Description

Urban context

South of Victoria Park in the London borough of Hackney, at the intersection of
Parnell Road and Old Ford Road, a residential neighborhood of small buildings
was created; it stands out for its succinct use of public space. Twenty-three
buildings, with rhythmically arranged building heights of between one and four
floors, each of which houses two stacked units and their free spaces. The row
houses are arranged to form three built-up fields framing two polygonal street
zones that expand into a square. Additional office and commercial units
supplement the neighborhood. In the tradition of the European city, this project
is an homage to the public space of the street.

Ground-floor zone

All of the apartments on the ground floor are accessed directly from outside by
their own entrance. Although there is no semipublic space on the grounds –
neither common access areas nor courtyards – the decoration of the street with
rhythmically arranged trees and low lamps marks a subtle entrance zone in front
of the doors to the apartments. The street area is paved and extends through the
buildings with no threshold space. The clearly framed exterior can be read as
its own spatial volume. Free of automobile traffic, it is a space with
possibilities for urban and neighborhood activities.

Building structure

The basic type – two stacked row houses – is varied according to the situation,
adding to it and in part mirroring it back to back across the rear courtyards.
The thirty-eight relatively small apartments of this “high-density, low-rise”
neighborhood range between sixty-two and sixty-five square meters, and each has
a private exterior space that cannot be seen from the public space. Each of the
lower units has a patio-like garden and each of the upper ones a roof terrace
connected in front of the apartments.

Facade

The white, Mediterranean-looking buildings form a new urban attraction. Their
varied architecture frames a precisely placed public street or plaza space whose
polygonal form reveals ever new visual relationships. Openings of various sizes
and proportions give a lively look to the facades. All of the apartments have an
intense visual connection to the street. Bay windows, small balconies, and
oriels offer good views of the public space. Behind the walls, protected from
the eyes of others in the street, the units open up onto private open areas
through generous windows.

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Originally published in: Ulrike Wietzorrek, Housing+: On Thresholds, Transitions, and Transparencies, Birkhäuser, 2014.