Camden Town Townhouses

AMPTHILL ESTATE LONDON ENGLAND Spring 2018

I was involved was the design of a townhouse type that would be used to populate the larger scale urban site of the Ampthill Estate neighborhood surrounding Euston Station in London England. This project was in collaboration with John Simpson and Associates and Architecture firm based in London; and is part of a larger proposal for the redevelopment of Euston Station and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Development Drawings

I, along with the first year graduate design studio at the university of Notre Dame were tasked with coming up with an urban plan for the Ampthill Estate are. The main goal of this plan was to create an urban fabric that could integrate well to the existing one; a plan that can be versatile in terms of its occupants and one that can be adaptable as the needs of the residents change within the next several decades. The plan we came up with was a mix-use plan that carefully weaves residential, civic and commercial establishments and creates a vibrant community. Afterwards we were each assigned a block to further develop.

The townhouse type I wished to present was one that takes into consideration the numerous possible range of individuals that will occupy the neighborhood. I wanted to create hierarchy without it being outwardly obvious. The town house type I present is designed with five stories including a basement (sunken garden) and an attic level. Within the five floors there are different schemes of unites.

The first floor (street level) plus the basement (garden level) are designed as a single three-bedroom unit. This unit includes access to a back carriage house which includes a garage and a smaller studio flat below. The rest of the floors are comprised of two-bedroom units on each level with the possibility of the attic floor being used as extra square footage for the top floor. I was also able to add an additional unit above the garage that is used as a separate flat which has its own access form the mews (ally). I impressed with the variety of unities that we were able to develop at the end. .

Once the townhouse type was compete we had to use it to populate the block we were assigned to develop. The street elevation shows how I was able to create variations of the same type and create an urban street that is well balanced. I also wished to add a variety of commercial spaces/ shop-fronts on the street levels of some of the townhouses while still maintaining the livable units above. This allows for a vibrant community that embodies an efficient use of urban space. Since I had a fairly important block that turns a corner, I wanted to use that building as a book-end and created a mix-use building with a different typology to indicate that the purpose was also different. The mix-use building is not significantly different for the rest of the buildings on the block. I opted to use the same style in order to create a streets-cape that is cohesive.