Sheltered Housing, High Cross Road,
Tottenham Hale, London

This project is situated near a busy road system in Tottenham Hale, north London, and is intended to provide terrace housing and a care hostel for local authority referrals under the mental health community care programme. The Architect’s response to the brief has been to create a six metre high earth wall around two sides of the site, screening the housing from the road system. The wall or bund is created by a reinforced earth system, using recycled demolition material from the site’s original buildings. The rubble fill is then covered with top soil and planted. Its steep outer face and blockwork inner wall form a six metre barrier wall that is only three metres thick.

The housing structures are terraces of load bearing dense masonry with timber floors, clad in an exavternally insulted acrylic render system. The roof structures are built using a pre-fabricated timber and foam insulated composite panel system; a natural development from the stressed skin system used on a number of our previous projects. The same structural system has been employed on the four storey hostel block, where the bund wall has been integrated into the building’s outer wall using reinforced concrete.

Architect Walter Menteth Architects
Awards Civic Trust Award 2004, RIBA Housing Project Award 2001