2009 WINNING SCHEMES > Project Winners

 

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Newhall is unquestionably the UK’s de facto innovation park for housebuilding. At some point someone will build something run of the mill, but it won’t be this scheme. Its houses co-opt the vernacular pitch black weatherboarding found on mills and barns across Essex, as well as the commonplace slate roof. But then the plan, elevation and roof each have a little slice planed off so that the orthogonal form typified by Monopoly’s jelly-mould house instead becomes irregularly faceted like a partly cut gem.

The houses’ asymmetrical black shapes resemble the radar-baffling ‘stealth’ designs of naval architecture, an impression heightened by windows mostly found in the flank walls rather than street elevations of the scheme’s most used type, a 117 m2 courtyard house. Its 9.5 m wide by 10.5 m deep T-shape plan and the fenestration to the side, allows access to the space it envelops, including a first floor decked terrace, as well as lighting a generous central hall. So the impression made on arriving quickly moves from a guarded frontage through a generously sheltered porch space into a toplit roomy hallway, a transition from the stark to atmospheric. Conversely, the opposite journey is often to be found in the poorly lit 5 m-narrow frontage 20 m-deep plots that these courtyard houses replace.

There are three other house types, 90 and 115 m2 terraced houses built as part of the 1 in 4 provision for affordable housing, complete with 5.4 m2 of photovoltaic roof tiles. The final house type is the scheme’s largest, a 134 m2 L-shaped plan villa where the short outrigger is two storeys, three storeys for the rest. This includes a private recessed balcony at first floor which serves a double bedroom. The semi-private covered space is typical of the designs throughout, seizing oblique glimpses of the countryside (still extending around) by placing fenestration where it best suits those inside rather than those outside.

Houses are finished with decking to the rear so that the shallow gardens have space capable of intensive use. Five small brick clad apartment blocks will complete the scheme of 85 homes that forms the final element of the first phase of Newhall. As with the slo scheme immediately to the south, the scheme has struggled to achieve budgeted rates of sale and hence build.

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