Elmington Village

Information

Location: Peckham, London, SE5 7JA

Built: 2004

Designer: London Borough of Southwark Peckham Partnership (developer) / BPTW Partnership with Pollard Thomas Edwards (architects)

Type: urban

Density: 88 homes per hectare

Parking ratio: 85%

Land receipt windfalls led to one of the larger council developments since the 1980s. The scheme has controlled unallocated on street parking and two variants of front courts, but is most successful when these are to the front of the more urban building lines.

The development is housing for rent built in three phases, with 50 flats and 50 houses completed in the first phase of a rolling programme linked to the Peckham Partnership. It is one of the larger schemes in recent years procured by a council and generous standards extend to the quality of landscaping and surfacing materials throughout the public realm and parking areas.

The car parking does not allocate residents’ specific spaces, but rather uses an informal mixture of solutions in adjacent streets and on the estate itself. There is an agreement that, following monitoring of the parking provided, dedicated residents’ spaces will be allocated if conflicts arise. There are layby-style parking spaces immediately outside townhouses, front parking courts obscured from dwellings by full height brick walls, and side by side bays adjoining pavements. There is also service-road-style parking, where residents may park on both sides of a wide cul-de-sac adjacent to the main road where the effect of the design is similar to a front court.

Vehicular routes through the development and parking areas are both finished in the same herringbone pattern concrete block. There is generally no defined zone for pedestrians; in some cases adjacent to housing for the disabled, vehicles are only separated from buildings by stainless steel bollards.

The scheme provides a mixture of 1 and 2 bedroom flats, 2, 3, 4, and 5 bedroom houses, distributed across a variety of building forms, comprising 2, 3, 4, and 5 storey terraced blocks.