CONTEXT 181 : SEPTEMBER 2024 15 URBAN HOUSING for Circle 33 Housing Association. It consists of 42 homes arranged in a series of tightly packed two- and three-storey terraces. Each home has its own front door opening on to a pedestrian-only street and a small square, and either an outdoor private yard or roof terrace, a significant achievement in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, where 70 per cent of social housing has no outside space. Oriel windows and balconies give character to the smooth white rendered facades. McGrath Road and North Street Concerned that white render might not be adequately maintained in the future, PBA’s later schemes have all been faced in brick. A prime example is McGrath Road, Stratford, built for the London Borough of Newham. This is a perimeter block around a courtyard, reminiscent of the much larger Karl-Marx-Hof in Vienna of 1927–30. It contains 26 units, 19 with two bedrooms and the others with three bedrooms. Those on the entrance front and south side are back-to-back units, treated as tower houses, with a single room on each floor and at third-floor level a living room with a roof terrace. Each also has a balcony that stretches the full width of the facade. The density – 620 habitable rooms per hectare – is remarkably high for a building that does not exceed four storeys and provides such a generous amount of open space. McGrath Road, with its unorthodox layout, has proved successful with young people from the vicinity seeking starter homes, and can be bought through a shared-equity scheme, with payments split between conventional mortgages and a council loan. Back-to-back dwellings are also used at North Street, Barking, where 14 council houses form a fortress-like island in an otherwise chaotic urban setting. Each house is entered through a private open space shielded by brick boundary walls. Burbridge Close PBA’s project at Burbridge Close, Becontree, is designed for older people, particularly those seeking to downsize and thus freeing up larger council houses for families. The client, Barking and Dagenham Council’s regeneration company BeFirst London, approached Barber to advise on developing a redundant backland garage site on the vast Becontree Estate. His solution was to build four units on each side of a shared pathway. Six of the houses are single-storey cottages, while the end pair at the junction with Fitzstephen Road are two-storey. There are no rear gardens, but each has a sitting-out area by the front door that encourages neighbourliness. The idea for the layout was derived from Choumert Square in Peckham, a Victorian alleyway with cottages to each side and no back gardens. But with its wavy roofline and arched brick lintels, Burbridge Close has its own lively character reminiscent of historic village alms houses. Kiln Place Barking and Dagenham Council is not alone in identifying garage areas and leftover spaces with potential for new social housing and environmental improvement. A similar exercise carried out by the London Borough of Camden resulted in PBA making interventions at Kiln Place, a 1960s housing estate consisting of five-storey slab blocks built around green areas. In 1999– 2000, Kiln Place underwent alterations involving single-storey extensions that were intended to The density at McGrath Road is remarkably high for a building that does not exceed four storeys and provides so generous an amount of open space.
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