Cullinan Studio completes 119 new homes for the London Borough of Camden
Cullinan Studio, with delivery architects ECE Westworks, has completed 119 new homes, including 51 council homes, in the Maitland Park Estate for the London Borough of Camden. The new infill projects on two sites create a vibrant heart for the community with an enhanced landscape setting designed by Turkington Martin, new open play spaces and a new community hall and garden.
The homes, constructed by Bouygues, offer both social rented and private home ownership tenure in a variety of sizes to suit Camden’s housing needs, with fully accessible and adaptable dwellings provided across the development.
On Wednesday 20th December 2023, Camden Council marked the completion of the redevelopment at an event attended by local residents, Camden Cabinet Members, and MP for Holborn and St Pancras, Sir Keir Starmer.
The redevelopment at Maitland Park is Camden’s latest social housing project to reach completion since it announced the expansion of its housebuilding programme by committing an extra £1.3bn investment towards building new homes for residents.
As part of Camden’s strategy for diversity in the public spaces - which aims to better represent and empower the borough’s diverse communities - each of the three new residential buildings at Maitland Park has been named after prominent local figures from Camden. They are:
Noor Inayat Khan, the first woman spy who was dropped behind enemy lines in France during the Second World War.
Mary Prince, the first black woman to have an autobiography published in Britain.
Antony Grey, an LGBTQ+ Activist whose work led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality for men.
Councillor Danny Beales, Camden Council Cabinet Member for New homes, Jobs, and Community Investment, said: “At Maitland Park we can demonstrate what is possible when we invest in council housing. We have worked with the estate’s residents to transform an outdated block in chronic disrepair into larger homes that meet modern standards and lift families out of overcrowding, we have increased the number of council homes on the estate from 36 to 51 while building new community facilities, and residents have shaped the legacy of where they live by helping to choose three remarkable figures from our local community to name their new buildings after.”
Maitland Park Estate was built in the 1930s with successive waves of development until the 1980s. Set around a long park, it provides a tranquil and mature landscape at its heart. The new development frames the central park with a series of brick buildings that share common details and forms across the two sites.
At Grafton Terrace, the scheme repairs the Victorian street frontage with a combination of four to six storey flats and a standalone four-storey townhouse. A new community hall, with dedicated garden, commands the corner of the park. The new centre houses a large, sub-dividable function room, bookable meeting/teaching spaces, and a café at its heart to provide a hub for locals. New boundary treatments to back gardens, new play features, landscape enhancements and planting have greatly improved the estate’s parkland setting.
On the Aspen House site, a five-storey courtyard building is fronted with a six-storey mansion block to the park. The communal courtyard is landscaped with blossoming trees and areas to sit and play, for the benefit of all the residents of the estate.
Maitland Park is the first project for Camden to target the Homes Quality Mark (HQM) accreditation, ensuring each home achieves an excellent standard of performance while being made of healthy, low-carbon materials. The project is also the first Camden Borough scheme to use air-source heat pumps with MVHR (so fully electric), combining with an extensive PV array, a building fabric based on Passivhaus principles, and biodiverse roofs to achieve a truly low energy scheme.
Cullinan Studio was initially asked to look at the entire estate for infill opportunities. Through extensive consultation over several years, they forged a close relationship with the residents and the wider community to evolve the scheme into a viable project. Cullinan Studio developed the design up to RIBA Work Stage 3 and was subsequently retained by Camden Council as their Client Design Advisor. ECE Westworks, working for the main contractor Bouygues, took on and completed the design with both practices collaborating closely throughout.