Angell Town

Character

The scheme immediately appears unusual for a modern estate with its variety of interesting new architectural designs and its direct and connected streets, trees, and businesses on the busier streets. Housing types feel identifiable and different, and are built with obvious quality and care for variety. In the majority of cases they present doors to the street making the public spaces feel well overlooked. The mixture of uses, housing types and the street network’s permeability ensure a good presence of people. New housing is two or three storey and reworked blocks around the estate’s edges are transformed with ground level entries and dramatic new stairwell towers, giving access to upper floors. The streets have a traditional and lively feel, with surveilled parking on street or in ports.

Roads, parking and pedestrianisation

The road layout has been made comprehensible by opening additional, formerly fire access only, streets. The estate is well connected by roads to the north and south and by footpaths to east and west, and the street layout makes rat-running inconvenient. Demolishing a section of Warwick House adjacent to Boatemah Walk has opened up an extra pedestrian connection from Brixton Road. The aim of the Masterplan to face all streets with entrances has largely been achieved although some in the last phases to the north are cramped, not overlooked and so go against the principles it established. Fir Grove Road, already with little overlooking, has its blankness compounded by the revised orientation of the ten Ecohomes Self Build houses, and the busy pedestrian way between Fir Grove Road and Torrey Drive is too narrow.

Pedestrian crossovers, front parking courts and some streets use blockwork, with the main route awaiting its finish; recent phases use a simple tarmac with quality kerbs and square slab footway paving. Some parking is in courts or ports but is mostly on-street, some spaces defined by inefficient build-outs; provision is generally under some pressure although non-permit holders are clamped. Footpath space varies and in a few places is blocked by bin-storage or inconvenient deflections.

Design and construction

Refurbished and new housing have very good insulation standards and in Holles and Warwick Houses, refurbished by Anne Thorne Architects Partnership (ATAP), independent testing has revealed nearly 50% reduction in energy costs. New housing is predominantly built to Lifetime Homes standards, with level entry, straight stairways, areas for lifts and accessible designs; particular care is taken to accommodate people with disabilities.

The variety of housing designs and materials is striking. Burrell Foley Fischer, following their subtle remodelling of the 1993 Pilot Project, produced with residents housing of sandstone-buff brick; later phases by Greenhill Jenner Architects have brick hues in red, purple/grey and light yellow, with contrasting untreated western cedar and zinc details; work by Mode1 effectively uses white render, engraved glass and coloured glass block inserts. ATAP uses timber cladding, render, tiles and decorative metalwork, and their new block of 18 Ecohomes-rated ‘Excellent’ flats, Boatemah Walk, is Lambeth’s first environmental housing. This includes a photovoltaic roof powering ground floor flats for disabled persons, grey water recycling providing 90% of toilet flushing, recycled insulation material and passive air extraction from kitchens and bathrooms; timber is Forest Stewardship certified and environment-friendly paints and stains are used.

In the groundbreaking Angell Ecohome Self Build, residents trained by Higgins Construction are completing ten externally finished shells, saving some £50,000 which goes into improvement such as underfloor heating.

Environment and community

Thanks to ATCP, residents have benefited from the regeneration through apprenticeships, training schemes, employment and, finally, Dora Boatemah’s aspiration of self-build, facilitated by contractors Higgins Construction. Although Lambeth Council has an estate management board onsite made up of residents, ATCP maintains its independence, supported, unusually, from the rents of over 30 offices, shops and workshops converted from former garages, thereby avoiding direct Council funding.

Two major play spaces have been rejuvenated and the Little Angels green space awaits completion. The estate is well connected to buses and underground, and the opening of the estate to Brixton Road makes access safer for all users. Good retail facilities are nearby and mixed uses from earlier phases look to be economically secure. Fundraising is now ongoing for £235,000 towards an estimated £1.2m new community centre, 'One Generation' for both young and old, to be converted from space in Fairfax House.