Bayside housing in Worthing by Allies and Morrison raises the design bar for developer-led housing in seaside locations with rippling balconies and a sensitive response to existing buildings
RIBA South East Regional Award 2023
Bayside, Worthing
Allies and Morrison for Roffey Homes
Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 22,766m2
Bayside in Worthing provides 141 homes, a restaurant, and commercial units immediately adjacent to Worthing’s esplanade and beach. The development, for local client/developer Roffey Homes, is located at a key point along the seafront where the town centre gives way to residential properties.
The scheme has been carefully and skilfully moulded to mediate its massing between the adjacent Splashpoint Leisure Centre to the west, the historic Brighton Road to the north, and a handsome terrace of private properties to the east.
Allies and Morrison has responded generously and considerately to the immediate context. The adjacent New Parade road has been extended through the site to form a key organisational principal that dictates the position of the tower and the courtyard block.
The courtyard block in particular works hard to mediate the various public and private conditions adjacent to the site. Its primary gesture is to open up to the sea, providing the maximum number of homes with a sea view and offering a sheltered private garden for residents that is particularly well executed as an extension of the beach.
To the west, the courtyard block pulls away from the site boundary, responding to the adjacent leisure centre and forming a more appropriately scaled urban space that addresses the entrance to the pool. Along the northern boundary, Brighton Road, the ground floor is activated by commercial units and the southeast corner of the site is given to the public realm, with a standalone restaurant providing focus.
The 15-storey tower elegantly rises adjacent to the esplanade and is animated by a gently rippling stack of balconies. These generous external living spaces have been handled with great care by the architect, their form alternating as they rise up and providing both openness and shelter depending on the projection of the balcony above. Pride in craft and care in delivery is also evident from the developer/client: the quality of the cast-in-situ concrete and of the workmanship as a whole is excellent.
The success of Bayside is evident in further schemes being collaborated on by the architect and client. It also must be congratulated for raising the bar for design in developer-led housing found in seaside locations such as Worthing.
Client: Roffey Homes
Contractor: Roffey Homes
Structural engineer: Manhire Associates
Environmental / M&E engineer: Building Services Design
Planning: ECE Planning
Landscape architect: Lizard Landscape Design and Ecology
See the rest of the RIBA South East winners here. And all the RIBA Regional Awards here.
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RIBA Regional Awards 2023 sponsored by Gaggenau, EH Smith and Autodesk