48 PROJECT FOCUS - CHIPS
Glass-walled walkways cross the airy entrance lobby
The apartments themselves are imaginative and, in keeping with Alsop’s belief that ‘if you are going to have high-density housing you have to have some personalisation’, they are all different. Where possible every apartment has some full-height glazing. The Janex windows are the tilt-and-turn variety, which Norman adores and regrets you don’t see more in the UK. With generous glazing, thermal performance is kept up by the quality of the windows and by placing more insulation in the walls.
The flats are not large, and corridors in them are wider than average, to allow for wheelchair turning circles. Two things prevent them being cramped – the high floor to ceiling heights and the very open nature of the design. Alsop’s intention was to cluster services in pods containing the kitchen and bathroom. ‘We wanted to see them as one big open space with all functional requirements set within the pods,’ Norman explained. ‘All the services, switches and lighting should be set in these. We wanted nothing on the white end walls at all.’ In terms of servicing this makes sense, and one of the savings on the project is that all the risers are set above each other, but there have been occasional compromises.
Of course Norman would have liked all the pods to be prefabricated but although the bathrooms were brought complete to site by Offsite Solutions and craned in, the kitchens ended up being built in situ. But, he says, ‘the bathrooms are really nice. We have gone for the Vitra range of sanitaryware with dark ceramic tiles.’ And he also sees getting bright red splashbacks in the kitchens as a triumph over the usual bland developer spec.
Colour also comes in the form of bright folding doors. ‘Originally we went for some designer company, but in the end they were made using door blanks that were spray painted,’ said Norman. On a management contract that, by the end, involved, says Norman, ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul,’ this is the kind of compromise that the architect had to accept. But by going for bold gestures, and clinging to their importance rather than the finer detail, Alsop Architects has succeeded in achieving a building that is as original as it had hoped, even if not everything is exactly as it would have wished in an ideal world with a limitless budget.
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Alsop Architects drew up the masterplan for the area, as well as designing the first building
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