Mae’s multi-generational living block on the Aylesbury Estate

Photos reveal Mae’s project in Southwark, south east London which caters for multi-generational living on what was once part of the Aylesbury Estate.

Photos
Tim Crocker

The Aylesbury Estate – the place where Tony Blair delivered his first political speech – is famously (or perhaps infamously) undergoing regeneration. It’s so far been a prolonged process, fraught with court cases and resident protests. “If you were born when [plans for its regeneration] began, you could have graduated university by now,” said one councillor.

However, ‘Block S01’ designed by Mae Architects is nearing completion. Some 4,200 homes are being built on the site in Burgess Park, owned by Southwark Council, replacing 2,759 of the original council homes. Only 1,600 will be listed as ‘social rent’, with 581 being council homes. Of these, 119 come from Mae as part of Block S01 which can be found on the southwestern edge of the Aylesbury development area.

Block S01 faces a new public square and has been arranged in a horseshoe footprint around a courtyard garden, lined on its sides by galleries accessing the apartments – bringing a connection with nature, including two large mature trees, and light of the seasons into the residents’ everyday experience.

Arranged in a horseshoe formation surrounding a courtyard garden, Mae’s design sees the creation of a new public square defined by the block’s double-height brick arches that form a colonnade at ground level. This, say the architects, is a specific reference made to the nearby St Peter’s Church designed by Sir John Soane, and to the former brick kilns found in Burgess Park.

The block reaches to five and seven storeys, with the taller of the two massings being on the southeastern corner of the plot, topped by a communal garden on the roof.

“The architecture is designed to be consistent across tenures and types, intended to feel like a single urban block albeit with different heights that respond to setting and subtle detail differences (square windows on the lower blocks, vertical windows on the tallest block)”, Alex Ely, director at Mae, told Architecture Today.

Ground floor plan.

Looking out to the street, the ground level features shared internal spaces, namely a café, lounge and community centre, the latter able to be accessed from Westmoreland Road and facing East onto the new Westmoreland Park adjacent and able to accommodate 100 seats, also able to be linked to two adjacent rooms and be opened up to form a larger event space.

Such moves are all part of the wider ambitions of the scheme to foster multi-generational co-living. This is achieved, both through design and through programme, with 54 of the new council homes comprising the Harriet Hardy Extra Care flats for older persons.

Conceived by Mae as a 21^st Century Almshouse, all units have been designed to be “care-ready” with facilities such as tele-care (an alarm service for elderly people that lets them call for help if they fall) and assistive technology built in and able to be adapted for user’s specific needs.

The apartments have been planned around the idea of what Mae calls “progressive privacy” – affording residents independency while establishing strong connections to the support and communal amenities within the block, enabled in part by the horseshoe formation of the block. Within, flats feed off of short corridors via indoor and outdoor decks. These are wide – wide enough for neighbours to meet as well as facilitate ease of movement of wheelchairs and other mobility aides.

“Our design aims to make extra care housing a seamless part of our housing provision, this multi-generational block brings together general needs accommodation for individuals and families alongside specialist care housing,” said Alex Ely, director of Mae. “The building has a civic quality and offers the benefits of independent but collective living in the city; we have imagined a new community that will be both cohesive and outward-looking.”

Windows are large, and balconies generous, allowing apartments to be filled with plenty of natural light and views of two large mature trees in the courtyard.

“Part of the reason we are re-developing the Aylesbury Estate is to make sure we have more new homes that are of good quality and meet the needs of our current population,” added counsellor Helen Dennis, cabinet member for sustainable Development and New Homes.

“This includes people who want to live as independently as possible but might need that little bit of extra help. This new block is not only beautifully designed to meet those needs, it encourages residents to stay involved with the diverse and thriving community that is developing around it.”