Social homes impress with subtle variation and practical design touches

Once again, change is afoot in London’s White City. The area was home to the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition – a flurry of whitewashed palaces, ornaments and artificial lakes – and more recently to the BBC Television Centre, a purpose-built studio complex. 

Today, it is in the midst of an AHMM masterplan to transform a 5.7-hectare site into housing, offices, leisure spaces and new television studios. Phase 1 completed in 2018 and Phase 2, bar one plot, is due to complete in 2027.

At its southern end, 1 and 2 MacFarlane Place, designed by Maccreanor Lavington for Peabody, delivers the scheme’s 142 affordable homes, all with heat-regulating external shutters. The scheme mediates the transition between the red-brick Victorian vernacular of Shepherd’s Bush and flashier new developments beyond.

The triangular site tapers to the north and is closely bounded by a railway viaduct, Victorian terrace and A-road. Despite also facing a bus station and Westfield shopping centre, the scheme is arranged in such a way that it doesn’t feel penned in or overshadowed by the surrounding infrastructure.

Subtly different 'siblings' that echo Victorian mansion blocks

‘They’re siblings, not twins,’ project architect Owen Jowett says, as we wind our way around and between the blocks. Differences include metalwork colour, typical window shape and number of facades. 

There’s something reassuring about the variations, even if you don’t always actively notice them. They blend the new build and its all-at-once-ness into the accumulated urban context.

Block 1 has 79 homes – 71 for London Affordable Rent and eight for London Living Rent – arranged in a loose U-shape around a raised courtyard garden. The eight-storey road-facing facade steps down to six storeys on one side and stacked maisonettes on the other, with the courtyard opening up to the railway and frequent flashes of red-and-white tube trains.

Block 2 is taller but narrower and has 63 homes, 26 for London Living Rent and 37 shared ownership, with a communal corner roof terrace. Commercial space (yet to be filled), bike stores and disabled car parking occupy the ground floors. Both entrances face a new paved road, which slices through the site and will eventually connect to the rest of the masterplan and Hammersmith Park through the railway arches.

Sturdy frontages, characterful detailing, red brick and white banding draw on London’s Victorian mansion blocks. ‘It’s the only time that London really did a good, aspirational apartment building,’ reflects Jowett. Granted, the typology has become well-cited by projects over the last decade. But the influence would have been relatively novel when the scheme was first designed and, crucially, MacFarlane Place offers far more.

The scheme operates on multiple scales. From afar, the buildings are blocky and monochrome enough to be seen – and to feel permanent. They echo the nearby Dimco Buildings, a pair of large brick sheds built as part of an electricity generating station in 1898. Yet the closer you get, more detail and difference emerges.

Pattern and texture ripple out from each window, using three colours of brick and varied compositions. On some facades, windows are framed by mid-red bricks and then framed again by a darker burgundy trim. On others, windows are topped by a more decorative strip of alternating lighter horizontal and projecting vertical bricks, all contained within a thicker burgundy outline. These varied details are gridded by regular pillars and white bands, running the length and width of the buildings, into a nuanced brick-and-window tartan. The facades read as a unified scheme, yet still surprise and delight with irregularity.

Heat-regulating roller shutters

External roller shutters, in themselves, are not a new innovation. They are widely popular across Europe and a tried and tested sun-shading device. In the UK, however, they have barely made an appearance. 

MacFarlane Place has more than 500 and is thought to be the largest UK residential installation to date. The metal shutters roll up into a metal box above the windows and are electrically operated from inside each flat. They prevent overheating during the day, eliminating the need for air conditioning and opening windows at high-traffic, high-noise times.

Prisca Thielmann, Maccreanor Lavington’s associate director, grew up using shutters in Germany and explains how intuitive the process is. ‘It’s what we always used to do: shut your windows in the morning, don’t let the hot air come in, come back home in the evening and it’s nice and cool inside,’ she says. ‘And when it does cool down outside, open the windows. That’s the system, and you don’t forget it.’ 

Peabody embraced the shutters, which will keep energy use lower and costs more affordable for tenants and residents. They will also enable users to regulate their own temperature, depending on personal preferences and the orientation of their home. Walking around the blocks, shutters are lowered to different increments and it’s clear that they are already well used.

All the London Affordable Rent and London Living Rent homes are occupied and few shared ownership units remain. New tenants are moving in as we enter Block 2: suitcases and furniture lean up against the beautifully tiled lobby, doors are wedged ajar in corridors, and we’re even welcomed inside by one tenant. We’re privy to new beginnings, and there’s a tangible sense of excitement.

Amid the paucity of new high-quality affordable housing, Peabody and Maccreanor Lavington have delivered homes that are user-conscious, innovative and feel generous. While Phase 2 is still ongoing, it’s difficult to fully know exactly how the scheme will operate within the new Television Centre masterplan. Behind MacFarlane Place, the lift shaft of AHMM’s new 23-storey residential tower stands bare, mid-construction, and the viaduct arches are boarded up. 

However, Maccreanor Lavington has certainly created a visually ambitious, nuanced project that attends to both the immediate street context and scale of nearby infrastructure. The design draws on the London mansion block, without mimicking it, and weaves in a variety of references and practical solutions to create something new.

In a gracious gesture to White City old and new, it rewards those who look carefully but doesn’t trouble those who don’t. MacFarlane Place can be walked past or savoured.

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Key data:

GIA 13,921m²
NSA (net saleable area) 11,191m²
Whole-life carbon 799KgCO_₂eq/m² (A-C excl B6-7)