Highland Road, Portsmouth
Client: Protodale
Value: £1.5m
Scale: 7 houses
Status: Complete
The owner of this former garage site in Portsmouth commissioned Yelo as they required an architect that could provide a full professional service from planning to construction completion.
The site was quite a challenge as it was almost landlocked by other developments and was very contaminated from oil and petrol leaks in its previous use.
The client’s brief was to provide good quality family housing within an urban environment.
We produced several options and met with Portsmouth planning department through a pre-app process to agree the principles of the new development. The planners were supportive of the proposal but were keen that we met the local requirements for amenity space and parking. With a compact urban site and a requirement to provide at least 7 houses it presented us as architects with quite a design challenge. Part of the solution was to combine the road access and parking into a parking court thus optimising this area. Rather than providing the required amenity space with a single rear garden we divided the requirement into multiple smaller areas comprising a courtyard garden, a balcony and a roof terrace for each house. This gave a desirable variety to the occupier and meant we could design the amenity to cover different needs such as privacy, long distance views, morning, daytime and early evening sun paths,
As architects we are known for our pragmatic and site-specific designs, the site is surrounded by several other developments built in brick so we utilised the same palette. To provide a more contemporary feel we integrated zinc panels, aluminium windows and sun-screens.
Internally the houses are designed for a modern family including a family room with kitchen/living and dining, a downstairs toilet, utility room, family bathroom, master bedroom with dressing room and ensuite and equal sized bedrooms for children and guests.
Building Contractor was WStirland
To see another Yelo Architects designed project on a similar site please click here
