教堂路丨CZWG Architects

Church Road

Location

Ashford, Surrey

Client

Inland Homes

Content

347 Apartments | 10 Houses | 619m² Commercial | 442m² Education

Status

Planning Granted

The buildings defining the pocket park and green space develop progressively into the site from simple, relatively urban buildings to a more complex, domestic scale architecture which reflects the language of the surrounding suburban housing.

Adam West, Director, CZWG Architects

Adam West

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Proposals for a new town square offer a focal point for the high street and the first of three new spaces for the town of Ashford. Four-storey buildings frame the square to create a delightful, sheltered, south facing space for the community to host outdoor events as well as the surrounding new cafés and purpose-built Brooklands College Hairdressing Academy housed in the ground floors. The two buildings which ‘bookend’ the square address the street with strong gable ends; the language of the pitched roofs providing an echo of Ashford’s pre-WWII urban fabric.

A generous tree-lined shared-surface boulevard leads pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles, via a feature ‘pocket park’ to a large green open space at the heart of the development.

Apartment buildings provide a backdrop to the boulevard and other public routes through the site. Towards the centre of the site, ‘The Courts’ apartment block defines a grand south facing entrance courtyard and a north facing raised belvedere garden for residents, overlooking the large open space Towards the northern perimeter, semi-detached houses and three-storey apartment buildings are arranged in pairs and are sympathetic in scale and grain to the neighbouring family houses. Feature dormer windows and ‘cat slide’ gables provide both attractive design features and an intermediary scale between the houses and apartment buildings.