Hi, Dominic. How are you?

 

I'm great.

 

Good. I wanted to talk to you principally about your Dockley Apartments, down in Southwark, because it's pretty striking. But also to move on to perhaps talk about your style and perhaps a little about the housing market in general here as opposed to elsewhere, because you've got experience of Europe and beyond on that front. So first of all, can I ask you about Dockley and ask you to describe it in basic principles?

Yep. Thanks, David. Dockley Road is a constrained formerly industrial site in Southwark, and it's extending the low line and the beer mile in the sense that is a route which is becoming quite busy and a fantastic, outdoor social environment. It's right next to the rail viaduct that leads out of London Bridge. It's trying to think about housing; you know, the next approach to housing, and how it deals with those kinds of very London conditions of Victorian railway arches. Previously, the buildings have closed themselves off and regaled against those kinds of conditions and pulled away from them. And I think now we're seeing a kind of mixed-use building that really is offering workspace for artisan producers and wholesalers. We wanted to open that up, and really integrate those kinds of employment opportunities that become social environments for the weekend, into the life of the building. Because of the constraints of the site, we wanted to create a courtyard building. It was appropriate, because the site wasn't big enough to do anything else. But in a sense, to open up and create all these additional spaces. The laneway along the viaduct is actually something that we then created more employment spaces within our building. The building is deck access, and obviously, there's a new book out that talks about a design guide for deck access housing…

 

By Rory Olcayto.... 

 

…and it's very opportune at this moment, because with the need for dual aspect apartments, I think there's much more discussion around health and wellbeing in our housing. Even post-pandemic, the idea that people want to be able to access outdoor spaces in a convivial and neighborly way; I think it was the right move here to actually look at galleries, as we call them. Lots of people call them different things, but we call them galleries. And maybe that's a more continental European approach, but to really create very generous outdoor space, dual aspect, double sided, and therefore, obviously, cross ventilation, all the kinds of things that even way back in the 19th century they were looking at in terms of the idea of health and healthy environments. I think these are the kinds of things that obviously now are coming out of the London Plan; becoming much more prescriptive as we move forward with those policies to actually create those dual aspect environments. For us the galleries work in this instance, because it's quite a small building, it's quite dense. It's not that high, in terms of walking around, and actually, there's a number of cores and lobbies that then make it quite a convivial environment. You know, there's not a lot of people moving past each other's apartments. And so I think the appropriateness of that type is down to how well it's designed, how many apartments there are, and the quality of the courtyard space as well.

You say it's small, but it's 111 flats, which is reasonably sizable, isn't it?

 

It is, and you know, I think it works out as 308 dwellings per hectare, so it's quite dense. But I think it's the combination of a kind of courtyard space that opens up to the street. And so the play space on the ground floor opens up to the street and is covered. The garden then also opens up visually through entrances that are open to the street. And I think because of the nature of the gallery moving around this garden, there's kind of an intimacy to it, without being overly dense, because the building actually is predominantly about five storeys high, but actually goes up at the corners - to get up to sometimes high points of nine. But you know, it's still a mid-rise, urban building. And I think that sense, when you walk around it you see the galleries, you have got passive surveillance but at the same time you could talk to a neighbour. It's not like you're 10 storeys up in the sky and you're looking at across a green field or something. I think that's when environmentally it becomes problematic. This is kind of mid-rise.

 

 In the blurb, the press release about the scheme mentions that it's ‘European style’ housing. What aspect of it do you think is European rather than London vernacular, let's say?

 

Yeah, I think it's a couple of things. I think it's first of all an approach to materiality. I think the idea of a kind of light... so we're not using a kind of a brick. I think it's the approach to the galleries, which is predominantly something that recently is being revisited by architects and developers within London, but it's historically been something, you know, that's continuously and consistently being looked at in continental Europe. That was a solution that we brought to the table. And I think it's the idea of communal environments that are scattered around the building. So we've got communal terraces on the first and fourth floor. I think it's also this idea of pulling the galleries away from the building, which you see a lot in Europe, and therefore giving it more light and more privacy to the rooms that face the gallery. So, there is actually active frontage onto the galleries as well. And I think it is that lightness, and this goes on to the question around housing in Europe – what happens in Europe is that architects lay claim to, let's say, a larger or broader combination of different types. And so, what we're trying to do here is show that you can actually have within a building that is working very hard, in plan and section to create that kind of varied silhouette. And so, although it's mid-rise, there are high points. And I think it moves away from this idea of mansion block, tower, slab that become quite overly limited as a single solution, let's say, for offering diverse housing solutions.

 

And, lastly, because we're coming up to time, what are your observations about the areas you work in outside London and Europe? Because I know you're working in New Zealand a bit. What are your observations about how the London architecture scene, let alone housing market, compares?

 

Yes, it's an interesting question, because especially in London it is highly constrained in terms of – obviously – the cost of land and value and what we need to achieve on it. I think London's also constrained by the fact that we have got 2.5 million two-storey houses. That's something that has really driven the way in which we have to approach our environments, especially moving forward.  I think that's the challenge that London has, that no other city has. And also, London has grown incrementally over time, and in a layered way. You know, the fact that villages then get layered over with central city environments. And so, it's not like the great plans of Barcelona or Glasgow, or, or Melbourne, etc., that have very mature, grid-like structures to the city. So in a sense, all of these things create these very constrained environments: railways, topography, canals, medieval streets, etc. And I think that forces us to have to think that new developments need to be very dense. That's the challenge for architects here, compared to other places; it’s that we're limited, let's say, and it asks for much more creativity, you could argue. But how do we then design housing that really starts to answer the things that we demand of our housing now? You know, places that we can work in, that we can actually enjoy outdoor space, that are light and airy? I think these are the challenges we're going to be facing over the coming years. These things are actually easier to achieve across continental Europe and further afield because we don't have those kinds of financial land value constraints. And so, I think it's the profession that has to step up.

 

And is it easier for practices like yours to be working away from London at the moment or away from the UK at the moment, or is it easier here?

 

I think it's easier abroad, definitely. 

 

Why? 

 

Because I think – understandably so – there's a lot on the line. And I think as architects, there's less of these issues, and clients don't demand as much. Therefore, I think we can answer lots of different questions abroad in terms of, if you're an architect, you could be a masterplanner. And if you've designed housing, you can design an office. I think that that's something that is quite difficult to do in the UK.

 

Right. So there are too many pigeonholes here, is that right? For specialisms?

 

There are specializations, and I understand why because obviously, there's much more at stake with the kind of scale of development you're getting in the UK, especially in London.

 

Right. So, if you're a housing designer, it's difficult to break out of housing. Is that what you're saying?

 

Yeah, I think it is. Especially if you're a mid-size or small practice. I think those things become very, very clear, very quickly. And I think in places like New Zealand, you're an architect. And then you can do lots of different things. And the same in the Netherlands, and Belgium, where we work. 

 

But more siloed here.

 

You know, we're designing a park, we're designing a massive public building in Belgium, etc. Which we wouldn't have that opportunity to do in the UK. But at the same time in the UK, we do housing, and we love doing that. Our focus and our passion is about doing mixed use residential buildings. Bringing employment and living together is increasingly important, especially in defining what London is trying to be, as a kind of identity for London.

 

Well, you've done a great scheme here. It looks really fantastic. So, congratulations on that. And I look forward to having a look around it more closely at some point.

 

Yeah. Great. Look forward to that.

 

Brilliant. Thanks, Dominic. 

 

Thanks David