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SOCIAL HOUSING PROJECT REPORT


Curves in the capital F


An aff ordable housing block inspired by Hercule Poirot has distinctive curving brickwork that brings a touch of class to a grey and constrained urban site in London’s East End. Stephen Cousins reports on a challenging project.


ans of the Agatha Christie TV adaptation Poirot will be familiar with the many British modernist and Art Deco buildings that acted as backdrop to the Belgian detective’s murder investigations in well-to-do neighbourhoods.


One of the most notable Grade II-listed Florin Court in Charterhouse Square, Clerkenwell, central London served as the location for ercule oirots fl at ‘Whitehaven Mansions.’


The mansion block’s elegant curved brick facade, ornate metalwork, and cleanly-detailed windows perfectly capture the essence of 1930s glamour, and provided the unlikely inspiration for a new affordable housing project on a much less well-appointed former industrial site in a congested part of the capital. Bulrush Court is the second phase of the major 956-home Leaside Lock residential redevelopment by The Guinness Partnership in Bromley-by-Bow. The 144-home scheme was designed by


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Pitman Tozer Architects to provide a mix of one, two and three-bedroom affordable and social-rent units and 213 m2


of


commercial space in a mid-rise mansion block positioned at the centre of a new masterplan for the area. U-shaped in plan, the building encloses a communal landscaped courtyard and was conceived as a “new city bloc, defi ning new streets, squares and courtyards.” The intention was to create a human-scale environment in an urban high-density area intersected by numerous transport arteries. Christie’s moustachioed detective would no doubt doff his hat to the building’s contemporary take on modernism, characterised by clean horizontal lines, a precise curving brick facade and brick-clad cantilevered balconies that project like diving boards into the central courtyard.


The project encountered bumps of a less satisfying kind during design and delivery, including a post-planning


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