PROJECT REPORT: SOCIAL & AFFORDABLE HOUSING
project’s sustainability credentials. Further ‘green’ features include air source heat pumps, thick windows and insulation, and a district heating scheme.
Playing with bricks
For the key material for cladding the project, initial conversations at Mecanoo saw ideas bandied around on a variation to London stock brick. But, following a discussion between Dick Van Gameren and practice partner Francine Houben, the project team went for a lighter colour to better fit the red brick vernacular of the nearby 1930s and 1990s housing. The Scala red facing brick is laid in both stretcher bond and a ‘specialist bond,’ with dark mortar and recessed joints. However, in contrast to many surrounding buildings, there is more colour variation within the brick itself, and therefore nuance to the new building’s exteriors, says Van Gameren. The most distinctive visual feature of the facades is the vertical brick fins, one brick wide but in groups of differing height, which cowls the entire length of the building. Changing as the shadows they create lengthen, the fins play against the horizontal rhythm of the overall volume and also bring down the scale further. “The contrast is nice, but also starting at different levels enhances the idea of the meandering change in shape, height and position,” says Van Gameren. In addition, nearer ground level the architects have here and there introduced a playful spottiness to the facades, with a sprinkling of darker bricks, and a ‘hit and miss’ section framing the gate connecting the public spaces that omits bricks at regular intervals to create a lattice effect. He says that the slightly experimental approach (although the architects have gone further on many Dutch projects for example, inspired by the Amsterdam School), represented a “big decision” to be made with the builder. Van Gameran says that they were unable to guarantee the facades, concerned about performance in freezing weather, but as he protests, “It’s never happened before, so why should it happen now?”
Further research and demonstration of reference projects which had stood for many years in the Netherlands persuaded the builder however. While the contractor was challenged by the brick artistry required, the architects were taken aback by the decision to use a steel frame on the project “which I’ve never seen on a project like this in the Netherlands,” says Van
ADF FEBRUARY 2021
Gameren. There, an in situ concrete structure would be poured, with services embedded into load-bearing internal walls, requiring very early decision making. However, in the UK, he says Mecanoo have “had to get used to” the fact that layers of material would be fixed to a frame of either steel or concrete.
Balconies
Residents’ private external space is provided by sizeable balconies, which are present in most of the apartments and townhouses (some of the latter also having roof terraces which work as loggias). Van Gameren says the balconies are very important for relating the apartments to the world outside and the courtyards within the scheme, helping create a community feel. “In low rise architecture I think it can work well, and economically, it’s simpler to deliver the space with balconies than with internal loggia,” he says. With the balconies facing into the courtyards as well as out to the streets, there is an opportunity for them to help foster communication and appreciation between residents, hopefully enhancing the cohesion already likely to be possible within what is a relatively small- scale scheme.
Conclusion Taking its cues from the existing red-brick architecture of Manchester, this scheme however moves away from both the historic, yet problematic ranks of the city’s past terraced housing, and the austere, isolated towers and monoliths of 20th century social architecture, to provide something more readable and friendly. Designed with care by an influential practice, it has potential to inspire designers of further affordable schemes, by providing a pragmatic halfway point that balances density with outdoor space, form and safety in a refreshing, even elegant way. It is far from showy, and yet shows the way to housing which embraces its community without trying to slavishly emulate the past, and celebrates its urban nature in so doing.
The major housing schemes of the mid- 20th century, however well-intentioned, produced some of the most inhuman and anonymous architecture we have yet seen, much of which is reviled, but some celebrated albeit on its own terms. The Aaben is a conscious move towards something which smacks far less of architectural ego, and is also somehow equally powerful for that.
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PROJECT FACTFILE
Client: One Manchester Architect: Mecanoo Project management: R-gen Structural engineer: Renaissance M&E engineer: Max Fordham Brick manufacturer: Vandersanden Group
Acoustics advisor: Max Fordham Cost consultant: Simon Fenton Partnership
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