Oval

Our proposal for this South London based development of affordable apartments and combined community uses starts from the landscape; the heart of the scheme is a new community garden creating a calm courtyard centred on the mature London Plane tree. The church client sought to provide an innovative range of homes for Londoners affected by the housing crisis, combined with much-needed community functions accessible to all and to be shared with a neighbouring school.

Conceived with a nod to monastic traditions, the residential blocks sit around and above a central courtyard and is framed by a colonnade on three sides, forming a sheltered walkway that gives access to the halls, training rooms, kitchen, stores and cafe which face onto the gardens. The courtyard is envisaged as a place of encounter, the colonnade as a place where you might stop awhile in sheltered seclusion. The muted scheme gently stitches together the broken streetscape, following an historic curved building line opposite The Oval cricket ground.