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LEIGHAM COURT ROAD
Can we create affordable homes on heavily constrained, derelict land?
Location: Streatham
Status: Planning
Client: Pocket Living
Architect: Bell Phillips Architects
Structural Design Brief
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Design lean, cost and carbon effective frames that respond to the architectural design.
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CMC foundations deliver a low cost, low carbon solution, accommodating the constraints of the party and boundary walls as well as the slope stability limitations of the adjacent rail culvert.
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Resolve complex level changes, whilst preserving the existing boundary, avoiding retaining walls and mitigating the need to remove the contaminated ground from site.
Introduction
With its proximity to Streatham Hill Station, and the vibrant community around it, the Leigham Court Road development will deliver much needed homes for key workers and young professionals. Three of the four new buildings will deliver 92 rental homes with 50% affordable (by unit). The fourth building, marking the entrance to the development, will house a community use.
Building Knowledge & Solution
The site constitutes three pockets of land combined to create the new development. To the west, an underused public car park and public toilet. This will be combined with the central plot, currently housing a disused synagogue and the eastern zone which was formerly a bowling green. Across the three plots there is over 3m of level difference and a variety of boundary conditions that the new proposal will navigate. This includes a boundary with Network Rail, which has a significant slope down to the rail line. The design needed to ensure that this slope remains stable and that the project can be built and maintained without disruption to the rail service.
Initial testing identified contamination in the ground and relatively weak soil composition. A CMC foundation solution has been developed, avoiding arisings from the site and minimising the cost and carbon of the necessary ground improvement works. This enables the buildings to be delivered using shallow foundations to support the lean concrete frames, designed using 200mm thick reinforced concrete slabs.
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