Pollard Thomas Edwards

What a brilliant day at the Housing Forum National Conference this week! It was great to see many familiar faces and enjoy meeting new ones. Top headlines for me:   - From Cllr Grace Williams: 1 in 50 Londoners are homeless or in temporary accommodation, including 1 in every 21 children—effectively 1 in every classroom. Shameful. - £3 million a day is spent by each London borough on temporary accommodation—£90 million per month. - Local authorities are focused on boosting capacity despite a 22% reduction in core spending power (28% in London). - Helen Rieman strongly advocated for not losing sight of the the meaning and people behind our work - homes not "housing", or worse still "units". A core PTE mantra. - Natalie Tate emphasised the power of mindsets and the fact that people don’t always perceive the positive impact of well designed homes. We all need to work harder to extend this mindset so that residents truly see the difference good housing makes. - Everyone knows what the problems are, so let’s not spend 95% of our time talking about them—let's talk more about solutions. - Tristan Carlyon underscored the importance of getting the public behind an idea to put pressure on policymakers. - Adam Tucker explained how Sutton provides Voices for the Voiceless for residents whose lives are significantly improved by housing in new developments. Often an unheard group at planning committees and consultation. - PTE's Heike Messler set out some of the sobering findings of the Grenfell Enquiry Report, highlighting the systemic failures that led to it and the enormous responsibility that falls on everyone in the construction industry to ensure we do better. - Spencer Wicks and The Futures Network cohort 3 presented their fantastic Sizzle reel as part of their education outreach initiative, Build Your Future in Housing. https://lnkd.in/eAVqmaSF - Catherine Raynsford set out how successful partnerships come from aligned core values, clarity of roles and accountabilities, mutual respect, and understanding the requirements for each partner. - Also discussed the work Hyde is doing to support local SMEs, turning contractors into development partners and potentially developers. - Phil Jenkins’ positive encouragement: necessity is the mother of invention, and our industry is inventive by nature. - Andrew Waugh set out that we are the only country in the world not using structural timber up to 10 stories and offered detailed insights on the progress made to date with operational and embodied carbon. - It’s clear that if we want to make a meaningful impact, regulating embodied carbon must be a central part of our industry-wide strategy. - Favourite overheard conversation: “What are you hoping for in next week’s budget for housing?” “MONEY.”   Thank you Shelagh Grant and team at The Housing Forum for a fantastic event!   #HousingForum #Collaboration #SustainableHousing #Innovation #EmbodiedCarbon #Pollard Thomas Edwards

If you’re interested in the Happy Homes Project and would like to find out about how to access a year of free-to-use project testing and validation – please join us at the event...

On Thursday 28th November we are launching the findings of the Happy Homes Project – a two-year research project that explores where Social Value can be identified in housing design - and outline the development of the Happy Homes Toolkit (HHT) to help design teams and clients predict how their projects can offer long-term benefits to residents’ quality of life. Through interviews with residents and design teams, and visits to residents’ homes Pollard Thomas Edwards has been building a data bank, in collaboration with Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, the University of Reading (School of Architecture) and The Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge, to evidence where the design of housing – spaces, elements and details - contributes positively to residents’ quality of life. Rather than simply measuring Social Value outcomes through volunteering, work experience or local employment, the biggest impact by far comes from the buildings and places we design and deliver. Post Occupancy Evaluation measures building performance, sometimes wellbeing, but it doesn’t identify the Social Value of what we design, or measure the reality of its presence or absence – the Happy Homes Project and the suite of tools we are developing do this. If you’re interested in the project and would like to find out about how to access a year of free-to-use project testing and validation – please join us at the event – book your ticket here https://lnkd.in/dw6zM7yE Further information regarding the project can be found here https://lnkd.in/dHX4BaGj #happyhomesproject #socialvalue #POE #postoccupancyevaluation #architecture #design

We were delighted to be shortlisted for the RIBA Neave Brown Award this year - all the more so given it is our 50th birthday too. Alas, we didn’t win. And there’s no hardship in missing out when the winner is as good as Chowdhury Walk by Al-Jawad Pike! As we’ve said before, this gong is the most consequential architecture award in Britain – it celebrates the most important ‘type’ of architecture the country needs right now – so even being shortlisted really makes our efforts in the social housing sector all the more worthwhile. Especially as we started in 1974 by refurbishing and converting terraced housing into flats for social housing tenants. We’d like to thank our client, Islington Council, and especially Alistair Gale, the council’s Head of Programming, Design and Customer Care, who did a brilliant job of engaging our residents to co-design their future homes with us. Of course, huge, huge thanks and even bigger congratulations must go to PTE partner Charina Coronado and our now-retired colleague, former partner Tricia Patel, who together designed and delivered this exemplar project. And a very special thank you to all of Dover Court’s residents and neighbours – for co-designing their homes, and for putting up with the disruption a project of this size invariably entails. Finally, here’s to all of our valiant competitors: Alison Brooks Architects, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCBStudios), Gort Scott, Page\Park Architects and AL-JAWAD PIKE - it was a privilege to have our work considered alongside yours. https://lnkd.in/g-gSgMC?

We are thrilled to report that we have been named Public and Social Housing Architect of the Year at the Building Design. Awards! It means a lot to us this year as we celebrate our 50th birthday. More so, given when we started out in 1974 our first jobs centred on refurbishing and converting terraced housing into flats for social housing tenants. Our award submission focused on four London projects: Dover Court, our RIBA Award-winning council infill housing on a post-war estate; King Square, a mixed-tenure development that serves as a case study for the Happy Homes social value toolkit; a retrofit of the 1930s-built Barnsbury Estate and 240 homes right by the famous Brutalist landmark, Brixton Rec. The judges said: “This practice demonstrates a strong commitment to people-centred architecture with an environmental focus and a deep engagement with end users.” Huge thanks to BD and their amazing panel of judges, and a huge thanks to all our colleagues at PTE, for their tireless dedication to social housing design. #socialhousing #publichousing #architecture

We are delighted to share news of our recent win at the RICS Awards Grand Final with Juniper House in Walthamstow triumphing in the Residential Development category. We’ve landed a national RICS award this time, after picking up a regional gong in June. Located on a brownfield site opposite Walthamstow Central, one of the capital’s busiest local stations, 18-storey Juniper House is actually a mixed-use development: providing 91 mixed-tenure homes (around half are affordable) alongside a nursery for more than 50 local children. Its family friendly housing too with a number of homes offering three and four bedrooms. It also contains two floors of classrooms and social space and a winter garden, for the University of Portsmouth London campus, as well as a ‘pocket park’ that connects the development with adjacent residential streets. Juniper House was designed for the London Borough of Waltham Forest and built by Hill Group UK, with landscape architecture delivered by our regular partner, AREA landscape architects, led by the brilliant Charlotte Norman. Congratulations to all our partners!

Infilling council estates with new housing is contentious. If you live in a garden-less flat in a dense, polluted part of town, you could argue it's wrong to reduce communal green space for a few extra homes. But with private developers failing to deliver enough social housing, even on large, ex-council sites, infill housing offers local authorities a way to cut waiting lists. Trevor Morriss explores this dilemma in Building Design. this week, warning that faith in infill homes as a housing crisis fix could sacrifice community spaces and social infrastructure in the rush to densify urban neighbourhoods. He highlighted six homes planned for a ‘village green’ on a small estate in south London, where a community centre and children’s playspace would be demolished. Morriss argues this compromises an ‘already limited local amenity,’ concluding that ‘homes on their own do not make a community.’ He calls instead for solutions that balance housing delivery with the social infrastructure residents need. We couldn’t agree more – although we think infill housing can do just that. At Islington Council's Dover Court, for example - shortlisted for this year’s RIBA Neave Brown Award - local residents backed our plans, produced with landscape architect Farrer Huxley, because we developed them together. During consultation we learned that the many fragmented open spaces on the estate were difficult to use and manage and had become ‘unloved’ and unsightly. We demonstrated to residents that, by rearranging and consolidating these spaces, we could create a new London Square as big as the nearby Emirates football pitch. This was easy to visualise and appreciate for the residents, who became advocates for the wider regeneration proposals as a result. At Dover Court, we also asked what kind of homes were needed and established trust by ensuring residents would be re-housed on the estate. In the end, we delivered 70 new homes – covering a wide range of house types and sizes - along with a community centre at the base of an existing tower, as well as a revitalised public realm - improving the open spaces, pedestrian routes and lighting to fashion a safe and welcoming journey home for all residents. And a brand-new ball court too.  We sympathise greatly with Morriss’s argument but strongly believe infill housing, especially on retrofitted housing estates, will be essential to providing new homes throughout the UK. As the Dover Court exemplar shows, the way to make it work for everyone is quite straightforward: co-design the evolving neighbourhood with existing residents. #infilhousing #housing #housingcrisis #Neavebrownaward #brownfield #estateregen #councilhousing #codesign (you can read Trevor's article here: https://lnkd.in/dgqK_DRH?)

We had a great time at the 2024 Inside Housing Development Awards last week, where Juniper House, delivered in partnership with London Borough of Waltham Forest and Pollard Thomas Edwards, was awarded Best Development for 4+ storeys 🎉 The awards celebrate the very best residential developments across the UK and recognise quality homes and sustainable places. Congratulations to all involved in this project, this award reflects your dedication, hard work, and excellence. #TheHillGroup #InsideHousingDevelopmentAwards

We are incredibly proud to share that Juniper House, Walthamstow, has been recognised with a Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors award in the Residential Development category. Nestled in the heart of the transformative Walthamstow town centre, Juniper House has delivered 91 new homes for local people with 50 per cent of these being affordable homes (a combination of shared ownership and social rent), including three and four bedroom properties suitable for families, a nursery, and the launch pad for the borough’s first higher education offer with the University of Portsmouth (UoP) London Campus. From concept to completion, our goal has always been to design high quality, affordable homes where people can live well, grow and thrive, which are key components of our 'Mission Waltham Forest' strategy. Designed by Pollard Thomas Edwards and built together with Hill Group UK Congratulations to all teams involved who worked hard to deliver this incredible building that's already improving the lives of Waltham Forest residents.

Happy Birthday Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) pleasure as always to host your events