Building Up

There is an urgent need for genuinely affordable housing throughout the country, but the need is particularly acute in London. The cost and availability of land are making development of social housing increasingly unsustainable in almost all boroughs.

Reed Watts have developed ideas for a number of housing estates which seek to work with the existing fabric and community to imaginatively and innovatively extend existing estates, providing additional homes and improving amenity for all residents.

Rather than decant residents in order to facilitate construction, the projects seek to build upwards, exploiting the air space at these higher levels without disrupting tenants or harming the valuable external amenity and landscaping at the lower levels.

Proposals harness latent building structure, which not only limits disruption and cost, but is inherently sustainable – building more with less.

Images: Studio Archetype