Working collaboratively with Featherstone Co-housing group, we are developing a community-driven residential scheme on the crest of Sydenham Hill, in south London. The designs have been carefully developed to provide long-term accommodation tailored to the group’s individual and collective needs.
The co-housing group is cross-generational with members from a diverse mix of ages and backgrounds including young families, middle-aged couples and single people of retirement age. This design hopes to establish a viable, long-term community that can be seen as a model for sustainable, social housing.
The project comprises the conversion of a large, locally-listed Victorian Lodge set in extensive grounds. The property was previously an institutional building that also includes a gatehouse built in the 1970s that will be demolished to make way for 2 new homes and a gymnasium built in the 1990s that will become a shared community space. The project is being documented as a research project by the London School of Economics.
Our approach to developing the existing property and creating new houses in the grounds is sympathetic to the character of the original building and the mature woodland site. All of the 11 new homes will have living, dining and kitchen spaces that face south over the grounds and all the new homes will have grouped front doors which create mini groups of homes within the larger site. The project also features shared living and dining spaces within the lodge itself.