6 September 2019
Pocket Living and Metropolitan Workshop were the winners of the Best Design award the National Housing Awards 2019 for their scheme Mapleton Crescent.
Mapleton Crescent SW18 is a 27-storey tower including 53 one-bed, one person affordable homes and 36 larger for sale apartments on a triangular constrained site next to the River Wandle. 60% of the 89 homes were only available to local first-time buyers, who lived or worked in Wandsworth, at affordable 20%-discounted prices from £225,000 - £330,000.
Take up was “instantaneous”. This compares to an average of 25-35% affordable homes delivered by most private residential schemes and helped improve the area’s social sustainability. The brief to architects Metropolitan Workshop for the site was to provide the maximum number of one-bedroom Pocket apartments and larger two and three-bed private sale homes with a rich variety of high quality shared amenity space for residents to enjoy, whilst improving the immediate public realm.
The design overcomes and is inspired by the constraints of what was considered an “undevelopable” site. It has generated a unified, powerful character for the scheme, expressed in form and in many details, assisted by Pocket Living’s commitment to the design concept, to create a socially, economically beneficial, beautiful new landmark.
Judges' comments
An exemplary project, which has already been rightfully covered in the national press. The very urban scheme creates 89 new homes on what was previously thought of an undevelopable site on a triangular parcel of land behind a shopping centre. The new 27 storey tower is beautifully realised, clad in bespoke blue-green ceramic. The tower was also ingeniously constructed using modular construction techniques, which meant it went up at a rate of a storey a day. Many congratulations to Pocket Living and their architects Metropolitan Workshop.
Category sponsor
Winner: Pocket Living and Metropolitan Workshop
Pocket Living specialise in creating genuinely affordable homes designed for local first-time buyers on moderate incomes. Back in 2005 Marc Vlessing and Paul Harbard had an idea: to help the millions of young, middle earning Londoners who contribute to their city in so many ways, buy their first home. Pocket Living then started creating affordable Pocket homes exclusively for local first-time buyers allowing those on lower incomes a way to get their foot on the housing ladder and own a piece of the city they love.
