Project description
All forty apartments at Bridge House are dual aspect. That was our proposal at competition stage, and maintaining it across every floor and every tenure on a fixed site boundary took a lot of design work. The site was a waste management plant on the canal towpath.
The building was delivered for the same cost per square metre as the other blocks on the Wickside masterplan. Every apartment sees the canal and the new square in front, and exceeds the London Housing Design Guide on area as well as aspect. The rooftop garden belongs to every household.
The balconies sit within the frame, sheltered from wind and from overlooking, and sized above the Design Guide minimum so a table and chairs fit with the door still open. 87.5% face south or south-west and take the afternoon sun. There are no internal corridors: half the apartments are reached from a covered external deck to the rear and half directly from a lift core, no run of deck passes more than one other front door, and the lobbies take daylight through glazed doors. The deck looks east over Hackney Wick and the Olympic Park.
The in-situ frame forms most of the external jacket, with cladding reduced to a few areas of the facade. The concrete is poured in-situ with slab edges and soffits left exposed, batched 500m from site at a plant on the A12. The base is ten equal bays that rise with the bridge approach level, and the upper grid reads the building as three united blocks. Studioshaw is a Hackney practice and this is a Hackney building down to the aggregate. The frame is the architecture, and it sets the building apart from the New London Vernacular of brown and grey boxes that surrounds the site.
A colonnade runs on two sides at ground level, facing the towpath and the new square. A café occupies a double height space straddling the level change between bridge approach and towpath, with other class E spaces alongside. In the colonnade there is a child-height window with an off-centre lintel, looking down into the café. Public realm was designed with Adams & Sutherland.
“What a pleasure and a joy to see this exemplary scheme delivering the highest of quality in Hackney Wick. 100% true dual aspect, innovative and climate responsive design maintained from competition to completion.” Paul Taylor, Design Principal, London Legacy Development Corporation.
“In working with Studioshaw they have shown great enthusiasm and ideas and this has really helped to push the building development to a successful conclusion. If asked were they the right architect for the project the answer would be a resounding yes.” CJ O’Shea.
Project images
