The model of the eighteenth or nineteenth century English garden square and its surrounding townhouses have lessons for today’s developers. Critically however this model of development is not about the style of the architecture, but about the principles of dense urban development and good quality design.

Community
Garden squares principally create an ethos of shared space. This design proposes a series of terrace townhouse clusters around a central shared square. Each house leads directly from the house entrance onto the square, with no street separating the two. Each garden square is accessible only by residents of the surrounding townhouses.

In addition to the shared garden each house has its own private garden.

Sustainability
Terrace house forms are inherently energy efficient. Each house effectively shares two of its walls with its neighbour, thus gaining heat from its neighbours and reducing its energy requirements. Super-insulated walls front and back help to give this development a very low carbon footprint.

To prevent heat loss in winter and gain in summer a series of shutters act as either shading devices for summer and super-insulated panels for winter. They are based on counterweighted technology, similar to that found in traditional box sash windows, and slide up and down the front and rear facades.

The design proposes burying the pipework for a shared ground source heat pump in the garden area. Spoil is removed for foundations and basement levels and used to form a raised shared garden area. This minimises the cost of pipework installation, while the shard system will mean reduced running costs. Each garden square block has the potential to use a combined heat and power community system. Grey water is collected on the flat roofs and can be re-used throughout the development.

Flexibility
Each housing unit can be built initially in any configuration from one bedroom to five bedrooms, with options to add an additional studio/workspace or granny flat.

A first-time purchaser would probably buy a one or two-bedroom unit and add bedroom units as funds and family grow. These bedroom units are pre-fabricated with ensuite bathrooms and access bridges, and arrive on a truck and are craned into position. They are off-the-shelf units supplied by the developer with fixed-menu pricing. Studios, granny flats, carports and even lifts could be added in the same way. The home’s initial foundation design allows for the addition of these elements without needing extra work.

If the homeowner later wants to downsize, they simply sell bedroom units to other homeowners.

Design
A terrace configured townhouse design places importance on the vertical and the quality of space is defined by the use of double height space. Therefore the lower two storeys of kitchen, dining and living space can be configured as either double height or single height, or a combination of the two.

Materials
The main structure is lightweight steel frame with precast concrete elements for floors to add thermal mass. This helps maintain an even temperature and reduces energy consumption. Facades are a mix of rendered blockwork, timber cladding and aluminium clad super-insulated panels. Combinations of aluminium and timber louvres provide shading.

© British Homes Awards |  Site design: LW design