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Location: North Shields, Tyne & Wear, North Shields NE30 1JZ
Built: 2001
Designer: Persimmon Homes (developers) with JDDK (architects) / Gordon Durham & Co (developers) with Napper (architects)
Type: urban
Density: 60 homes per hectare
Parking ratio: 200%
Minutes from Meadowell, an estate synonymous in the 1990s with car crime, Dockwray Square had to offer safe parking. One treatment supplements on plot parking with on street in a housing square to echo the area's Georgian landmark Northumberland Square.
Dockwray Square stands on cliff tops overlooking the Tyne. The scheme was developed in different competition phases, although there is a consistent use of facing brick used with reconstituted stone dressings.
The square surrounds a landscaped garden, part of a formal composition of townhouses, mostly 3 full storeys and unallocated on street parking outside residents’ homes. Behind this building line is Beacon Street, a secondary road where two storey terraces are punctuated by accesses into small rear mews courts serving directly dwellings on both roads. There are four of these, approached from an arched opening in the terrace, and contain two garages integral to the units adjacent, and a further six detached garages used by residents living in the square or on Beacon Street, each accessed directly.
There are also two parking spaces available in front of the integral garages. The other element of Dockwray Square looked at here was procured under a separate design competition. Built to a smaller scale unequally divided between a minority of semi-detached villas, and a larger number of terraced 2 storey houses, or paired small houses arranged in an unusual 3 zone deep configuration within the urban block. The paired houses in the 3 zone configuration offer garages to units in the first two zones, but omit this option to the third house; these are approached from slip roads perforating the basic block. Finally, there are conventional garages arranged in groups of six, situated at either end of streets with 2 storey terraced housing.
This unusual layout feels suburban but is very high density for houses, with some 24 dwellings in about 0.3 hectare. However, the houses in the middle strip of the 3 zone configuration have no recognisable frontage or connection to the street and are not well surveilled.
The density of development actually varies between 45 and 75 homes to the hectare, and consists predominantly of 3 and 4 bed houses arranged as a mix of terraced 2 and 3 storey homes, two-storey villas and semis.
The eastern side of Dockwray Square’s housing square which also has mews courts within the block.
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Garages are supplemented with uncontrolled on street parking.
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Plan of a block.
Proceed with Caution! - Courts tightly dimensioned; may cause problems if a number of residents require simultaneous access.
Green Light! - Excellent examples showing combination of a well-designed mews court supplemented with on-street provision. Parking courts ingeniously planned; which work as informal social space for neighbours. The presence of cars is a positive quality; complementary to traditional benefits of square design. Good visual surveillance of residents' vehicles.
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Lanes between housing grid cut across the whole urban block.
Red Light! - Access roads are inactive, and garden sizes are restricted b the car.
Proceed with Caution! - Only two in three houses has a garage and access to garages is tight. Very high density achieved for houses with garages but access is wasteful of space and short streets and road-like.
Green Light! - Conveniently close to dwellings.
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Plan of a block
Red Light! - Access roads are inactive, and garden sizes are restricted b the car.
Proceed with Caution! - Only two in three houses has a garage and access to garages is tight. Very high density achieved for houses with garages but access is wasteful of space and short streets and road-like.
Green Light! - Conveniently close to dwellings.
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Formal iron railings define private space but don’t spoil surveillance.
Proceed with Caution! - Courts tightly dimensioned; may cause problems if a number of residents require simultaneous access.
Green Light! - Excellent examples showing combination of a well-designed mews court supplemented with on-street provision. Parking courts ingeniously planned; which work as informal social space for neighbours. The presence of cars is a positive quality; complementary to traditional benefits of square design. Good visual surveillance of residents' vehicles.
Be the first to add a comment!
Integral garages to dwellings on Beacon Street.
Proceed with Caution! - Courts tightly dimensioned; may cause problems if a number of residents require simultaneous access.
Green Light! - Excellent examples showing combination of a well-designed mews court supplemented with on-street provision. Parking courts ingeniously planned; which work as informal social space for neighbours. The presence of cars is a positive quality; complementary to traditional benefits of square design. Good visual surveillance of residents' vehicles.
Be the first to add a comment!
Garages access directly to townhouses on square.
Proceed with Caution! - Courts tightly dimensioned; may cause problems if a number of residents require simultaneous access.
Green Light! - Excellent examples showing combination of a well-designed mews court supplemented with on-street provision. Parking courts ingeniously planned; which work as informal social space for neighbours. The presence of cars is a positive quality; complementary to traditional benefits of square design. Good visual surveillance of residents' vehicles.
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Facade around access to mews court.
Proceed with Caution! - Courts tightly dimensioned; may cause problems if a number of residents require simultaneous access.
Green Light! - Excellent examples showing combination of a well-designed mews court supplemented with on-street provision. Parking courts ingeniously planned; which work as informal social space for neighbours. The presence of cars is a positive quality; complementary to traditional benefits of square design. Good visual surveillance of residents' vehicles.
Be the first to add a comment!
Central row also has hard-standing bay to front.
Red Light! - Access roads are inactive, and garden sizes are restricted b the car.
Proceed with Caution! - Only two in three houses has a garage and access to garages is tight. Very high density achieved for houses with garages but access is wasteful of space and short streets and road-like.
Green Light! - Conveniently close to dwellings.
Be the first to add a comment!
Gables have windows onto lanes between houses.
Red Light! - Access roads are inactive, and garden sizes are restricted b the car.
Proceed with Caution! - Only two in three houses has a garage and access to garages is tight. Very high density achieved for houses with garages but access is wasteful of space and short streets and road-like.
Green Light! - Conveniently close to dwellings.
Be the first to add a comment!
Space submitted by Sam Brown
9 October 2013