Alongside the design and community engagement activities that civic have been undertaking for Duxford Parish Council, we were asked to develop a schematic housing plan in order to attract potential housing developers to the site.

We worked on the financial modelling and design layouts to provide a commercially viable scheme that would provide opportunity for the village to expand sensitively and in line with demand for a range of housing types and tenures – thereby supporting the village’s need to grow in a balanced way.

The housing scheme (shown bottom left) offers a variety of properties from 1 bed to 5 bed houses to create a mixed development of 22 units of various size wrapped around the new community hub and opposite the Primary School.

Following a village-wide referendum on the project for the community hub in 2015, the plans are on hold. A second village-wide referendum is due to be held in 2016.

Becketts Atelier is a new re-furbished house in the woods, remodeled from an old timber-framed studio positioned on the edge of the Greenbelt in Surrey. The new building serves as an addition to a main five bedroom dwelling in over three acres of Bluebells and woodland, a stunningly modernist house in an area of ‘Arts and Crafts’ mansions.

When the client originally bought the property, it had been semi-occupied by a mother and son for over twenty years, who emigrated to France. They had used the space as a workshop, artist’s studio and living quarters while the main house was under construction, and had also used it to prototype construction details for the main building. The main house was published, shortly after it was finished, in Homes and Gardens, May 1968.

When the client engaged Civic, they had already skilfully procured planning permission to convert the cabin into a two-bedroom single-storey dwelling. This is no mean feat on the edge of the Greenbelt. Civic then developed the detailed proposals for the Atelier within the parameters of the planning permission, developing the design of the internal plan and the design of the building’s relationship to its surrounding landscape, in particular.

The main contractor was chosen for his experience of working with timber, linked to constructing ‘garden buildings’ rather than dwellings. Close collaboration between the builder, the client and Civic during a builder-led ‘on site’ phase has meant that it has been possible to achieve a really elegant, simple dwelling on a very modest capital budget.

The scheme reorganised the entire split-level ground floor of a Victorian terraced house to get more effective use from the space. A principal aim
was to make a small extension to the sitting room without destroying an existing suntrap – now a courtyard – to the side of the house.

Heavily textured courtyard walls pick up sunlight as it falls and help bounce it further into the dining room. The Courtyard is painted in domestic colours
to imply interior walls and the continuation of the Dining room outside. Oversized roof lights make generous pockets of extra head room inside the sitting room. Large sheets of double-glazing are clamped by patent glazing bars each side making simple windows at minimum cost. From the Kitchen there are views through the dining room and sitting room, towards a segment of garden foliage and sky. What you see is a succession of frames, each overlaid on the next.

Stepping down from the hall way by the front door, a body sized vestibule in the swing of the kitchen door is like the inside of a wardrobe, lined out in American
cherry.

Carried out under the employment of Penoyre & Prasad Architects, this was designed for the Peabody Trust under the ‘Rough Sleepers’ Initiative’ to provide permanent single bedroom flats for 12 residents alongside an office and residential space for support staff.

We also acquired funding for a series of on site consultations and ‘design walks’ with homeless people from the nearby hostel on Mare Street, under the Royal Society of Arts’ ‘Year of the Artist’ fund.

Working closely with the Bridge Housing Trust. (support team), artist Nayan Kulkarni and the homeless people we developed a set of materials that would create a familiar environment for residents of this building – and that would not be ‘too new’ to them when moving in. A series of window seats in the stairwell were upholstered with old leather jackets to give a familiar smell and texture to those waiting for interviews or to speak to friends in a semi-private area of the building.

The building design was imagined with a hard urban face in brick which then encloses a softer, landscaped courtyard that serves as a private shared garden for the residents.