PROJECT REPORT: RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS 31
involved in the project, starting in 2015 when the Borough of Barking and Dagenham announced that Levitt Bernstein had been appointed for Phase 1 of the Gascoigne East development, whose design would replace towers with six lower blocks and a new street plan. White Artitekter’s Phase 2 comprises Scandinavian-style family apartments and smaller homes with communal gardens, and the HTA and Pitman Tozer-designed (and currently ongoing) Phases 3A and 3B contain a mix of mid-rise mansion blocks, traditional terraced homes and mews houses. White Arkitekter was appointed to
design West Phase 1 by BeFirst (from RIBA Stage 1). When Wates Residential came on board at Stage 2, the practice was novated to the contractor, and continued through to planning.
The practice subsequently also won the competition to design West Phase 2 (from RIBA Stages 1-3 and through planning), and the two phases would finally total 587 units. As Linda Thiel, project director at White Arkitekter tells ADF, the challenge of tackling this extremely demanding, complex project was mitigated by the practice having weekly client meetings and a “very relaxed, open and candid relationship” with BeFirst’s design team and its head of design, Jacob Willson.
ADF MARCH 2023
Design development Linda Thiel says that White applied its key principles, successfully demonstrated in projects across Scandinavia, combining a simplicity of form with “high quality in terms of balconies, windows and facade detailing. Simple, more streamlined detailing.” As she says, this approach frees them up to “spend more on the public realm, because that is what stitches a community together – that’s part of our core ethos of landscape-led urban design.” The scheme developed for (West) Phases 1 and 2 would be delivered in a very short timeframe. As well as a straightforward approach to the detailing, another factor helping address this challenge was a conscious methodology to have as much structural repetition as possible, including simple stacking, although this was offset by the variety of forms and facades created. In West Phase 1 a certain degree of offsite construction was implemented such as pod bathrooms and utility cupboards, and balconies. (In West Phase 2 this was taken even further to include MMC-produced precast facades.) Thiel believes that such MMC approaches could be expanded in future similar schemes.
The scheme is designed as a car free development with limited parking, to enable a “more pedestrian friendly public realm.” This meant the architects did not
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LANDSCAPE-LED URBAN PLANS The completed West Phase 1 (facing page) provides 201 homes on a tight 0.9 hectare site, in a range of volumes from three to 11 storeys. West Phase 2 (above, currently onsite) includes five towers Drawings © White Arkitekter
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