Barking Riverside London, UK

At 140 hectares, Barking Riverside is the UK’s largest residential regeneration scheme. Sheppard Robson was commissioned to prepare the designs for the 45 hectare Stage 1 area, delivering the first 1,400 of 10,800 homes in two character areas - Buzzards Mouth and Ripple Gardens.

The energy-efficient houses in Buzzards Mouth Court range from traditionally laid-out terraces to innovative, linear houses wrapping around an intimate garden.

Some houses have back gardens leading directly into courtyards; others open onto welcoming home-zone streets with pedestrian priority. Frontages have been designed to create natural surveillance and care has been taken to make streetscapes welcoming. Houses have sufficient openings between blocks to allow access from different sides, to encourage the local community to access courtyards and for children to visit different play areas.

Ripple Gardens feels more urban in character than Buzzard Mouth Court, although each resident still has private outdoor space - a balcony, a terrace or, for ground floor residents, a garden - and the surrounding parks and outdoor facilities are easily accessible. Homes are designed to the best possible standards, with generous provision of space and light. Where access is shared, emphasis has been placed on designing spaces to foster a sense of community. Conceived as a series of kinked, ribbon-like blocks, the buildings in Ripple Gardens have numerous variations in internal arrangement and layout. Within buildings there are homes of different sizes and types, ranging from single-aspect, one- bedroom homes to larger, two-bedroom, dual-aspect homes with internal stairs.

Ripple Gardens has been designed to cater for all members of the community, in different circumstances and at different stages in their lives. All properties have been built to surpass current standards, with a high proportion being adaptable for wheelchair use.

The project won a Housing Design Award for completed schemes in 2013 and was featured on the Mayor of London – London Assembly website as an exemplar project ‘creating a new neighbourhood'.

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