In recent years many old factories industrial buildings within the heart of our towns and cities have become redundant. The practice has been appointed by the owners to prepare proposals for redevelopment which will rejuvenate the outworn fabric of the settlement and provide alternative viable sustainable uses on their brownfield sites.

Projects

Woods of Colchester
Magdalen Street, Colchester
The Maltings, Braintree
The layout is largely dictated by an alignment of the new town road and the perimeter streets which determine the position of the internal loop road and main frontages.
Within this framework dwellings are related to give continuous street frontages and a tight urban form. The car is accommodated in overlooked group parking courts.

The design of the buildings aims to compliment the Victorian character and density of the house types and surrounding area whilst providing a variety of modern standard accommodation.

About half of the proposed dwellings are apartments, half houses accompanied by a doctor's surgery. In keeping with the Victorian design concept a large proportion of the houses are deep-plan with slate roofs and chimneys with further interest provided by houses stepping down the slope of the site. The intimate scale of the streets is relieved by use of light coloured facing materials - stock and gault bricks and white painted render and stucco. Three and four storey apartment buildings are designed to be reminiscent of the textile mills characteristic of Braintree. The brief by the Local Authority included a major new town road through the site and the provision of an open space corridor on the southern part of the site.

The project was awarded Best Use of a Brownfield Site for Housing at the National Home Builder Design Awards

Gate Street, Maldon