Railway Apartments
Four apartments and a row of eight terraced houses.
This was an awkward triangular shaped brownfield site wedged between a railway line and busy road, tapering towards the crossing at the southern corner point of the site. Over the crossing is the local railway station linking the village to Cambridge and London.
Terrace housing and apartments generate a density and footfall which supports the viability of local amenities and transport links, which in turn encourages a reduced reliance on car use. However the local planning policy stipulated that this development should include on-plot car parking provision. We saw this site as an opportunity to reimagine the traditional model of the terrace house.
This design incorporates a vehicle entrance in the middle of the site, which brings cars into a shared undercroft parking area behind the house frontages. Facing the street each house has a generous entrance and adjacent small study room, which together creates an active frontage to the street. The entrance lobby stair leads up to a first floor living space which spills out to a garden terrace above the parking.
Beyond the decking and the parking is a shared communal garden, half a level down, with space for a couple of large trees and greenery to shield the garden terraces from the railway line. To the southern corner of the site, which is too constrained to fit further terraced houses, are four affordable apartments.
These buildings provide a new model for contemporary terraced housing, with all the benefits of close grained urban dwelling, and with cars neatly tucked out of the way.
