East London affordable housing complex wins Neave Brown Award for Housing

Latest News Fri, Oct 14, 2022 6:36 AM

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced Hackney New Primary School and 333 Kingsland Road by Henley Halebrown as the winner of the Neave Brown Award for Housing 2022.

Given in honour of social housing pioneer, Neave Brown (1926-2018), the annual award recognises the UK’s best new affordable housing.

Located on London’s Kingsland Road, this hybrid scheme skilfully combines a community-led school with 68 apartments on a compact urban site. The deliberately dense housing – which includes 68 rented homes, 50% of which are offered below market rates – frees up the maximum footprint for the school, whilst also providing a substantial baffle from noise and emissions from the neighbouring busy road.

The development is owned by an affordable housing charity which primarily focuses on housing key workers. 333 Kingsland Road operates a tenure blind arrangement, whereby 50% of apartments are available below the average market rent.

Orientation, natural ventilation and light have been carefully considered and prioritised to create spacious, bright apartments. On each of the main floors, eight homes are clustered around a central octagonal stair. Windows are deliberately large to optimise views across the capital, and all residents have access to a communal roof terrace. Below, as the building meets the ground, a welcoming colonnade generously extends the pavement and provides access to the new commercial units, completing an impressive, multi-faceted urban complex.

Chair of the Neave Brown Award for Housing jury, Kaye Stout, said: “This is a notable architectural response, demonstrating how to effectively combine multiple functions without diminishing the strength of either the educational or residential aspect. Here, Henley Halebrown deliver high-quality affordable housing that stimulates and delights residents, visitors and passers-by. The robust design is thoughtfully detailed throughout. Not only does it provide social value to this inner-city neighbourhood, it responds to a complex brief with architectural ambition and sets an extremely high standard for urban design. When Neave Brown accepted the RIBA Gold Medal, he said ‘… we weren’t so much doing housing, as making part of the city’, and this project does just that.”

RIBA President Simon Allford said: “This is a highly-intelligent response to providing critical social infrastructure – a thoughtful and generous set of spaces for residents and the local community to live, learn and play in. The educational and residential elements are elegantly engaged in a single composition - an architectural essay in designing an important city corner that engages with the public realm.”

The 2022 Neave Brown Award for Housing jury was chaired by previous winner, Partner at Pollard Thomas Edwards, Kaye Stout; Architect and Development Manager at Meridian Water (Enfield Council), Yemi Aladerun; and Neave Brown family representative, Professor David Porter.

RIBA named The Hackney School of Food as the winner of the Stephen Lawrence Prize 2022.

The annual Prize was established in 1998 in memory of Stephen Lawrence, a teenager who was on his way to becoming an architect when he was tragically murdered in a racist attack in 1993. Supported and founded by the Marco Goldschmied Foundation, it aims to encourage new architectural talent, celebrating and rewarding projects with a construction budget of less than £1 million.

Previously a derelict school keeper’s house and garage, The Hackney School of Food provides a unique service in the area: an inspiring place to teach children how to grow, cook and eat food, whilst also serving as a crucial community hub.

Due to limited space and budget, Surman Weston looked to retrofit the existing building to realise the client’s vision. Whilst externally, the house appears unchanged, inside it is transformed by the removal of the first floor to create an impressive double-height space. Outside, the derelict gardens have been overhauled to provide vegetable patches, greenhouses and outdoor cooking and eating spaces, forming part of the welcoming oasis for children to learn all about food.

Meanwhile, RIBA also named Thornsett Group Plc and the Benyon Estate as RIBA Client of the Year 2022. The annual RIBA award recognises exemplar clients who champion and commission outstanding architecture.

The joint clients commissioned Henley Halebrown to create Hackney New Primary School and 333 Kingsland Road in 2015 – a project that has since been upheld for its significant contribution to the East London community as a piece of social infrastructure.

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