Ingress Park

Information

Location: Greenhithe, Kent, DA9 9XJ

Built: 2001

Designer: Crest Nicholson (developer) / Gardner Stewart Architects (architect) with Tibbalds TM2 (urban designers)

Type: urban

Density: 95 homes per hectare

Parking ratio: 160%

Design quality brought housebuyers to a Thames Gateway site next to the Dartford Crossing. Some areas dependent on allocated spaces have faced parking issues, but treatments are diverse, including Kentish stable doors for garaging, and amenity over garages.

The scheme is built around generous amounts of soft landscaping, presenting the development as a sequence of separate spaces. So there are houses

set around a crescent shaped green with a grass surface laid to the natural grade; and there are tree lined boulevards with gravelled edges adjoining granite kerbs and wide grass verges. Brick arched gatehouse buildings give access to streets and pavements finished with precast setts. A proportion of the 950 homes of Ingress Park are located in a five-storey apartment block, the subjective scale of which sits uncomfortably with adjacent buildings.

The scheme was one of the first to apply reduced parking ratios to a major new housing development: in areas where spaces are mostly allocated on plot, notably in integral garages, there are obvious problems with capacity as the garage is ignored and the car parked in front of properties with two wheels on the pavement.

But other treatments are diverse and often well executed. Simple layby parking is provided to the edges of the green; the apartment block sits over a rusticated brick undercroft vented at high level through grillage in medievally deep openings. The close-style housing has hardstandings finished in blacktop (perhaps also usable as visitor bays), and slate roofed garages in pairs for residents; the garages are accessed from streets paved in multi-coloured squares.

The red multi-stock brick townhouses use integral garages with arched openings at street level; in front of these are parking bays, which will offer some unallocated capacity for visitors, marked on blacktop hardstanding adjoining the square paviors. Raised dimpled areas are located near some buildings in an attempt to deter on street parking immediately next to windows and entrance doors.

The actual density of the scheme varies between 40 and 150 homes to the hectare, and uses a variety of building forms including 2, 2.5 , 3 and 3.5 storey terraces; as well as a 4.5 storey apartment block with basement. The development features a mix of 1 and 2 bed flats, as well as 3 and 4 bed townhouses.