Europan 8: Oldham

Winner: Parkland Community

Team members:

• Alexander Franklin, architect
• Phil Catcheside, architect
• James White, architect
• Rachel Basha, interior designer
• Harry Dobbs, urban uesigner
• Geoffrey Morrow, structural engineer
• Lloyd Woolnough, quantity surveyor
• Michael Guin, environmental engineer

About the project

Parkland Community sensitively analyses and adapts URBED’s proposed masterplan for Werneth. It proposes a series of green squares that span between the existing Werneth Park and the proposed Europan site; these are carefully integrated with the existing terraced house street patterns. The architectural proposal follows a similar humane approach, reappraising the typologies of the neighbourhood and proposing a new iteration of the typical terraced house.

The housing on the site is formally laid out in cranked rows. These have a particular hierarchy of main family houses and adjoining mews properties, an interesting move allowing the residents to expand and contract both in terms of family size and potential home working. The housing itself is simply articulated in fair-faced and ceramic brickwork, which is playfully punctured by windows to provide the necessary overlooking and surveillance of the neighbourhood.

Why it won

Parkland Community was seen as a clear proposal that successfully combined a vision for the wider masterplan with the satisfactory resolution of the housing units. It was noted that the team had adopted a clever re-interpretation of the overall masterplan that linked well with Werneth and produced a very satisfactory resolution for the wider green space strategy.

The housing layouts are also appealing, being a re-working of the terraced house, but expressed as a loose grid pattern. This allows the streetscape to be defined by a slight shifting of the elevations rather than by a straightforward block.

The jury enjoyed the real sense of humanity that ran through all aspects of this proposal, and felt that the presentation explained the story with clarity and a sense of resolution.