Architect
de Metz Forbes Knight
Developer
MMHG with The New Islington Housing Group
including Urban Splash
Contractor
Richardson Projects
Planning Authority
Manchester City Council
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These 14 houses for Manchester Methodist Housing Group represent the second affordable in the New Islington masterplan for the old Cardroom Estate in Great Ancoats, an ambitious regeneration driven by English Partnerships, the New East Manchester Regeneration and Manchester City Council.
The layout is a hybrid of terrace and courtyard houses. It punctures the terrace line with the courtyard form to draw daylight into the plans of one half of the width of the plot, and makes houses triple aspect.
Tenant consultation helped to shape the designs as three individual types: a two-storey 2-bed and 3-bed house and single-storey 2-bed house. Houses can be accessed from front or back. In the two-storey houses the access from Piercy Street is from a semi-private courtyard side on into the house into a room which can act as hall or study or dining room.
The kitchen, which also has space for a dining table, is set in the shallow plan nibbed part of the house. This give it views to both the front and back, helping surveillance of the street and the gated off-street parking bay within the plot which is accessed from another street behind - cars are not encouraged into the new street. The bay is right up to the kitchen windows to help give more protection from crime and the kitchen is accessed directly from there. The hall/potential dining room, the kitchen and the living room flow into each obliquely, so the open plan is discrete. The living room looks onto a garden terrace which can be accessed by double doors opening to the parking bay. At first floor level houses are either 3-bed or 2-bed with access to a terrace over the kitchen.
Houses have green roofs and achieved EcoHomes Excellent. They are also designed to Lifetime Homes standards. Though vaguely familiar in form, they are a million miles from the typical Great Ancoats terrace.