• Mount Pleasant: Fortress or Circus? Mount Pleasant: Fortress or Circus?

    Mount Pleasant: Fortress or Circus?

    London's population is now on track to exceed nine million. The main route, therefore, that we are taking to providing new homes is by maximising density on a comparatively small number of sites. We build a lot in a few places.

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  • West Hampstead: What is a Mansion Block? West Hampstead: What is a Mansion Block?

    West Hampstead: What is a Mansion Block?

    When does a mansion block cease to be a mansion block? London's second ever neighbourhood plan (in Fortune Green and West Hampstead) was very clear that residents valued the neighbourhood's red brick mansion blocks.

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  • Little Oval: Cricket and Gasworks Little Oval: Cricket and Gasworks

    Little Oval: Cricket and Gasworks

    In 2015 at the request of, and working with, the local neighbourhood forum, residents from the Kennington Park Estate and the Save Oval Campaign Group we drew up a sketch alternative master plan. We called it Little Oval.

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  • Northampton: Narrow Fronts, Many Doors Northampton: Narrow Fronts, Many Doors

    Northampton: Narrow Fronts, Many Doors

    Our approach to the Marefair site was not to replace one large building with another large building but instead to create street fronts and rediscover and assert their rhythm with narrow plots and many doors.

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  • Wimbledon: What is It to Be Premier? Wimbledon: What is It to Be Premier?

    Wimbledon: What is It to Be Premier?

    Many members of the public seem resigned to the fact that new functional buildings must be ugly and de-sensitising. But this is a fallacy. In 2016 Create Streets worked up an alternative approach to a proposed new Premier Inn at 153 Broadway in Wimbledon, South West London.

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  • Euston Road: Can an Arch a Boulevard Make? Euston Road: Can an Arch a Boulevard Make?

    Euston Road: Can an Arch a Boulevard Make?

    Over the last few years Create Streets has been encouraging and supporting a partially community-led programme for the populist beautification and intensification of London's arterial roads with a range of beautiful, popular, medium-rise developments.

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  • Empress Place: Join the Street, Don't Destroy It Empress Place: Join the Street, Don't Destroy It

    Empress Place: Join the Street, Don't Destroy It

    One of London's most controversial developments over the last decade has been the replacement of the Earl's Court exhibition centre in West London and nearby social housing estates. This has involved the fairly needless destruction of the rather pretty street, Empress Place.

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  • The Sutton Estate: Anywhere or Sutton Square? The Sutton Estate: Anywhere or Sutton Square?

    The Sutton Estate: Anywhere or Sutton Square?

    In 2015 Affinity Sutton (as it was then called) announced its desire to demolish 13 of the Sutton Estate's 15 mansion blocks. The proposals were widely criticised for presenting London with a triptych of needless destruction.

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Taken from Designing Well-Tempered Towns by Nicholas Boys Smith and Francis Terry.

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