Stirling Prize 2024 shortlist: Chowdhury Walk, Hackney, London, by Al-Jawad Pike

Chowdhury Walk is part of a new housing programme by Hackney Council to develop small, underused sites, rather than redeveloping existing estates. Al-Jawad Pike was commissioned in late 2017, after winning a mini-competition and impressing with its work on Tori Ann Walk, five minutes’ walk away.

Eleven two-storey houses form a terrace along a newly created public thoroughfare for pedestrians and cyclists, with private patio gardens to the rear. With a mix of two- and three-bedroom houses and one fully accessible four-bedroom home, seven of the units are for social rent and four for private sale. All are constructed in cross-laminated timber, are highly insulated and have integrated solar panels. The site, formerly occupied by garages and ad hoc car parking, tapers towards the western end and is bounded by a Victorian terrace and post-war blocks.

Chowdhury Walk boasts crisp detailing and sophisticated subversions. Carved out entrance porches and a staggered plan minimise overlooking front and back. Houses sit on plinths of granite which jut out into deep planters in front of ground floor windows to increase privacy. Waterstruck red bricks lend an overall softness and warmth to the scheme. Perhaps most notable is the large ‘upside-down’ window on the blind wall facing Daubeney Street. This quirky flourish, inspired by windows common to Victorian end-of-terraces, identifies the scheme as much as the signage below it.

Can you outline the design process for this project?

Jessam Al-Jawad The initial concept came about quite quickly and it is interesting how much the final scheme stayed true to those first ideas. We had been working for Hackney Council on Tori Ann Walk around the corner, which had two 3-bed-mews houses, the plans for which we sort of transplanted to this site, set side by side in a terrace but rotated to face the main entrance to the site from Daubeney Road.

At competition stage we gave the council two options: detached houses separated by gardens or a denser version where they were stacked together, which they chose. Following those initial proposals the design process was one of iteration and refinement to achieve the best tenure mix and types of units on the site. Because the site was very constrained a lot of work went into ensuring space standards were achieved while ensuring the combined housing volume sat comfortably on it.

What were the main architectural priorities?

As with Tori Ann Walk, one of the driving priorities was to create a new pedestrian route alongside the housing, to give something, in the form of public realm, to the community. In its existing state, as you approached the site there was a community garden near the entrance gates; further in it was very overgrown with vegetation on the southern side. It had a very bucolic atmosphere and that was something we wanted to bring into the new project.

We also wanted it to address the main frontage, where Daubeney Road curves, which is where the idea of tilting the houses and twisting the massing came from. That twisting also led to the cut-outs for the entrance doors, and the monopitch roofs which added to the silhouette.

Materially, as we’d had at Tori Ann Walk we had this idea of giving the buildings a base that connected them to the ground, in this case it was granite block and granite cobbles.

How did the budget influence the design?

It’s council led social housing so building to a budget is extremely important. There isn’t much room for frills, and most design decisions need to be justified as being good value for money. Having come up doing house extensions and retail interiors, we’re used to pretty strict budgets and quite often no QS. So we do a lot of cost benchmarking analysis internally, and are mindful of cost in the design process.

Very early in the process we looked at granite, and were asking suppliers, ‘How much does this cost relative to brick?’. We found it was almost comparable, or even cheaper in some respects. It was important to assure the client that it was possible and we weren’t focusing purely on design. There’s a duty of care when you’re doing social housing to provide the best housing for prospective residents, and for the council to maintain.

What else had a significant influence?

A lot of the ideas came from travelling. Madrid has cobbles and granite; there’s red brick and grey mortar in Belgium. So there’s a bit of a European feel to the project, but it also feels right in London.

Adopting a sustainable approach was also a big driver, both we and Hackney were keen to use cross-laminated timber (CLT), so we had to do quite a lot of research into it and other schemes that had used it, to justify its inclusion.

How was the design developed?

A big portion of all the brickwork, bonding and the relationship between the houses was worked out in 2D and 3D modelling. We built physical models early on for the massing, and more scaled up versions during the design process.

Once we had established the plan for the houses the real challenge was ensuring that they fitted comfortably in the site. There’s no ‘fat’ anywhere.

The other important element in the design development was integrating the CLT and ensuring that this was all accurately modelled and worked out before going to tender. As the project was tendered traditionally with a full Bill of Quantities, we could control all the details, but this also meant everything had to be completely resolved quite early in the process.

Who were your most important collaborators?

Landscape architect Periscope, which we worked with on Tori Ann Walk, were pretty fundamental to the whole design process. The idea of the pedestrianised walkway, to take the overgrown and slightly wild condition of the existing site and connect it into the new proposal, very much came from them. Also to have the granite cobbles slowly fade away and disintegrate into the greenery. There’s something unique to the UK about greenery growing into manmade areas.

We’ve worked with structural engineer Momentum on a number of projects and it’s a successful collaboration. They helped us understand and develop the cross-laminated timber structure.

Another aspect that we carried through from Tori Ann Walk was the importance of signage and house numbering. We wanted something that felt permanent and integrated rather than stuck on, and developed an approach with graphic design studio Villalba Studio. It designed the font early on and it became quite an integral part of the project.

What was the most challenging aspect?

Managing our expectations throughout the build process. We came to the project with a bespoke mentality and getting that buy-in was a challenge. Everyone says, when you’re working on housing, there are certain battles to fight and you’ll have to cede ground on other things. We went through that process as a practice for probably the first time.

When you do small projects there’s the possibility for negotiation. There’s a bit of give and take, but you can bring people round to the concept. But working with larger sums and a contractor that builds a lot of housing, and is good at it, you have to accept a certain political framework and management process.

However, the client body was good at mediating between our expectations, the contractor’s demands and their opportunity to do things slightly differently. There were quite a lot of those conversations during construction.

Which part of the project has been most successful?

Definitely the public gesture of the pedestrianised street – the blend of the house frontages across that path into the wilder planting and the northern boundary wall with bike stores. We’re proud of the way that it’s turned out. Standing there, there’s the silhouette of the houses, the small gesture of twisting them and the tapering. It works well and feels like a mini community.

We were very grateful to Hackney for giving us the opportunity because they did take a bit of a punt – we’d only had the office for a year and a bit. It’s projected us forwards and made us grow up in a way that we probably needed to.

See all six projects shortlisted for the 2024 RIBA Stirling Prize

Key data:
Contract value Confidential
GIA 1061m²

The 2024 Stirling Prize is sponsored by Autodesk