Ibstock public award winner creates a stir

BDA Brick Award for Best Public Housing Development, the London Borough of Southwark Housing Regeneration Initiative project used Manchester Red and Westbrick Pinbrook Multi bricks from Ibstock.

The redevelopment of a South London housing estate, the Elmington Estate in Camberwell, has transformed its appearance through the imaginative use of brick as a contemporary decorative material that holds its own with others such as timber cladding and render.

Gaining the BDA Brick Awards 2004 for Best Public Housing Development, the London Borough of Southwark Housing Regeneration Initiative project used Manchester Red and Westbrick Pinbrook Multi bricks from Ibstock.

The architects, bptw of Greenwich, selected brick as a material because of its durability and low maintenance requirements, and then made full use of its decorative possibilities.

This includes stack bonded panels and green glazed brick coursing to relieve the main red brick faced front and back elevations, dentillations and other details, to provide a strong contrast with the vertical timber cladding panels and rendered facades.

Partner Alan Wright commented: "We selected the Ibstock bricks on their technical performance and visual appeal, both from past experience and having examined actual projects using the bricks, which the suppliers NBS found for us".

"The Elmington Estate project resulted from a decision by the London Borough of Southwark to redevelop part of the Elmington Estate following the identification of structural weaknesses within 4 large blocks".

"The project started as an extension of the Peckham Partnership, a Southwark scheme to provide more mixed tenure housing for the South London borough, which started in the early 1990s".

"The Peckham Partnership has been a marked economic and social success, and bptw was involved from the master planning stage".

The redevelopment is a mixture of new affordable homes and private properties, mostly arranged within traditional street terraces and courtyards to recreate the human scale of the neighbourhood, and featuring apartment blocks of up to five storeys at the corners.

Alan Wright advised:" We wanted to recreate the urban context of these residential estates, where easily recognisable buildings like public houses or local shops tended to be located at the terrace ends, and provided visual clues for navigating streets with a similar appearance".

"We therefore sited the apartment blocks there, and gave them distinctive decorative features, such as the mint green glazed brick panels on the balconies".

The Elmington Estate development was also short listed for the BDA 2004 Supreme Winner award, and is expected to feature as an example of the best in urban housing regeneration design in many other contexts in the future.

Client: London Borough of Southwark Housing Department.

Architect: bptw.

Contractor: Countryside Properties.

Brickwork Contractor: Galostar.

Brick factor: NBS.

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