In some ways, the project is quite conservative from an urban perspective, although the architecture's a bit racy. London is basically made of houses. Seventy percent of buildings in London are houses. Houses are what create the public space in the city - streets, squares etc. So when I started, I thought: We're not designing a housing scheme, we're designing a piece of the city, and that should be the starting point for many housing schemes. |
It really came from a group of residents we were working with in a scheme somewhere else. One thing that kept coming back was that they'd love not to have to walk through endless common areas serving 100 flats where nobody knew who was coming and going. Those spaces do nothing socially, do they? You don't meet people in those environments and they're not comfortable to spend a lot of time in. |
We had a major victory, and they have one breath left. |