Cressingham Gardens Estate by Lambeth Borough Architects Department

Cressingham Gardens Estate in Lambeth was presented at the AT Awards live finals on 7 November 2022 at the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health to a jury comprising, Marion Baeli, Sarah Allan, Deyan Sudjic, Roger Harrabin, Ben Derbyshire, and Chair Catherine Burd. Read about how the project has stood the test of time, below.

Completed
1979

Cressingham Gardens was built between 1967 and 1979 to designs by the Lambeth Borough Architects Department, led by Edward ‘Ted’ Hollamby (1921-1999) and has endured as an excellent example of late 20th-century public housing.

The estate includes 306 homes from one bed bungalows to six person houses, each with its own private outdoor space, set alongside pedestrian walkways with paths that meet at the central grass plateau or ‘village green’.

The estate benefits from generous green space dotted with mature trees. Credit: Colin Westwood

With no loadbearing internal walls, the rooms and spaces can be easily reconfigured to accommodate changing lifestyles and growing families, for example: converting one bedroom properties to two bedrooms; removing walls to create open-plan lounge/kitchen areas; creating a mezzanine level as a guest bedroom or young child’s play nook.

A ‘circus tent’ rotunda at the development’s heart was originally designed for a playgroup but now operates as a community centre and co-operative nursery, while the launderettes have been converted into large studio flats.

A ‘low-traffic neighbourhood’ long before the climate-crisis became mainstream, vehicles are restricted to the estate perimeter, with buildings designed to fit around existing trees. The landscape has matured and flourished providing a haven for wildlife, and space for residents to plant edible gardens.

Residents have fought a ten- yearlong campaign to resist plans to demolish the estate to make way for a high-rise, high-density development, and have worked up an alternative proposal with local architect Variant Office. The ‘People’s Plan’ includes a basic green retrofit, installation of renewables, enhanced community facilities and conversion of the underutilised car parking and garage spaces to create 23 new homes and the construction of 33 new homes for social rent.