Central Somers Town Masterplan
- Categories Urban & Landscape
- Clients London Borough of Camden
- Completion 2023
- Size 2.2 hectares
- Budget £80m
- Project Team Deborah Saunt, Ellen Hadden, Molly Judge, Maeve Dolan, Nichola Ibbotson
-
Awards
London Planning Awards 2018
Caught between the railway tracks of Euston and St. Pancras stations, Somers Town is one of only a few substantial areas of publicly-owned land in Central London. As such it presents a unique opportunity to explore innovative models to deliver much-needed homes and public amenity for a neighbourhood with many needs.
The single ownership of the buildings, and also the public realm around them, allowed the London Borough of Camden to develop an ambitious place-making strategy using a self-funding development framework to enable delivery. The commission comprises a new primary school, community facilities, affordable homes and a world-class public park —worthy of the site’s significance — as well as a proportion of private housing.
Led by DSDHA, the Masterplan was devised via an innovative collaborative process, using landscape and public realm as the primary drivers around which housing was designed — in opposition to the prevailing trend towards maximising build yields at all costs. Rather than developing massing criteria to guide the development of each plot, DSDHA curated a sophisticated dialogue between the practitioners involved, thus allowing creativity to flourish to promote a rich mix of architecture and landscape that mediate seamlessly between the scale of intimacy and infrastructure.
- Collaborators Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, Studio Dekka, AKT 11, Atelier Ten, Turley, dRMM Architects, Hayhurst & Co., Duggan Morris Architects, Adam Khan Architects
Share: