A creative development consultancy

SUSD has formed a joint venture with Thames North Trust to develop the 1870’s building, St Paul’s URC, situated just off Westbourne Grove between an adjoining Arts and Craft residential building and a Grade II listed detached house.

The project involves prolonging the life of the building, extending its community use, whilst also making it fully accessible for all visitors. SUSD is creating a new community hall and office facilities within the existing building and two new high quality private apartments on the upper floors, with completion due in Spring 2013.

The planning application consists of altering and dividing the existing building into two parts: creating church community space, offices and adding two residential apartments at the second, third and fourth floors, both with private roof terraces.

An entirely new basement level is being formed with the ground floor raised to provide level access throughout improving access for all the community to the new public spaces. The design will pay particular attention in retaining the building’s existing features at street-level, opening up spaces to improve natural light and sustainable & energy conservation elements, such as:

-       New efficient boiler and heating system;

-       High levels of insulation;

-       Natural ventilation;

-       Improving airtightness on existing windows, doors and skylights and new glazing elements will use low u-value;

-       Water saving devices;

-       Provision for recycling waste.

The intensity and mixed nature of the building use will ensure it is efficiently used throughout the week, rather than periodically which necessitates high- energy use for short-term return.  The new mixed use of the building leads to a sustainable community.

SUSD recently completed construction of ‘The Longhouse’ developement in the beautiful Cotswolds in Gloucestershire, and the building has been sold to a local family. The original Jovial Foresters Public House has also recently been refurbished as local shop with living accommodation, and sold to a young couple.

SUSD acquired the freehold interest in the Jovial Foresters Public House, Star Hill, Nailsworth, Gloucestershire in 2010. Planning permission was granted for erection of a new single dwelling, The Longhouse, on the land of the public house to the rear of the garden.

The site is located within the Settlement Policy Boundary and outside of the conservation area of Stroud District Council and is approximately 1 kilometer  north west of the town centre in beautiful surroundings making it a popular and sought-after place to live.

The view from the front garden of The Longhouse.

The Longhouse design is influenced by the existing pattern and density of the traditional buildings in the surrounding area. The Jovial Foresters Public House and its attached buildings were retained with sufficient rear garden.  The new house provides a four bedroom single house within the rear unused part of the former Jovial Foresters Pub and occupies approximately 140sqm with 150sqm of private garden.

Elevation of The Longhouse and The Jovial Foresters Pub.

Garden elevation of former Pub

The existing mixture of housing forms, sizes and appearances emphasizes a village-like atmosphere and leaves space between the buildings to preserve the vernacular character of the site. The idea was to enhance the family friendly atmosphere in-line with the character of Nailsworth and its surroundings. The new house forms a unity through its external appearance in similar form, size and materials, while blending contemporary design with traditional forms.

The Longhouse entrance and carport.

The spatial concept came in direct response to the elevated location in order to take full advantage of views to the east of the site. Various leveling of the outdoor spaces maximise the use of sunlight. By adapting the landscape and placing the living area on a lower level to the east of the site, the visual impact of the house is minimised from neighbouring buildings. Working with the natural slope of the land on a west-east axis, enabled single and two storey spaces to be brought under a unifying roofline.

Front Elevation of The Longhouse.

An additional garden strip between the new house and the garden of the former public house reduces the visual impact and creates a buffer against any potential noise.  Smooth transitions between interior and exterior are achieved through full height openings. The sizes of the rooms are shallow enough to achieve good daylight penetration for each room.

Master bedroom and ensuite – natural daylight and views over the valley.

The materials used are in keeping with the near environment and the former public house. The walls are rough and random coursed Bath Stone in hydraulic lime mortar with solid stone lintels.  The pitched roof is finished in slate tiles and galvanized gutters and downpipes.  Garden walls are Cotswold dry stone walls with traditional upright top row.

Material detailing.

The internal design of the house is reflected in the elevations. Generous fenestration offers full-height openings. Good size timber framed double glazed openings provide good daylight to the interior as well as outstanding views to the outside.

Living room – full height double glazed openings.

The natural characteristics of the selected materials; oak, Bath stone, slate and well designed detailing  define the appearance of the house, blending contemporary design with traditional form.

SUSD has now begun working on the final phase of the project – more information to follow shortly.

Along with many, many others I am deeply concerned about the deterioration of the quality of the local retail offer within towns in the UK and the insipid aesthetic that has grown like Japanese Knotweed over our high streets. The position of a local retail operator within a community cannot be underestimated, in my opinion. A strong sense of belonging is developed from just being recognised by your local shopkeeper, and the transaction between local independent retailer and a local resident has so much more significance than just using a swipe credit card, interestingly first marketed as a ‘contactless’ card. ‘

What’s on offer on the local high street is becoming too predictable and inclined toward poorly designed generic brands purely because they pay more and make more money. The independent retailer cannot compete and needs support from the community. What’s good for the community should not be judged solely on the basis of what will attract the most money. A successful community relies upon contact and relationships being formed with the retailers supplying it rather than the ‘contactless’ offer from supermarkets and the national brands occupying the High Street. This is’having a dramatic effect on our eating habits and our diets, simply because of what is on offer or made available to us by the supermarkets.

A very interesting article appeared in the Guardian yesterday about a small town taking action against a major brand occupying a High Street shop. Its interesting that the paper chose to put forward the premise that the resistance to a major branded bar was founded on snobbery rather than strong local identity and a strong interest in good quality design and retail offer.

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/13/lymington-rejects-wetherspoons-pub

SUSD’s environmentally sound development, Highwood Court has been featured on the new Building research Establishment BRE sponsored online magazine/ knowledge hub Building4Change, follow the link http://www.building4change.com/page.jsp?id=425 to read the article.

Building4Change is dedicated to sustainability issues in the built environment.

Highwood Court won a special commendation at the London Evening Standard New Homes awards on Friday. Excellent news!

This is one of those “why has no-one ever thought of this before” moments! The pavegen system harvests kinetic energy from footfall and stores electrical energy in a battery for low-power use. I think its genius and love the concept, imagine the amount of energy that could be harvested from the 200 million annual visitors to Oxford Street alone.

Visit the pavegen site at www.pavegensystems.com and take a look at the article in the Observer at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/16/laurence-kemball-cooks-ethical-pavegen

A sense of rootedness comes from knowing people and, just as importantly, from being known. Anonymity within a large city has, at times, been portrayed by the media as somehow aspirational and ‘urban’ but it is chiefly a control mechanism which can be used to orchestrate dependencies upon others or by which others might have to depend on you both emotionally and economically in order to survive.

Single person households are marketing gold, providing marketeers even greater numbers of consumers who are co-habiting only with their gadgets, especially as they increasingly manipulate our technology-based culture. Social media is another control mechanism whereby social interaction can be managed, at an emotionally disconnected distance. On top of that, technologically influenced architecture serves to isolate people as is demonstrated by airports and ‘malls’ and by our emotional responses to them. Designers are principally to blame for the deterioration in quality of the built fabric of communities and the erosion of any real sense of diversity. But in light of the rise of social media, is it possible to marry the success of virtual communities with real physical communities to get people to care for their neighbourhood and be involved? Taking this further, maybe arresting the influence of global brand blandness, changing the miserable generic appearance of our local high streets, getting the community to resonate with local services, businesses and most importantly relationships once again.

Thankfully, developers are becoming more aware of the social value of a good quality neighbourhood and that new developments have a responsibility to enhance and contribute to the existing community. The physical environment cannot, however, magically engineer this without people becoming more involved in their own neighbourhood and more involved in their neighbours’ lives. As development control has shifted to larger organisations local voices have been polarised and rendered less effective. However, where local ideas have been sourced, it has often led to far richer and more successful design, which is eventually adopted with a greater sense of pride by the neighbourhood.

These are issues that SUSD plans to grapple with, openly discuss and ultimately help solve. For now though, here are some interesting links to check out

Facebook and Bebo risk ‘infantilising’ the human mind – A report on Baroness Susan Greenfield’s observations on social networking sites and their relationship how our brains will develop in the future

www.thesocialorganization.com Established by Rachel Happe to use social media to enhance organisations and communication

www.heidelberg.org – community arts project in Detroit

www.goodwilldetroit.org – giving a hand-up, not hand-out to people in Detroit.

Our development in Harlesden is the subject of an in-depth review by Graham Bizley in the latest Building Design. You can read the story and access drawings here.

Many thanks to Graham, David Grandorge and BD for a fantastic article.

Read an interesting profile on the borough of Croydon’s planning department in The Observer yesterday. It’s great to see a local authority planning team achieving such a high level of engagement. I think we’re starting to see more of this from other borough councils.