2022 Neave Brown Award for Housing Winner, Shortlist, RIBA Architecture Winners, British Architect

2022 Neave Brown Award for Housing

13 October 2022

Photos: : Nick Kane

Hackney New Primary School and 333 Kingsland Road by Henley Halebrown

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced Hackney New Primary School and 333 Kingsland Road by Henley Halebrown as the winner of the Neave Brown Award for Housing 2022.

Given in honour of social housing pioneer, Neave Brown (1926-2018), the annual award recognises the UK’s best new affordable housing.

Located on London’s Kingsland Road, this hybrid scheme skilfully combines a community-led school with 68 apartments on a compact urban site. The deliberately dense housing – which includes 68 rented homes, 50% of which are offered below market rates – frees up the maximum footprint for the school, whilst also providing a substantial baffle from noise and emissions from the neighbouring busy road.

The development is owned by an affordable housing charity which primarily focuses on housing key workers. 333 Kingsland Road operates a tenure blind arrangement, whereby 50% of apartments are available below the average market rent.

Orientation, natural ventilation and light have been carefully considered and prioritised to create spacious, bright apartments. On each of the main floors, eight homes are clustered around a central octagonal stair. Windows are deliberately large to optimise views across the capital, and all residents have access to a communal roof terrace. Below, as the building meets the ground, a welcoming colonnade generously extends the pavement and provides access to the new commercial units, completing an impressive, multi-faceted urban complex.

Chair of the Neave Brown Award for Housing jury, Kaye Stout, said:
“This is a notable architectural response, demonstrating how to effectively combine multiple functions without diminishing the strength of either the educational or residential aspect. Here, Henley Halebrown deliver high-quality affordable housing that stimulates and delights residents, visitors and passers-by. The robust design is thoughtfully detailed throughout. Not only does it provide social value to this inner-city neighbourhood, it responds to a complex brief with architectural ambition and sets an extremely high standard for urban design. When Neave Brown accepted the RIBA Gold Medal, he said ‘… we weren’t so much doing housing, as making part of the city’, and this project does just that.”

RIBA President Simon Allford said:
“This is a highly-intelligent response to providing critical social infrastructure – a thoughtful and generous set of spaces for residents and the local community to live, learn and play in. The educational and residential elements are elegantly engaged in a single composition – an architectural essay in designing an important city corner that engages with the public realm.”

The 2022 Neave Brown Award for Housing jury was chaired by previous winner, Partner at Pollard Thomas Edwards, Kaye Stout; Architect and Development Manager at Meridian Water (Enfield Council), Yemi Aladerun; and Neave Brown family representative, Professor David Porter.

2022 Neave Brown Award for Housing – Building Information

Hackney New Primary School and 333 Kingsland Road
RIBA region: London
Architect practice: Henley Halebrown https://henleyhalebrown.com/
Date of completion: 06 2020
Date of occupation: 06 2020
Client company name: Downham Road Ltd. (JV)
Project city/town: London
Contract value: £26,000,000.00
Gross internal area: 8,500.00 sqm
Net internal area: 6,075.00 sqm
Cost per m²: £3,059.00 / sqm
Contractor company name: Thornsett Structures

Consultants
Structural Engineers: Techniker
Environmental / M&E Engineers: Elementa
Landscape Architects: Tyler Grange
Planting: Jennifer Benyon Design
Artist: Paul Morrison
Planning Consultant: CMA Planning
Principal Designer: Potter Raper
Approved Inspector: MLM
Fire Consultant: BWC Fire
Acoustic Engineers: Pace Consult
Transport Consultant: Phil Jones Associates

Awards
• RIBA Regional Award
• Regional Award Short List
• London East

Jury Report
Hackney New Primary School is an immense sculptural pink brute of a building, punctuating a busy junction on the Kingsland Road with a certain civic pride.

The project comprises a school enabled by a new housing block, both on a single, tight urban site. Its size clearly challenges educational and environmental norms, with the elimination of internal corridors forming an inner world of a closely knit courtyard and classrooms. It is clear the architects have had to be inventive to deliver required light and ventilation on this restricted school site and the courtyard is very much the heart of the school in the same way the hall was in the Victorian board school. Everything happens within this central space.

The grateful residents of the apartment building appear to be thoroughly enjoying the penthouse qualities of their temporary homes, the wide vistas across East London and the very generous outside spaces sheltered by the robust, uncomplicated concrete logia structure that defines the building’s external appearance. These current residents are maximising the meanwhile benefit of living in the building while another development gets underway nearby. Eventually the units will be occupied as 100% affordable housing.

The ten storeys are served by a central octagonal oculus staircase, a visual treat for those with a head for heights. When viewed from the tenth floor or basement, the impact is mesmerising, like a wormhole to another dimension. One hopes that it is enticing enough to tempt residents away from the lift on a day-to-day basis.

Equally of note is the façade, of delightful high-quality, with a solid street presence. The apartment building touches the pavement in a well-mannered way, with a welcoming colonnade giving space back to the public realm and a sense of place to the shop unit fronts.

Likewise, the long precast concrete bench backing onto the simply articulated blind façade of the school hall has been thoughtfully provided for waiting parents beside the school gates.

Overall, these elements make this a conceptually rigorous and notable architectural response.

Photography: Nick Kane

2022 Neave Brown Award for Housing Shortlist information received from RIBA 131022

Previously on e-architect:

29 Sep 2017