Europan 8: Stonebridge, London

Commended entries

Form Follows Fallow

Team members

• Vincent Lacovara, architect
• Daisy Froud, anthropologist
• Geoffrey Shearcroft, architect
• Thomas Coward, architect
• Christina Gestra, landscape architect
• Fozia Ismail, Community development worker

The project

Form Follows Fallow received a commendation for its light-hearted and thoroughly researched approach. The scheme proposes an architecture that is accommodating of difference, while articulating a clear identity for the neighbourhood. The architecture consists of three blocks and three parks. Perforated terraces to north and south contain flats, maisonettes, cottages and houses, intricately clustered, each with a door to the street and a park view.

The central space, both framed by the blocks and holding them together, is a ‘pocket landscape park’. Open on all sides and to everyone, it is conceived in a spirit of neighbourliness, facilitating encounters with other lives.

Jury comments

This project used the subject of community consultation as its main concept and driver. The scheme describes how local people can choose their property and develop their homes as their circumstances change. This is handled with humour, the idea being conveyed by means of invented characters and scenarios.

Although the proposals present an approach rather than a resolved design, the jury admired the detail and understanding that was represented within the project, appreciating that this team could do well within a consultative environment.

Common Ground

Team members

• Nicola Gerber,architect
• Tiran Driver, urban designer

The project

Common Ground received a commendation for its strong urban concept. With its intelligent plan and strong, simple architecture, the scheme works well with access through the site to tube and shops.

This scheme develops a strategy to rearticulate an urban nucleus around a new 'village common'. Housing concepts have been developed, transforming the Victorian terrace into a new hybrid typology of flats combined with a mews house to the rear. Other housing units have a combined low and mid-rise configuration to create flats with views over the green and the city.

The use of new cycle networks is suggested, connecting the site and other parts of central London using the recycled towpath of the Grand Union and other under-utilised sections of the city’s canal networks. The proposed buildings are accessible for all users with a view towards this development becoming a part of the lifetime homes concept.

Jury comments

The strength of this project was its strong urban concept. It challenges the established masterplan, intelligently proposing to increase the area designated as parkland and extends it towards Hillside. This then sets up a series of new relationships between green space, proposed housing and the existing surroundings, such as the hotel, that are intriguing and clear.