Camden Courtyards, a £40 million housing block for Barratt London, provides 164 new homes
Situated on the corner of St Pancras Way and Camden Road, the seven-storey brick building is topped with two upper levels clad in Cor-ten steel, both to reduce the mass of the block and to reference Camden’s industrial heritage.
The S-shaped plan encloses a double courtyard arrangement, separating the 50/50 mix of private and affordable tenures. Fourteen-metre-deep blocks allow dual aspect layouts, with bedrooms facing inwards to the courtyards at the centre of the project. The courtyard model draws on Haussmann and Berlin blocks, as well as London mansion blocks precedents.
02 camden courtyards ∏ simon kennedy
Source: Simon Kennedy
The massing of the building has been modelled to relate to the scale of buildings around the site: the southern side of the scheme is consistent with the larger housing developments on St Pancras Way, and steps back in response to the mews-style street on the northern side of the site.
The scheme is car-free, so a lower ground floor is incorporated, providing perimeter lightwells for duplex apartments at lower and upper ground floors. The incorporation of communal roof terraces allows for play spaces for children as well as views for residents. Inset balconies are incorporated to the main street frontages, creating vertical bays, while projecting balconies to the quieter mews street are designed to provide a more intimate scale.
06 Camden Courtyards Ground Floor Plan
Source: Sheppard Robson
Ground floor plan
Project data
Number of homes 164
Size of site 0.42ha
Habitual rooms per hectare 1,142
Completion date January 2018
Area 17,400m2
Architect Sheppard Robson
Client Barratt London
Contractor Barratt London
Project manager Barratt London
Structural engineer Walsh Group
Lanscape design Exterior Architecture
M&E engineer Whitecode Design Associates
Planning consultant CBRE
Sheppard Robson team Alan Shingler, Dan Burr, Tom Kyle, Jenna Fife, Peter Johnson, Anna Prajs, Gianluca Villa, Diana Capitao, Keith Sagar, Rachel Hain, Mirabell Schmitt, Juan Milano, Zsofia Kovacs
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Readers' comments (2)
John Cetra31 May, 2018 10:14 am
One aspect of the project that seems unconventional is how in the unit layouts one must walk past all bedrooms and bathrooms before getting to the living rooms and kitchen. I’ve seen it in other projects in the UK but not so much in the US.
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Robert Wakeham31 May, 2018 10:28 am
Image 8/19 raises the question of privacy - and of just how much of an asset the balconies really are in the rather pokey internal courtyards.
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