Jury feedback summary
The Two-up Two-Down proposes an alternative design to the traditional London terrace house. It aims to maintain the scale and character of the existing terrace house - in this case study, the Alexandra Road Estate - while maximizing green space and introducing additional public programs into the complex. The proposal is a roadmap for mixing single-family, multi-family, and co-living units, above a common ground-floor plinth infused with commercial space. The project’s imagery is strong in communicating an interesting type of low-scale, and high-density structure that departs from the often banal forms of social housing we have seen constructed in recent decades.
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Revival of the Reservoirs focuses on the approximately 300 subterranean water storage facilities built during Victorian-era London. Some of these structures are still in use today, some lie empty and vacant, yet all are inaccessible. The designer proposes to partially excavate these brick-formed, barrel-vaulted structures, and partially construct above them - to offer a dynamic new form of low-scale community with ample outdoor common space on two levels. Renovating the extant reservoirs would certainly face its fair share of economic and political challenges, but it is an exemplary idea that has the potential to define a new type of urban neighborhood unique to London, by reworking existing public infrastructure.