London-based practice Henley Halebrown's affordable housing complex has won the 2022 Neave Brown Award for Housing, presented by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

The project, named Hackney New Primary School and 333 Kingsland Road, has been named as the winner of the Neave Brown Award for Housing, given to honour social housing pioneer, the late Neave Brown, who passed away in 2018.

The award, initiated by the RIBA in 2019, recognises the UK’s best new affordable housing. 

Image © Nick Kane, courtesy of RIBA

The project, located on London’s Kingsland Road, was designed as a hybrid scheme, combining a community-led school with 68 apartments on a compact urban site. 

Henley Halebrown's dense housing project consists of 68 rented homes, in which half of them are offered below market rates. 

While the housing frees up a maximum footprint for the school, the scheme creates "a substantial baffle from noise and emissions from the neighbouring busy road."

Image © Nick Kane, courtesy of RIBA

"A highly-intelligent response to providing critical social infrastructure"

"This is a highly-intelligent response to providing critical social infrastructure – a thoughtful and generous set of spaces for residents and the local community to live, learn and play in," said RIBA President Simon Allford.

"The educational and residential elements are elegantly engaged in a single composition - an architectural essay in designing an important city corner that engages with the public realm," Allford added.

To create bright and spacious apartment units, the studio carefully paid attention to orientation, natural ventilation and natural light. On each of the main floors, 8 homes are grouped around a central octagonal stair. 

The studio conceived windows as large as possible to optimise views across the city, and all residents have an access to a communal roof terrace. 

On the ground level, the studio created a welcoming colonnade that "generously extends the pavement and provides access to the new commercial units." This also "completes an impressive, multi-faceted urban complex."

The housing complex is distinguished with its "sculptural pink brute" façade combined with red sand and red granite aggregate complement a unified, solid appearance.  

Image © Nick Kane, courtesy of RIBA

"A notable architectural response"

With the use of successful material components, the 11-storey residence block and the 3-storey school successfully combine to form a holistic cluster in an urban context.

"This is a notable architectural response, demonstrating how to effectively combine multiple functions without diminishing the strength of either the educational or residential aspect," said Kaye Stout, Chair of the Neave Brown Award for Housing jury. 

"Here, Henley Halebrown deliver high-quality affordable housing that stimulates and delights residents, visitors and passers-by. The robust design is thoughtfully detailed throughout." 

"Not only does it provide social value to this inner-city neighbourhood, it responds to a complex brief with architectural ambition and sets an extremely high standard for urban design." 

"When Neave Brown accepted the RIBA Gold Medal, he said ‘… we weren’t so much doing housing, as making part of the city’, and this project does just that," Stout added.

Image © Lorenzo Zandri, courtesy of RIBA

The 2022 Neave Brown Award for Housing jury was chaired by Partner at Pollard Thomas Edwards, Kaye Stout - Architect and Development Manager at Meridian Water (Enfield Council), Yemi Aladerun, and Neave Brown family representative, Professor David Porter.

Known as a modernist housing architect, Neave Brown was best known for a series of housing estates in and around Camden in North London.

Hackney New Primary School and 333 Kingsland Road by Henley Halebrown was also awarded the 2022 RIBA London Award and the 2022 RIBA National Award.

Top image © Nick Kane, courtesy of RIBA.

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