The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
Archio completes villa-style housing on the Becontree Estate
Every year a project among the AJ Architecture Awards entries grabs your attention with its sheer joy and verve. This time it’s 200 Becontree Avenue, by 40 under 40 practice Archio: an affordable housing scheme simply brimming with generosity, character and energy. It is testament to what thoughtful architecture, which puts people’s homes and happiness at its heart, can achieve.
Archio has completed a new type of villa within the original estate as part of a major house-building programme in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Commissioned by the council’s in-house regeneration company Be First, the design is the product of deep research into the characteristics of the estate, delivering a gentle density of 19 affordable homes, plus a community space, across two buildings on a landscaped corner.
The Garden City principles used to design the original 1920s Becontree estate became a touchstone for Archio’s design strategy. The historic estate is predominantly single-family housing, so the practice looked to other London County Council developments for clues on how to develop a denser scheme. The practice drew on examples such as the Ossulston Estate in Camden, which echo the quality of Becontree at a civic scale.
The new buildings, on the 0.4ha site of a former synagogue, playfully riff on details of nearby houses, such as semi-circular entrance arches and round windows, exaggerated dormers and undulating eaves lines. The building form helps minimise overlooking and overshading of neighbours and smooths the scale change from low-rise surrounding buildings to the denser, taller villas.
A particularly positive move has been the relandscaping of an adjacent pedestrian cut-through, School Way, into a play street linking to a local nursery. The large windows are another standout feature – quirky, individual, and plenty of them. Indeed, all the flats are triple-aspect, flooding them with natural light. Bedrooms are stacked vertically to minimise disruption as well as being located away from the main road and the entrances. Careful consideration has been given to developing robust and low-maintenance buildings through their layout and material specification. In combination with generously proportioned rooms and underfloor heating powered by air source heat pumps, the focus is on comfort and liveability.
The power of architects working in partnership with an open and ambitious client – with both parties willing to explore and grow – seems especially important here. Together, architect and client have delivered something different, and successfully so.
Location London RM8 • Completion March 2022 • Construction cost £5 million • Gross internal floor area 1,865m2 • Client Be First • Engineer Wilde • Services engineer Butler and Young, SMCS • Main contractor United Living • Annual carbon emissions Not supplied
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