Tower Bridge Road

While focused inwards on a shared courtyard, the architecture of this small development in Southwark also improves the boundary conditions, both onto the local high street and towards the rear neighbours. The gap site is currently the ‘missing tooth’ in a curved terrace of shops to Tower Bridge Road. Our design, which will be built by others following the sale of the site, reintroduces the local typology of back yards accessed through tunnel alleyways that punch through the street frontage.

A new ground-floor shop, with apartments above, will hold the high street elevation, its red brick, window openings and ornamentation abstracted from the surrounding conditions. A remade passage will lead through to a series of homes opening onto a central courtyard with a communal, mews-like feel. To animate the wall onto the 1930s estate behind, the form of these homes is generated by the internal living spaces, giving a series of stepped, articulated volumes in grey brick.