G A P H O U S I N G — NLA New Ideas for Housing London

London, UK

Year: 2015, Status: Shortlisted Competition Entry

main view of a London street with GAP HOUSING — G A P H O U S I N G – utilising gaps between existing buildings

In 2015, New London Architecture (NLA) in partnership with the Mayor of London invited submissions to find fresh thinking on how to unlock London’s housing supply and deliver the quality and quantity of homes that London needs.

Our submission was one of the shortlisted schemes out of 200 submissions and featured on more than 20 media outlets, including Architects Journal, Building Design, design week, dezeen, ArchDaily, Building Magazine, Daily Mail and Huffington Post. CityAM’s article picked our scheme as one of the ‘three of the best’ ideas.

Our concept for ‘G A P H O U S I N G’ was as follows:

A new method of micro interventions to existing urban fabrics was sought to unlock London’s housing supply. Urban typologies of terraced and semi-detached houses can be densified by utilising the gaps between houses. A hundred-metre stretch of a street in Southeast London was chosen to investigate the potential. Five small houses could be added to the area of about thirty terraced/semi-detached houses. If we could add a half of this rate to London’s residential streets of these typologies, this would supply more than 100,000 new households, where no potential was previously assumed. This approach would unleash crowd-based and bottom-up initiatives.

Proposed floor plans - how to fit standard-sized housing within narrow gaps between existing houses — Proposed floor plans – how to fit standard-sized housing within narrow gaps between existing houses

Site Plan – a 100m stretch of a street in London to test the idea

front cover of the report submitted: London map shown as 'dots' representing built areas and white gaps as gap housing sites — Front cover of submitted report: London map shown as 'dots' representing built areas and white gaps as gap housing sites

Featured Media:

Screenshot of GAP HOUSING article on Building Design magazine — G A P H O U S I N G on Building Design Magazine online