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Communal Character

Sergison Bates Architects’ Aldershothousing evokes the warmth and security ofa cabin in the woods, finds Simon Henley

Photos

Kristien Daem

Report: housing

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Architects tend to find housing estatesproblematic, and the urban cognoscenti

remains baffled by the appeal of suburbs and

provincial towns. So I was curious to visit 

North Lane in Aldershot, designed by 

Sergison Bates Architects and commissioned

by architect turned developer Crispin Kelly,

 whose ambition for the last decade has

been to establish whether it is possible to

compete with housebuilders such as George

Wimpey, which has recently completed

a nearby estate.

The premise was to match their spacestandards but to invest more thought an

marginally more money in the architect

especially the communal landscape in m

the same way as Jørn Utzon’s Fredensbor

scheme and Eric Lyons’ Span housing did

more than 40 years ago. The Aldershot 

scheme is Kelly’s third completed foray i

provincial housebuilding following Step

Taylor Architects’ two cottages in Gomsh

Surrey, and Tony Fretton Architects’ six

houses at Pewsey, in Wiltshire.

Above

The 14 homes within seven detatched

 villas set around a communal landscape

are each accessed from the interior of 

the site. Front doors are under cover

along the side of each house and are

approached through a semi-private

space between the house itself and its

associated parking structure.

The brownfield site was previously 

used for light commercial activity, and

lies within the heathland area crossing 

Surrey and north Hampshire.

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Aldershot is in Hampshire. The landscape

is heathland, and the wedge-shaped site is

bounded by two elevated railway lines, one

(disused) to the north, and another, the

London to Alton line, to the south-east.

The embankments are richly wooded and

 where they converge create a strong sense

of enclosure. By contrast North Lane, to the

south, and the car park to the west from

 which you enter the estate are more open.

The design pairs 14 houses into seven

 villas to give scale to the otherwise smallhomes. These are disposed in a picturesque

manner, three each side, and the seventh

 villa at the far end of a surface of golden

sand and gravel which laps up against the

facade of each villa. The grass in the gardens

is growing but the hedges are still ankle-

high and many of the trees have yet to be

planted, so one cannot yet experience the

full effect of what will be a delightfully 

scruffy sandy surface in a clearing in a

copse. Nevertheless, the elimination of

a conventional road surface, pavements,

kerbs and ‘defensible space’ establishes a

strong foundation for this community.

38 263 Works

Below

The site is bounded by wooded railway 

embankments to the north and east, by 

North Lane to the south, and by a new 

development of 25 veterans’ assisted

homes to the west. East of the rail

embankment lies an area of largely 

two-storey housing, including a new,

more typical suburban estate.

The wooded railway embankments

create a secluded green environment 

 within walking distance of shops and

close to central Aldershot.

All households have access to a shared

‘garden room’ towards the end of the

cul-de-sac, which will function as an

indoor children’s playroom and a

community gathering space.

Below right

The palette of materials – a buff brick

 with timber windows and tiled roofs –

is consistent across the scheme and is

intended to complement the wooded

landscape setting. The bricks are

thinner than traditional stocks,

allowing greater depth of cavity wall

insulation or a slimmer wall build-up.

There are three villa types: a two- and a

three-bed; a pair of three-beds; and a three-

and a four-bed. All are two-storey apart 

from the three-storey, four-bed house.

Each villa plan is roughly square, with an

interlocking party wall. Entrance porches

are cut out of opposing corners and the

staircases set within the crook of the party 

 wall. Each house has just two ground-floor

rooms: a kitchen with space for a table and

a living room. The living rooms, like the

entrances, are situated in opposing corners.Normally, semi-detached houses are

identical and depend for effect on mirror

symmetry, displaying their formal ‘face’ to

the street. Here, the rotational symmetry 

establishes the omni-directionality of villas

in a landscape.

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Right

Entrances are marked by decorative

tiling to the walls adjacent to doorways

in a similar manner to the decoration

of Victorian housing developments.

Below

Each villa has a unique character based

on its position and orientation on the

site, and details of the junction of roof 

and wall vary: in some instances the

roof projects to create an overhang,

 while in others there is a more flush

 junction between wall and roof.

Cuts formed in two diagonally opposite

corners reduce the villas’ apparent 

bulk and mark the entrances.

Small parking structures within the

 woodland adjacent to each house

maximise the size of the communal

area. Low-maintenance hedging of 

gorse, blackberry and blackcurrant 

frames a residents’ allotment at the

 western end of the site, a play area and

the public space connecting to North

Lane. Climbing plants will clad trellises

and fences separating gardens.

Externally, the villas are a composition of 

counterpoints and contrasts. The masonry 

cavity construction uses flush-pointed

Belgian facing bricks, 230mm long, 55mm

high and 70mm deep. Most are a reddy 

brown, but interspersed with roughly 

shaped yellows. The bond is ‘wild’ – a mix

of whole, three-quarter and half bricks –

so perpends do not align. The impression is

rustic. The walls were not set out to brick

dimensions. Instead, the bricklayers

 worked to a series of rules. Each elevationis different, with the eaves line broken by

a masonry chimney. Substantial black

timber-framed windows are arranged so

cills and heads do not align. Bedroom

 windows are clustered for scale, and all

are set just 40mm back from the brickwork

face. Cills are aluminium, and pistol bricks

conceal steel lintels. Besides the bond, there

is no elaboration of the brickwork.

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Pantile roofs are clamped between unusual

milled aluminium bargeboards and gutters.

The oversailing roofs, freed of their masonry 

base, are a striking feature. Each villa has a

consistent ridge but roof pitches and eaves

heights vary, and the ensemble resembles

scissors in motion.

Entrance porches are tiled in either green,

brown or yellow, and in some cases are quite

hard to find. Inside, halls are between the

two ground-floor rooms. Internal doorways

are wide – larger still in the four-bedroomhouse, where pairs of glazed doors are used.

In all cases one gets the impression of 

enfilade rooms. The living rooms, with 3.2m-

high ceilings, are cubic and illuminated by 

two huge windows. A wood-burning stove

stands on a tiled hearth in a corner. In each

 villa, one house presents the living room,

and the other the kitchen, to the cul-de-sac.

Large windows expose private moments.

Upstairs, the extended eaves that plays such

an important part in the outward expression

of the house has an important role on the

inside where, in the smaller bedroom, it 

draws one’s eye to the ground and to the

landscape. Placing a room in shadow, in

contrast to the other brightly-lit interiors,

offers both a figurative and literal retreat 

from the social exposure that is otherwise

the premise of the scheme.

Upstairs, the volume of the living room

generates split-levels, so the staircase spirals

up past the smaller bedrooms to the largest 

one above. In the three-storey house the

stair branches to serve different rooms. Each

flight and landing brings another degree of 

privacy as well as playfulness and generosity.

Bathroom

En-suite

Bedroom 3

Hall

Bedroom 2

Bedroom 1Bedroom 3

Bathroom

Hall

Bedroom 1

Bedroom 2

En-suite

WCHallStore

Hall

WC Store

Kitchen/dining

LivingroomKitchen/ dining

Livingroom

Store

Store

Bedroom 4

 Attic /storage space

Hall

Bedroom 3 Bathroom

Hall

Bedroom 2

E n- su it e B ed ro om 1

Bathroom

Hall

Bedroom 1

Bedroom 2

Store

WCHallStore

LivingroomKitchen/dining

Hall

WC

Livingroom

Store

Store

Kitchen/ dining

Store

Store

WC

LivingroomKitchen/ dining

Hall

Hall

WC

Livingroom

Store

Store

Kitchen/dining

Bedroom 3 Bathroom

Hall

Bedroom 2

E n- su it e B ed ro om 1Bedroom 3Bathroom

Hall

En-suite

Bedroom 1

Bedroom 2

Below

Plans of the three ‘villa’ types, A, B

and C, each of which comprises two

semi-detached houses. Type A is a

four-bedroom and a three-bedroom

dwelling, Type B comprises a

two-bedroom and a three-bedroom

dwelling, and Type C consists of

two three-bedroom dwellings.

Each villa is rectangular in plan and

has a pitched roof. The two houses

 within each villa are arranged side by 

side, along a stepped party wall. They 

share the same ground-floor plan,though with different orientations.

Opposite

Interior views. The form of the houses

developed from an exploration of how 

the space usually lost within pitched

roofs can be used to develop a stepped

section allowing ground floor rooms to

have a generous ceiling height of 3.2m.

Type A

Type C

Type B

Type C

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Selected suppl& subcontracto

Brick manufacture

Vande Moortel

Brick supplier

European Building 

Materials

Roof tiles

Forticrete

Timber windows

Flexwood

Timber floors

 Junkers

Ceramic tiling

 Johnson Tiles,

Craven Dunnill Jack

Kitchens

Howdens

Rainwater goods

Bailey UK 

Self-binding grave

Breedon Special

Aggregates

Project team

Architect

Sergison Bates Architects

Design team

 Jonathan Sergison,

Stephen Bates, Mark

Tuff, Andrew Jackson,

Michael Hughes, Katja

Meyer, Antonio Ippolito

Contractor

Construction Partnership

Cost consultant

Smith Turner

Structural engineer

Civic Engineers

Service engineer

MESH Projects

Landscape architect

 Jonathan Cook

Client

Baylight Property 

Services

The villas are mannered, but carefully so.

There is a congruency between the plan, the

elevation and the roof. There is a fantastic

elasticity to the forms that contrasts starkly 

 with the pudding-bowl pitched roofs of the

nearby estate houses. The joy is that this

elasticity of expression evident outside is

rewarded in the interior – in particular in

the height of the living room, and the way 

light falls on staircases and landings.

This seems to be popular: all houses were

sold before practical completion. But thesearen’t ‘English’ houses. What I mean is they 

aren’t genteel. Though one could mine the

history books for precedents, I was struck

not by the architectural references but by 

the houses’ ability to communicate ideas

about dwelling. The iconography is clear;

these are cabins in a wood, and the eaves and

the chimney signify shelter and warmth.