|
|
|
|
PLASSY ROAD
Client - Hyde Housing
Architects - JCMT Architects
|
|
|
|
|
The Design -
The building layout suggests a mews type development of the interior courtyard but there were concerns with the distance between buildings on Plassy Road and those behind. A study was undertaken to explore spatial, privacy and light and shade issues in relation to street width dimension. The study suggested that a number of successful and attractive streets and mews, some of them quite well known, were surprisingly narrow and that a close grained series of street spaces within a hierarchy of larger spatial street types could be a pleasing addition to the cityscape.
Of special interest was Church Avenue in Molesley, Birmingham. Built around 1860 for workers on the railway it comprised two housing terraces facing each other with small front gardens and path linking to the high street, pedestrian traffic only. Defensible space was large in relation to total width. It appeared to be one of the most attractive and well used of all the street spaces looked at.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
The design for Plassy Road used Church Avenue as inspiration to create a green lane in the city. Private defensible space was of a useable size to encourage civilised use of the shared spaces. There is a focal point to the south of 3 fastigiate oaks and to the north of a gabion tower. This gabion construction includes as much opportunity for nesting and sprouting as can be build into it and is intended as a totem of identity. The gabion tower echoes the use of planted gabions to define the front gardens on Plassy Road.
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
The staggered hedgerow planting that defines the edge of defensible space is attractive, easy of management, and helpful in creating wildlife habitat. The randomly placed boulders are intended to provide casual seating - for perching rather than lingering - and, in their placement, to discourage biking up and down.
|
|
|
|
|
|
MAYOW ROAD
Architects: Morris O'Looney
|
|
|
|
|
Brief: To create a shared inner courtyard with bike parking for a new residential scheme
The Design: The courtyard was conceived as a sanctuary or cloister and attempted to build on the special quality of the back gardens it replaced. Original apple trees were retained and the planting developed from them with many edible plants and allusions to motherhood and fertility. The intimacy and protection of the space was felt to be ideal for mothers with young children to sit out. The scheme also included an experimental bat tower structure and some defensible space of a useable size.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
TYSON ROAD
Client- Loromah Estates
Architects - Bryden Wood Associates
|
|
|
|
|
The Tyson road project is almost a hectare and comprises 7 apartment blocks in the form of eroded cubes with staggered greenroofs together with two other apartment buildings forming a gateway on Tyson road itself - in similar materials but reflecting the scale of the adjacent Victorian terrace. The landscape problem was to meet all the requirements of buildings, access and undercroft parking while at the same time attempting to preserve and build on the woodland quality of the site before development.
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
Of special concern were two magnificent trees - a maple and an oak -chosen to form 'bookends' to the central glade and all the landscape decisions, the placement and levels of buildings and access, revolved around preserving the ground levels in the large rootzones of these two trees. All the existing perimeter trees were preserved and the perimeter itself conceived as an ecological corridor with new native tree planting and extensive native hedgerow planting. In all some 70 new trees are proposed across the site. Several apple trees on the site prompted the creation of a small orchard on the access road together with a grove of hazel.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
The retaining structures of planted gabion walls, dictated by the sloping site, were kept to a minimum. Defensible space on the groundfloor was in the form of overlarge, deck balconies - the ground plane being otherwise a shared space. It includes a play space using site won timbers, an expanse of conventionally mown lawn and several other quieter areas of grass managed as meadow.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Other features include a raingarden fed from adjacent building roofs - a section of which is lined for permanent dampness - log piles for beetles tucked into the hedgerow and a planting attractive to butterflies. The close integration of buildings with landscape is intended to produce an effect of pavilion like buildings within a woodland grove like setting.
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Under Construction
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
