Arch Street Elephant & Castle
August 16th, 2011
While trawling London’s housing estates for raw concrete on behalf of my Sheffield friend I stopped at what’s left of the Heygate and on the way from the Elephant & Castle tube spotted this . . .
. . . and was reminded of that memorable phrase “a malformed zebra that has been rolling around in poo.” taken from an article in Building Design magazine that reviewed the development.
I can kind of see what they mean, it does look at bit odd. If you want to read the article it’s here but subscription only
however I am prepared to quote the odd juicy paragraph just to whet your appetite.
“A hundred metres across the other side of the roundabout, an exotic new arrival peeps up over the railway viaduct. Clothed in a lurid dazzle camouflage of yellow and orange zigzags, this is S333’s £7.5 million Arch Street development: a courtyard scheme that brings 52 units to the Southwark Regen brag sheet, 18 of which are for affordable rent.
With its shamelessly garish garb – as loud as the roar of the traffic along New Kent Road – the building has been the subject of some mockery, recently described by a bdonline blogger as looking like “a malformed zebra that has been rolling around in poo.””
I remembered a comment in the article about dual aspect flats and was keen to see how these were manifested. In fact what I remembered was a comment about frosted glass and so it proved.
“She enthusiastically points out the double-aspect living room, although on closer inspection it turns out that every single window in the southern facade has been blocked out with opaque film – the building across the courtyard being less than the 18m required to prevent overlooking. Out of the architect’s hands (any further away, and the courtyard would lose its sense of enclosure), this makes a complete mockery of the building code – a rule that fundamentally denies the possibility of creating streets, let alone dense, urban developments.”
While it’s true the residents are no longer living in a monolithic concrete estate bordered by roads, is being stuck by a railway viaduct in a single aspect flat an improvement on the housing across the road? And more importantly with only 18 units for “affordable rent” it will take a great deal more of these pocket sized projects to rehouse those from across the road and on terms less generous than they received before. Service charges will be an unwelcome addition to their costs, and a higher rent for sure, probably for a smaller dwelling. Is this progress or social cleansing?
