Architects Waugh Thistleton have won planning permission for this residential building in Ramsgate Street in Dalston, London.
The tower has a helical wind turbine attached to its back, although you can't see it in these images.
More details below:
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Ramsgate Street
Waugh Thistleton’s 66-unit scheme for Ramsgate Street in Dalston, London has just won planning permission.
Clad in glazed tiles and featuring a stunning tower of helical windturbines at its spine, the fourteen-storey building makes a radical architectural statement that will become a new landmark for East London. As well as exceeding the Mayor’s demanding targets for energy efficiency, this is a building that will signifi cantly benefit a community currently deprived of both decent housing and employment.
Commissioned by Metropolitan Housing Trust, the scheme will provide 66 private and affordable apartments, as well as 1,117 sq m of new office space acting as significant kick-start to a neighbourhood on the edge of a renaissance.
An iconic and uncompromising beacon for the regeneration of the area, the design for the scheme derives from its context. A tower stands at the north end of the site next to seven-storey Springfield House, supported by a four-storey plinth that spreads beyond to meet the lower neighbouring buildings. The plinth and the tower are distinct elements – the tower from the car park seems to float above the street as a distinct form – and yet are simultaneously interlocked, making maximum use of the site and providing a strong edge.
A key component of the design was to exceed the Mayor’s target for on-site sources of renewable energy. Conceiving of the energy producing/saving mechanics of the building as an integral part of the design was a challenging process, requiring the design team to investigate how the height and form of the building could best harness the wind energy at that location. The resulting form of the plan ensures that the tower acts as an aerofoil, concentrating the greatest wind speed to the spine of the building, where four turbines will be attached vertically, in a spiral form that is as visually stunning as it is innovative.
The turbines will provide the building with more than 15% of its energy requirements, exceeding the Mayor’s targets for energy effi ciency. Dependent on wind speed, the four turbines will generate around 40,000kW hrs a year. This is enough to power an 80-person office, or the electrical energy requirement of more than 40 flats and it will save approximately 7 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being pumped into the atmosphere every year.
The tower is a bold design statement, introducing a new aesthetic to the area. It goes beyond being environmentally accountable and providing the community with much-needed facilities, to a building that both projects and epitomises the area’s aspirations and potential.
Waugh Thistleton, established in 1997, is an architect practice based in Shoreditch. The two directors, Andrew Waugh and Anthony Thistleton, employ ten staff all boldly striving to make beautiful, intellectually rigorous, environmentally responsible architecture; responsive to client, context and brief. Projects range from high-rise housing, through to mixed-use, public, and commercial buildings. Clients include Housing Associations, Local Authorities, Artists, Synagogues and Cinemas.