Lansdowne Drive Planning Permission

We're really pleased to have planning permission for a new four-storey townhouse on a tight infill site near London Fields in Hackney – one that we will be taking forward into development ourselves as a practice.

The starting point wasn't promising: a poorly built former garage, damp, barely insulated, with no real outdoor space, wedged between a five-storey block of flats and two conservation areas.

The question was how to put a genuinely contemporary house here.

To answer it, we've borrowed from two places:

From London, the vertical order of the Georgian terrace – a solid base at street level, the main living rooms lifted to a piano nobile above.

From Portugal and the Mediterranean, the outward-facing life of an upper terrace, layered planting, and a house that opens up the higher it gets.

We’re achieving around an 82% reduction in operational carbon compared with Building Regulations through a highly insulated building envelope, heat pumps, MVHR and rooftop PVs. Summer overheating is minimised through thermal mass, external blinds and secure ventilation openings, with the stairwell acting as a thermal chimney to draw cooler night air up through the building and purge accumulated heat.

The ground floor walls of the garage are retained and retrofitted whilst the upper storeys extend the building up 3 storeys, clad in lightweight terracotta cladding to minimise the need for additional foundations.

Gardens run the full height of the house, from courtyard to terrace to green roof, with swift boxes and bee bricks built into the walls.

Lots more to come on this one!

https://www.platform5architects.com/private-homes/lansdownedrive