The Poulsom/Middlehurst team embarked on a research trip to the 2008 RIBA Stirling prize winning Accordia housing estate.
Designed by Fielden Clegg Bradley studios, Alison Brooks Architects and Macreanor Lavington; the development scheme consists of a masterplanned site comprising of 378 dwellings ranging from one bedroom flats to 5 bedroom houses. The designs of the houses and flats radically challenge and reflect on our changing aspirations and ways of living.
The scheme designed by the team of 3 architects shared a common language of using the same brick type, which was “selected to match closely to the traditional Cambridge Gault clay bricks”. Using the same brick and similar materials, really made the whole project read as one coherent design with the expression of the architects coming instead from the form of their individual designs.
Walking around the estate one striking feature of the whole development was the many generous common green amenity spaces scattered around the whole project. You immediately get a feel that you are walking in one big garden, having large trees and flowerbeds integrated and scattered throughout the whole site.
As space is becoming more of a private luxury having large communal outdoor living spaces that all residents can enjoy is a very radical way of rethinking our stereotypical view of living, with private front and back gardens; which in the present is beginning to be an unrealistic and ever more compromised option.