Accordia, Cambridge (2008)

This is high-density housing at its very best, demonstrating that volume house-builders can deliver high-quality architecture while improving their own bottom line. The scheme was about relationships: between architect and developer/contractor/client; and between private and public external spaces, providing a new model for outside-inside life with interior rooftop spaces, internal courtyards and large semi-public community gardens.

On a brownfield site in Cambridge – formerly owned by the military – beautifully thought-through houses sit in a density of 47 homes per hectare. The planners, led by Peter Studdert, were extraordinarily imaginative. What other authority would have allowed terraces on first and second floors instead of gardens, rather than banning them on the grounds of overlooking? Terraces sit alongside common land where children play safely as if in some idyllic throwback to the 1950s. Houses and flats have good-sized, well-proportioned rooms with views ranging from urban to rural pasture. There is plenty of variety in the house plans, and the detailing produces a different aesthetic in each. These are traditional houses with a twist. Much of the construction was fabricated off site to increase the speed of construction, reduce waste and improve site safety and environmental performance. This was a post-Thatcherite development that is unafraid of communal aspirations and aesthetics. There was plenty of individuality in the flexible house plans, but there are also village greens and strips of common land.