Grid Architects designs ladies's-only social housing tower for London

Planning approval has been granted for a housing growth in London that can present 102 reasonably priced properties to ladies, designed by Grid Architects for the Girls’s Pioneer Housing affiliation.

Named Brook Home, the social housing tower can have a 15-storey core with 11- and 13-storey wings on both aspect.

Situated within the district of Ealing, the constructing’s pink brickwork facade will probably be damaged up with balconies and horizontal bands of Recon stone, designed to reference the neighbouring structure.

“The extremely thought of design particularly attracts on the brick detailing, symmetrical facade and expressed entrances of the close by artwork deco constructing at Gunnersbury Court docket,” mentioned London studio Grid Architects.

Brook Home can have a 7,500-square-metre gross inside space containing 100 one-bedroom flats and two two-bedroom, 10 of which will probably be reserved for folks with disabilities.

Grid Architects designed the tower for British housing affiliation Girls’s Pioneer Housing (WPH), which offers properties to ladies in London.

The studio designed the flats in Brook Home to offer better-suited housing to the present residents and reasonably priced properties for girls who can’t entry the housing market, notably these dealing with inequality, abuse and downsides.

The tower will include 100 per cent social hire reasonably priced flats for single ladies.

“With rising ranges of inequality for girls within the UK, notably those that are older, have a incapacity or are BAME ladies, there’s a large present demand for any such housing,” WPH mentioned.

The tower replaces an present low-rise constructing that’s now not match to be used because the properties usually are not wheelchair accessible and fail to satisfy the minimal house requirements set out within the Nationwide Described Area Requirements, in accordance with Grid Architects.

When designing the brand new scheme, the studio consulted with residents within the 39 present properties, who’re largely an older demographic.

Outside areas will provide secure and safe locations for social interplay, together with a sensory backyard on the constructing entrance and a wheelchair-friendly communal roof backyard with planters for residents to develop their very own crops.

Grid Architects designed a woodland backyard to enhance the present wooded space and an exercise backyard, accessed through a managed gate, that can function train house, picket benches and a timber pergola.

A 1.2-metre railing and a 1.5-metre-tall hedgerow will encompass the residential gardens to dampen noise and wind and supply privateness.

“The transient from WPH was to make sure that the constructing was safe and that ground-level amenity gardens have been secure and well-lit,” Grid Architects director Colin Veitch advised Dezeen.

“WPH have requested that at detailed design stage we must always examine issues like decrease kitchen counters, which could go well with feminine residents higher than commonplace kitchens, and enhanced air flow controls to make sure consolation for menopausal ladies,” Veitch continued.

Photovoltaic panels will probably be added to the roofs and warmth pumps will ship heating and sizzling water to the properties as an alternative of fuel boilers.

Building on Brook Home is predicted to start out later this yr.

Different latest housing designs in London embody a block of 11 reasonably priced properties in Lewisham and a terraced social-housing design by Peter Barber.

The pictures are by Grid Architects.