St Andrew's

Originally built as a sick asylum for the poor, nineteenth century buildings of St Andrew’s Hospital were not considered suitable for today's clinical use so the hospital was closed in 2006. The site was acquired by the London Development Agency (LDA) who selected Barratt London and Circle Anglia as partners to develop the 3-ha site for mixed-tenure housing.

The brief for the masterplan, and the buildings within it, was reflective of the needs of the borough of Tower Hamlets' diverse population and the ambitions of the local area plan. It called for an unusually high percentage of family housing - 30% - with associated outdoor spaces. It also required a tenure mix of half affordable housing, half market units.

Our masterplan provided a framework within which three architectural teams developed high quality, distinctive yet appropriate, phased elements. We designed the first phase, the health centre and the two towers that comprise later phases; Maccreanor Lavington and Glenn Howells Architects designed the phase two and three blocks respectively.

The homes are organised around a series of public places and courtyard gardens. There are three courtyard blocks with two towers at each end. The block arrangement creates two new streets and clear boundaries between public and private spaces, and their orientation to maximises daylight in the homes. Buildings have been stepped back from the site edges as a buffer to the railway running along the northern boundary to the site and the elevated A12 road to the east.

The courtyard blocks are each conceived as six separate party-wall buildings with their own staircase, lift and entrance. To provide a variety of unit sizes and a high number of family units, there is an interesting mix of typologies: townhouses occupy the ground and first floors with their own front doors, while maisonettes, either interlocking or stacked, create a four storey terrace. Family duplex units are located on the top storeys of the courtyard blocks where the massing has been broken down to create large private roof terraces, safe places for children to play that are accessed directly from each apartment. The remaining areas of roof are planted to enhance the area's biodiversity.

The facades of the courtyard blocks are folded along their length to break down their scale and to provide additional public spaces between them. This creates softly cranked linear blocks, running north-south, prioritising east and west daylight and minimising the number of north facing units. Materials employed give the facades a distinctive character - a rich mixture of brick bonds and brick colours as well as deep brick reveals. Generous double height openings link the street to the internal courtyards and entrance cores.

Two tall buildings mark the east and west corners of the site. Marner Point, a 27-storey tower in the north-east corner groups and stacks unit types to give the impression of a group of nine distinct buildings, each finished in a different brick type or colour, while Ivy Point to the west employs stripes of brick and projecting balconies to give the exterior a lively rhythm. The landscape is an important part of the development, occupying one third of the total site area: Reeves Park along the northern edge, incorporates a line of existing mature London plane trees that provide a useful buffer to the railway, a medicinal herb garden, as well as a pleasant and more convenient route to Bromley-by-Bow station. St Andrew's Gardens forms a key gateway into the site and sits on top of the development's concealed underground parking, located between the third courtyard block and the main road. These two public spaces are supplemented by the private courtyards at the heart of each block, for the residents' use.

St Andrew's has delivered a policy compliant affordable mix and was cited in the Mayor's Housing Design Supplementary Planning Guidance (2016) as an exemplar project, both in terms of its contemporary design and internal space standards, but also in relation to its delivery of family housing and private and semi-private open space at relatively high densities. This latter point was also highlighted by residents in a Post Occupancy Survey as being a highly valued characteristic of their new neighbourhood.