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Communal Character
Sergison Bates Architects’ Aldershothousing evokes the warmth and security ofa cabin in the woods, finds Simon Henley
Photos
Kristien Daem
Report: housing
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Architects tend to find housing estatesproblematic, and the urban cognoscenti
remains baffled by the appeal of suburbs and
provincial towns. So I was curious to visit
North Lane in Aldershot, designed by
Sergison Bates Architects and commissioned
by architect turned developer Crispin Kelly,
whose ambition for the last decade has
been to establish whether it is possible to
compete with housebuilders such as George
Wimpey, which has recently completed
a nearby estate.
The premise was to match their spacestandards but to invest more thought an
marginally more money in the architect
especially the communal landscape in m
the same way as Jørn Utzon’s Fredensbor
scheme and Eric Lyons’ Span housing did
more than 40 years ago. The Aldershot
scheme is Kelly’s third completed foray i
provincial housebuilding following Step
Taylor Architects’ two cottages in Gomsh
Surrey, and Tony Fretton Architects’ six
houses at Pewsey, in Wiltshire.
Above
The 14 homes within seven detatched
villas set around a communal landscape
are each accessed from the interior of
the site. Front doors are under cover
along the side of each house and are
approached through a semi-private
space between the house itself and its
associated parking structure.
The brownfield site was previously
used for light commercial activity, and
lies within the heathland area crossing
Surrey and north Hampshire.
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Aldershot is in Hampshire. The landscape
is heathland, and the wedge-shaped site is
bounded by two elevated railway lines, one
(disused) to the north, and another, the
London to Alton line, to the south-east.
The embankments are richly wooded and
where they converge create a strong sense
of enclosure. By contrast North Lane, to the
south, and the car park to the west from
which you enter the estate are more open.
The design pairs 14 houses into seven
villas to give scale to the otherwise smallhomes. These are disposed in a picturesque
manner, three each side, and the seventh
villa at the far end of a surface of golden
sand and gravel which laps up against the
facade of each villa. The grass in the gardens
is growing but the hedges are still ankle-
high and many of the trees have yet to be
planted, so one cannot yet experience the
full effect of what will be a delightfully
scruffy sandy surface in a clearing in a
copse. Nevertheless, the elimination of
a conventional road surface, pavements,
kerbs and ‘defensible space’ establishes a
strong foundation for this community.
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Below
The site is bounded by wooded railway
embankments to the north and east, by
North Lane to the south, and by a new
development of 25 veterans’ assisted
homes to the west. East of the rail
embankment lies an area of largely
two-storey housing, including a new,
more typical suburban estate.
The wooded railway embankments
create a secluded green environment
within walking distance of shops and
close to central Aldershot.
All households have access to a shared
‘garden room’ towards the end of the
cul-de-sac, which will function as an
indoor children’s playroom and a
community gathering space.
Below right
The palette of materials – a buff brick
with timber windows and tiled roofs –
is consistent across the scheme and is
intended to complement the wooded
landscape setting. The bricks are
thinner than traditional stocks,
allowing greater depth of cavity wall
insulation or a slimmer wall build-up.
There are three villa types: a two- and a
three-bed; a pair of three-beds; and a three-
and a four-bed. All are two-storey apart
from the three-storey, four-bed house.
Each villa plan is roughly square, with an
interlocking party wall. Entrance porches
are cut out of opposing corners and the
staircases set within the crook of the party
wall. Each house has just two ground-floor
rooms: a kitchen with space for a table and
a living room. The living rooms, like the
entrances, are situated in opposing corners.Normally, semi-detached houses are
identical and depend for effect on mirror
symmetry, displaying their formal ‘face’ to
the street. Here, the rotational symmetry
establishes the omni-directionality of villas
in a landscape.
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Right
Entrances are marked by decorative
tiling to the walls adjacent to doorways
in a similar manner to the decoration
of Victorian housing developments.
Below
Each villa has a unique character based
on its position and orientation on the
site, and details of the junction of roof
and wall vary: in some instances the
roof projects to create an overhang,
while in others there is a more flush
junction between wall and roof.
Cuts formed in two diagonally opposite
corners reduce the villas’ apparent
bulk and mark the entrances.
Small parking structures within the
woodland adjacent to each house
maximise the size of the communal
area. Low-maintenance hedging of
gorse, blackberry and blackcurrant
frames a residents’ allotment at the
western end of the site, a play area and
the public space connecting to North
Lane. Climbing plants will clad trellises
and fences separating gardens.
Externally, the villas are a composition of
counterpoints and contrasts. The masonry
cavity construction uses flush-pointed
Belgian facing bricks, 230mm long, 55mm
high and 70mm deep. Most are a reddy
brown, but interspersed with roughly
shaped yellows. The bond is ‘wild’ – a mix
of whole, three-quarter and half bricks –
so perpends do not align. The impression is
rustic. The walls were not set out to brick
dimensions. Instead, the bricklayers
worked to a series of rules. Each elevationis different, with the eaves line broken by
a masonry chimney. Substantial black
timber-framed windows are arranged so
cills and heads do not align. Bedroom
windows are clustered for scale, and all
are set just 40mm back from the brickwork
face. Cills are aluminium, and pistol bricks
conceal steel lintels. Besides the bond, there
is no elaboration of the brickwork.
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Pantile roofs are clamped between unusual
milled aluminium bargeboards and gutters.
The oversailing roofs, freed of their masonry
base, are a striking feature. Each villa has a
consistent ridge but roof pitches and eaves
heights vary, and the ensemble resembles
scissors in motion.
Entrance porches are tiled in either green,
brown or yellow, and in some cases are quite
hard to find. Inside, halls are between the
two ground-floor rooms. Internal doorways
are wide – larger still in the four-bedroomhouse, where pairs of glazed doors are used.
In all cases one gets the impression of
enfilade rooms. The living rooms, with 3.2m-
high ceilings, are cubic and illuminated by
two huge windows. A wood-burning stove
stands on a tiled hearth in a corner. In each
villa, one house presents the living room,
and the other the kitchen, to the cul-de-sac.
Large windows expose private moments.
Upstairs, the extended eaves that plays such
an important part in the outward expression
of the house has an important role on the
inside where, in the smaller bedroom, it
draws one’s eye to the ground and to the
landscape. Placing a room in shadow, in
contrast to the other brightly-lit interiors,
offers both a figurative and literal retreat
from the social exposure that is otherwise
the premise of the scheme.
Upstairs, the volume of the living room
generates split-levels, so the staircase spirals
up past the smaller bedrooms to the largest
one above. In the three-storey house the
stair branches to serve different rooms. Each
flight and landing brings another degree of
privacy as well as playfulness and generosity.
Bathroom
En-suite
Bedroom 3
Hall
Bedroom 2
Bedroom 1Bedroom 3
Bathroom
Hall
Bedroom 1
Bedroom 2
En-suite
WCHallStore
Hall
WC Store
Kitchen/dining
LivingroomKitchen/ dining
Livingroom
Store
Store
Bedroom 4
Attic /storage space
Hall
Bedroom 3 Bathroom
Hall
Bedroom 2
E n- su it e B ed ro om 1
Bathroom
Hall
Bedroom 1
Bedroom 2
Store
WCHallStore
LivingroomKitchen/dining
Hall
WC
Livingroom
Store
Store
Kitchen/ dining
Store
Store
WC
LivingroomKitchen/ dining
Hall
Hall
WC
Livingroom
Store
Store
Kitchen/dining
Bedroom 3 Bathroom
Hall
Bedroom 2
E n- su it e B ed ro om 1Bedroom 3Bathroom
Hall
En-suite
Bedroom 1
Bedroom 2
Below
Plans of the three ‘villa’ types, A, B
and C, each of which comprises two
semi-detached houses. Type A is a
four-bedroom and a three-bedroom
dwelling, Type B comprises a
two-bedroom and a three-bedroom
dwelling, and Type C consists of
two three-bedroom dwellings.
Each villa is rectangular in plan and
has a pitched roof. The two houses
within each villa are arranged side by
side, along a stepped party wall. They
share the same ground-floor plan,though with different orientations.
Opposite
Interior views. The form of the houses
developed from an exploration of how
the space usually lost within pitched
roofs can be used to develop a stepped
section allowing ground floor rooms to
have a generous ceiling height of 3.2m.
Type A
Type C
Type B
Type C
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Selected suppl& subcontracto
Brick manufacture
Vande Moortel
Brick supplier
European Building
Materials
Roof tiles
Forticrete
Timber windows
Flexwood
Timber floors
Junkers
Ceramic tiling
Johnson Tiles,
Craven Dunnill Jack
Kitchens
Howdens
Rainwater goods
Bailey UK
Self-binding grave
Breedon Special
Aggregates
Project team
Architect
Sergison Bates Architects
Design team
Jonathan Sergison,
Stephen Bates, Mark
Tuff, Andrew Jackson,
Michael Hughes, Katja
Meyer, Antonio Ippolito
Contractor
Construction Partnership
Cost consultant
Smith Turner
Structural engineer
Civic Engineers
Service engineer
MESH Projects
Landscape architect
Jonathan Cook
Client
Baylight Property
Services
The villas are mannered, but carefully so.
There is a congruency between the plan, the
elevation and the roof. There is a fantastic
elasticity to the forms that contrasts starkly
with the pudding-bowl pitched roofs of the
nearby estate houses. The joy is that this
elasticity of expression evident outside is
rewarded in the interior – in particular in
the height of the living room, and the way
light falls on staircases and landings.
This seems to be popular: all houses were
sold before practical completion. But thesearen’t ‘English’ houses. What I mean is they
aren’t genteel. Though one could mine the
history books for precedents, I was struck
not by the architectural references but by
the houses’ ability to communicate ideas
about dwelling. The iconography is clear;
these are cabins in a wood, and the eaves and
the chimney signify shelter and warmth.