Greenwich Millennium Village

Information

Location: Greenwich, London, SE10 0QQ

Built: 2003

Designer: Developers Countryside Properties, Taylor Woodrow and English Partnerships (developers) / (A) Proctor and Matthews (architect) and (B) Erskine Tovatt and EPR (architects)

Type: city centre

Density: 100 homes per hectare

Parking ratio: 71%

A high-density development where initial perimeter blocks put most parking in either a landscaped underground or a podium car park. Comparisons between the two models point to how enveloping parking decks on all sides with real streets enhances any design.

GMV on the Greenwich Peninsula is a sustainable community of up to 2950 planned homes, 800 of which are built. This site was remediated by English Partnerships which also ensured that infrastructure such as a Combined Heat and Power plant, schools, parks, shops, health care facilities and a wetlands ecology centre were provided early on.

There are a variety of residential perimeter blocks including the 199 home Maurer Court which envelops a 0.28 hectare richly planted courtyard. This sits on a two-storey podium car park. From the exterior of the block it is possible to see into the podium only where it is wrapped in wooden slats. Mostly it is concealed behind a facade of banded brickwork at lower level and balconies and render above. The brickwork faces maisonettes at lower level with doors onto the street helping to keep it active.

The car park is well proportioned and naturally lit through the slats and extends to bike storage and a car washing bay. The podium is richly planted, accessed directly from small gardens to homes at podium level or through shared accesses for apartments on other floors. The underground is supported by on street parallel parking on a highway running up to the riverside, from which there is an access to the car park.

Besides this, there is little on-street parking in the early phases. Secondary roads running between perimeter blocks are mostly shared surfaces in paviors. The other block reviewed here has a conventionally dimensioned street, but its use is restricted. Parking to the livework units which form one side of this street is confined to a multi-storey. This is neatly screened by the live-work units on one side and by a grass bank on the other, and by cedar slats to the other ends. There is also soft landscaping over and gardens to the rear of the upper storeys which again soften the impact of the concrete frame. However, many residents who park there have an indirect route back to their homes.

The development has two key areas, each of which features a different strategy with regard to parking provision.

Area A comprises ground floor commercial units and duplexes at 71 homes to the hectare, in 2.5 and 3-4 storey blocks - whilst Area B is much denser and comprises maisonettes and apartments at 292 homes to the hectare.

Parking ratios are at 100% throughout.