images that became synonymous with the August 2011 London riots.

The building which was severely damage after being set ablaze was thereafter demolished being deemed as structurally unsafe.  The building had already been leased to Metropolitan Housing Trust for the provision of 26 residential units in the form of shared ownership and fully mortgaged properties. Threedneedle Pensions Ltd the freehold owner of the building (along with Zurich Insurance), under the lease agreement of the building is now required to reinstate the premises.  After some time deliberating, it has been decided that a replica of the original 1930's quasi Art Deco style building will be developed, with Rolfe Judd acting as the planning consultant. This will aim to provide as close to the original 26 residential buildings, as possible, as well as the same ground floor retail function. This has been deemed the fastest way of ensuring that the project is completed as early as possible allowing residents to move as quickly as possible back into their homes. Plans for this were submitted to Haringey Council on 20^th Feb 2012.

Pictures courtesy of Rolfe Judd

Here at LRR were working furiously on the production of this year's Red Book. Here's a snippet from the Merton section, all about London's ugliest building: 

Other boroughs may have larger consents but none have had a more tortuous journey to permission than Merton's biggest hitter The Tower (Brown & Root House). Voted the capital's most hated building, it could have been developed by London Green who exchanged contracts for the £13.75m site with Asif Aziz's Golfrate subsidiary, Yewbelle in 2005.

However, Yewbelle wrestled back ownership of the building after it eventually proved that some S106 obligations by Merton council had not been fulfilled.  Despite this, the building has remained undeveloped, slipping slowly into dereliction, even at one point becoming a favoured location for the production of al fresco adult films, much to the chagrin of the local authority.

Planning permission was granted in December 2011 for 218 residential units, all to be for private sale with no affordable housing whatsoever. Usually at this point we say something along the lines of  "the lack of any affordable provision was due to the developer arguing that the inclusion of such would make the scheme unviable". This is of course true, but the level of affordable housing was not the only thing jettisoned from the original S106 agreement.

Consider this; the S106 for the original 2003 consent (which the 2011 permission is a revision of) had £1,830,000 worth of commuted payments which would have assisted the development of a new library together with easing the strain on the local education system once people started moving in to the completed development. All that was removed from the latest S106 with only a single payment of £220,000 for infrastructure remaining, the council have gone as far as to say that it will fund the £742,840 education contribution shortfall itself.