a+t architecture publishers

a+t research group selected 14 case studies of collective housing for the book Density is Home. This third post about the publication features the Arch Street housing project, by S333, in London.

Arch Street will be used to house some of the residents who have had to leave the Heygate Estate. The estate was built as a model for urban housing in the 70s and failed because it was not a safe place, the maintenance costs were extremely high and its refurbishment was not feasible.

Users have outdoor space in each dwelling via balconies or private gardens and furthermore have shared raised terraces and ground floor courtyards.

The building is given an identity through the facades, clad with high-density stratified strips of wood, with a pattern which reminds one of the marquetry works carried out by the tradesmen who occupied the area in the early XXth Century.

The insulation against the noise of the viaduct and the road is carried out using acoustic block insulation and by reducing thermal bridging.

The fragmentation of the block favours the privacy of the entrances, which serve a maximum of five dwellings per floor. This is the response to the linear blocks of Heygate Estate, with gallery access, where the users formerly lived.

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