Architecture Archives - Page 9 of 9

PDP study tour to Sheffield

9th August 202121st August 2019 by Gary Stringer

We had a glorious day on a study tour in Sheffield with the team recently, exploring the city and discussing its urban realm. We started the day looking at the iconic Park Hill, which was council housing built between 1957 – 1961 and designed by Jack Lynn & Ivor Smith. The building is in the style of what is known as Brutalism with its harsh concrete forms and large openings and clearly inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation.

In 1998 the building was grade II* listed, which was controversial at the time as the building was in decline. Since then Urban Splash have redeveloped the site, retaining the structure and principle of streets in the sky, whilst breathing a new lease of life into the development. Whilst we were there Phase 1 was well established with most of the ground floor commercial units let to architects, a nursery, a café and various other office users. The flats have pops of colour brightening up the harsh concrete structure. They are currently underway with Phase 2 which looks very promising.

We moved on through the city towards Kelham Island, a part of the city which has seen a lot of change over recent years from industrial Steelworks to a more hipster environment with new start-up businesses and micro-breweries!

A particular favourite was the development at Little Kelham Street, a zero carbon community with clever hidden car parking and a unique design aesthetic which made us feel like we were in Amsterdam, it also helped that the sun was shining at this point. The Development was master-planned by Sturgeon North Architects and detailed design completed by Baumon Lyons Architects and delivered by Citu. The dwellings are built from SIPs (Structurally Insulated Panels) and have triple glazed windows, their striking appearance is from their cladding materials, alternating between vertical black corrugated, to grey brick bond and then to black large shingles all fibre cement profiled sheeting sourced from Eternit. The development appears to be a great success and it’s a breath of fresh air that the developer was so keen to be sustainable and even encourage the use of electric cars.

Lunch took us to the Winter Gardens and a great meal was had by all in Ego, which was a bright and airy restaurant providing a Mediterranean atmosphere. Unfortunately after lunch the rain struck- a key aspect in any of PDP team building days!

Throughout Sheffield we saw a lot of good quality urban design, they have spent time and effort making details work and included wild flowers in planting beds where in other cities they would ordinarily be extra wide concrete pavements with no purpose or delight.

In the afternoon we looked around the relatively new shopping development which is trying to draw people back to the city and an alternative to Meadowhall Shopping Centre. The street was full of shoppers, however it was noted that this type of activity has drawn shoppers away from the historic City Centre. We enjoyed looking at The Moor Market building designed by Leslie Jones Architecture, on behalf of Sheffield City Council. The building was completed in November 2013 and moved the Castlegate Market to The Moor and was constructed with Glulam timber which brings an interesting aesthetic to the interior and has a brass clad exterior. The entrance is inviting, albeit it only occupies a small frontage on the shopping street.

Overall a great day was had by all and we look forward to seeing what Sheffield brings next…

RIBA announces shortlist for Inaugural Neave Brown Award for Housing

19th August 201930th July 2019 by Gary Stringer

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) announced on Thursday 25 July the shortlist for the very first Neave Brown Award for Housing, named in honour of the late Neave Brown (1929 – 2018).

Neave Brown was a socially-motivated, modernist architect, best known for designing a series of celebrated London housing estates. In 2018, he was awarded the UK’s highest honour for architecture, the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, which is approved personally by Her Majesty The Queen.

The four housing developments in the running for the 2019 Neave Brown Award for Housing are:

Brentford Lock West Keelson Gardens, London, by Mae Architects

Thoughtful canalside development comprising six large apartment buildings, with distinctive saw-tooth roofs reflecting the site’s industrial past, linked with rows of four storey townhouses.

Eddington Lot 1, Cambridge, by WilkinsonEyre with Mole Architects

Designed for the University of Cambridge, this new residential quarter is an exemplar of integrated urban design. Incorporating a variety of housing types including generous apartments, some wrapped around a new supermarket and integrated with a new doctor’s surgery.

Goldsmith Street, Norwich, by Mikhail Riches with Cathy Hawley

Large development of 105 highly energy-efficient homes for social rent, designed to Passivhaus standards for Norwich City Council.

The Colville Estate, London, by Karakusevic Carson Architects with David Chipperfield Architects

Bold regeneration of a Hackney Council housing estate, designed and delivered in close engagement with residents, to provide 925 new homes in a neighbourhood of legible streets and open spaces.

The shortlist was selected from the 2019 RIBA Regional Awards winners by an expert panel of judges: RIBA President Ben Derbyshire; Director at Levitt Bernstein Jo McCafferty; and Professor Adrian Gale, formally of the School of Architecture at the University of Plymouth.

On the shortlist, Jonathan Jenkin, Managing Director of Planning & Design Practice Ltd said

‘It is good to see public housing and public bodies such as the University of Cambridge being recognised. All the schemes are exemplars and aim to provide high quality accommodation on difficult sites. Good quality public housing is essential if we are going to raise the quality of housing generally and meet the challenges of housing which is fit for purpose and long lasting and housing that meets the challenge of climate change’.

To be considered for the 2019 Neave Brown Award for Housing, projects needed to be a winner of a 2019 RIBA Regional Award, be a project of ten or more homes completed and occupied between 1 November 2016 and 1 February 2019 and one third of the housing needed to be affordable and should demonstrate evidence of meeting the challenge of housing affordability.

The winner of the Neave Brown Award for Housing will be announced at the RIBA Stirling Prize ceremony on Tuesday 8 October 2019.

Congratulations to Ciarán – Chartered Architectural Technologist

19th June 202323rd July 2019 by Gary Stringer

Congratulations to Ciarán – Chartered Architectural Technologist

We are celebrating in the Planning & Design offices, with the news that Ciarán Spalding has been awarded his Chartered Status from The Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists.

After years of hard work and passing through the CIAT Application and Professional Interview stages, Ciaran is now officially recognised as a competent Architectural Technologist qualified to offer design services and manage projects from inception to completion.

As a Chartered Architectural Technologist, Ciarán will lead the technological design of a project; forming the link between concept, innovation and realisation.

The team at Planning & Design also includes Chartered Town Planners, Associate members of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation, Chartered members of the Royal Institute of British Architects and ARB registered architects – meaning we can provide our clients with expert advice on a comprehensive range of services.

Architectural Influences Part II: British weather boarding origins and evolution overseas

19th August 20193rd July 2019 by Gary Stringer

Fernando Collado Lopez, from the PDP Design Team, writes about how 17th Century British architectural influences plus construction and engineering techniques boosted timber construction in the second part of a two-part article on English heritage in Southern Spain.

When it comes to weight, cost, upcycling and prefabrication, timber construction is at the top of the list.

From 17th Century Great Britain, new engineering techniques and tools boosted timber construction until the great fires of London pushed for the introduction of brick and mortar as the new standard.

Having a closer look at the construction scenario at the time, we could narrow down the timber construction types to a) Cruck House, b) Square Frame, c) Ornament house, d) Cladding house and e) The Weather-boarded house. The latter type was chosen for Punta Humbria in Spain.

Weather-boarding was widespread by the end of the XVIII century in Hampshire, Berkshire and Essex and in some areas of Pembrokeshire and Herefordshire. The construction method was composed of boards of a standard length and uneven thickness so the bottom of the boards was thicker than the top which was fixed back, by wooden pins early on, and later on replaced by copper nails; copper which was often extracted at the mine in Huelva.

Due to their resistance to decay and durability, oak and cedar were the preferred timber. Later on, cheaper timbers were also used but these had to be treated with a coat of tar, like the original fishermen’s houses in the southern coast of England.

As mentioned earlier, the weather-board house type was rapidly replaced by brick and mortar in the UK, but it was still in widespread use across the Atlantic in North America.

This expansion on the American continent and the use of cheaper timber types, created the need for a protective coating for the timber. As a result of this, in London dozens of white lead paint factories sprung up across the river Thames to provide for the market.

In Huelva, this light, cheap and versatile construction method was implemented and altered with elements influenced by practices in the western colonies, so porches and verandas were added as well as stilt structures lifting the house above ground level, reminding the company officers of their colonial bungalows in the tropics.

Stilts and verandas suited the dunes and the maritime context on which the buildings where erected, so the concept was adopted rapidly and developed further by their inhabitants and by J.Clayton in 1957 for the Rio Tinto company. Making them perhaps better suited to the local weather by enclosing some of the verandas and adding new internal partitions.

Sadly, today none of the buildings erected have survived. But the character, and typology still resonates perhaps on the still existing beach bars ‘chiringuitos’ dotted across the southern coast of Spain.

Below: Original layout (Left) Re-designed layout (Right)

Fernando Collado Lopez is an ARB registered architect who joined Planning & Design Practice in February 2019. Previously working in the private sector in a variety of practices and locations including United States of America, Spain and London.

British and Colonial architectural influences in southwest Spain

19th August 20197th June 2019 by Gary Stringer

PDP_Architectural influences Southwest Spain

Centuries of mining on the sunny southwestern coast of the Iberian Peninsula has left an interesting legacy of colonial architectural influences in Spain, writes Fernando Collado Lopez, the newest member of our Design Team, in the first of a two-part article.

Minerals in the Rio Tinto (Burgundy river) area of southern Spain close to the border with Portugal have been exploited since ancient times and are amongst the oldest mines in Europe. Tartessians, Phoenicians and later on Roman mining activity represented a golden age of mining activity in the region but this later faded away under Visigotic and Arabic periods until the middle of the 19th century by which point activity had almost ceased.

However, after the discovery of new mines in the second half of the 19th century British, French and German enterprises cast their eyes over the region, buying and reopening existing mines and creating new ones. A new railway, docks and associated infrastructure were quickly built, transforming the local economy and profoundly affecting the regional style of architecture.

The Tharsis Sulphur and Copper Company (1866-1873) became the world’s biggest mining company followed by The Rio Tinto Company limited (RTCL), which then became the largest company for the next 50 years. The RTCL also purchased land adjacent to the main docks in the capital Huelva, the Rio Tinto, surrounding fields and settlement and the eastern side of the existing railway lines. Some of these strategic moves would determine the city’s future urban growth and development, forcing the city to grow further north constrained by the Tinto and Odiel river flood plains.

The RTCL developed an unusual combination of buildings across the region with a strong English character and some adopted vernacular elements. During this period, steel bridges, peers and docks as well as various buildings and mine barracks, terrace, semi-detached and detached houses designed by the company’s architect, Alan Brace, began to emerge across the landscape. Other excellent examples of this period were the Hotel Colon built in 1883 developed by Wilhelm Sundheim and Hugh Mathenson and designed by Jose Perez Santa Maria & Andres Mora, and the Reina Victoria neighbourhood.

Around 1880 the RTCL became aware of the Punta Umbria beach adjacent to a small fishing village as Guillermo Sundheim, the company’s local manager, had built a small bungalow by the beach to enjoy the unspoiled surroundings.

The company decided to make it a retreat for the company’s executives to have a break from the sulphurous air surrounding the mines and so successful was this move to the beach, that from 1882-1895, up to 11 buildings were built, the last two, erected under the direction of J.Clayton, setting a new regional trend around the bungalow type that has endured until recent times.

In next month’s second instalment we will look in more detail at methods of construction and the continuing legacy of colonial architectural influences which endures to this day.

PDP study tour to Sheffield

RIBA announces shortlist for Inaugural Neave Brown Award for Housing

Congratulations to Ciarán – Chartered Architectural Technologist

Architectural Influences Part II: British weather boarding origins and evolution overseas

British and Colonial architectural influences in southwest Spain

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