Hawkins\Brown has created a multipurpose development in an area of London with a rightful place amid the area's listed modernist buildings.

The project is located on Hackney Road, and sits within a varied conservation area that includes listed modernist buildings by renowned architects, including Erno Goldfinger, Berthold Lubetkin and Sir Denys Lasdun, and early Victorian terraces. It encompasses a number of dual-aspect homes and many communal spaces within a building that improves its context and sits comfortably within the neighbourhood.

The design draws aesthetic inspiration from its modernist neighbours, while responding to the smaller scale and finer grain of the 19th-century buildings. At ground level the building is set back to create a wider pavement and retain the London plane trees, simultaneously creating a public realm as the front door to the commercial and workspace uses facing the street.

Above this, residential accommodation wraps around a courtyard with homes accessed along a communal gallery which allows a high percentage of the apartments to be dual aspect. Within the courtyard, space light wheels drop natural light into the workspace below.

This project has been longlisted in the housing project category of Dezeen Awards 2022.

Architect: Hawkins\Brown

Project: Hackney Road Development