Bath firm wins top design prize
A housing scheme designed by a Bath firm and dubbed a modern-day Coronation Street has won Britain's most prestigious architectural award.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios was one of three architects firms behind Accordia in Cambridge, which features terraced houses without gardens and which at the weekend won the Stirling Prize.
The estate includes houses of up to six bedrooms for £1m as well as terraced houses and mews apartments.
The development has roof terraces and communal playing areas rather than individual gardens.
The winning development - the first housing scheme to be given the prize - was announced by TV presenter Kevin McCloud and Royal Institute of British Architects president Sunand Prasad.
The Grand Designs broadcaster said: "This project lays down a marker, a new benchmark for housing."
The firm's senior partner Keith Bradley said the win was "fantastic."
"It's vitally important that a housing project has won. This is the architecture that people experience on a daily basis and it's great that quality can be recognised like this."
Batheaston-based FCB Studios is also the architect behind the 2,000-home Western Riverside housing development for derelict land in Bath.
The judging panel described the scheme as "high-density housing at its very best."
"[It provides] a new model for outside-inside life with interior roofspaces, internal courtyards and large semi-public community gardens," they added, saying it offered children a safe place to play where cars are "tamed not banned".
"It is architecture which gives hope for us all for the future."
Mr Bradley added: "A lot of mistakes were made in the past - not all the fault of architects, but architects were party to that: put all the same sort of people in the same place. It never works."
FCB Studios was originally appointed as sole architects, but invited two other practices, Alison Brooks and Maccreanor Lavington, to collaborate.
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by Dave Laming, Larkhall Bath
Tuesday, October 14 2008, 7:11AM
“Nice one Evelyn. You have them all chasing their own https forward slashes, www dots, uk's and dot coms.
Try bowling a google and get your wikipedia to snatch their bails off.
As for the final comment attributed to FCB partner Keith Bradley "the principal concept is about living in a large garden". Was that not tried in the seventies, when all that was grown was a very special weed, and everyone turned into vegetables. See where he's coming from now.”
by Hugh Dixon, Bath News & Media
Monday, October 13 2008, 4:14PM
“It's the "www" or "http" that get them stopped. (Off to moderate my own post...)”
by Evelyn, UK
Monday, October 13 2008, 4:02PM
“For more pictures, the bdonline
and of course the dot
and co
and dot
and uk
part has them, along with interesting comments.
The Bath Western Riverside scheme can be viewed on the Bath Heritage Watchdog
dot
and then org
website.”
by Evelyn, UK
Monday, October 13 2008, 3:51PM
“Thanks Hugh!
I appreciate that direct links cause delay but thought I had disguised it enough so it would get past what other site call the '**** detector'. We live and learn.
Was that what David's comment said? :)”
by David, Bath
Monday, October 13 2008, 3:47PM
“Well, at least you got your comment back, Evelyn; I made the mistake of drawing attention to the elephant in the room.”
by Hugh Dixon, Bath News & Media
Monday, October 13 2008, 3:38PM
“Evelyn, our comments system is set up to hold for moderation any comments which contain anything that appears to be a web address.
I think the idea is to stop people posting adverts or other naughty things, but it means that even legitimate posts get put on hold until one of we busy chaps here at Chronicle Towers has time to release them. Your post should now have been published, but please be aware that there is sometimes a delay.”
by Evelyn, UK
Monday, October 13 2008, 3:26PM
“Odd - my response vanished into cyberspace!
Maybe it's because I posted a link to the Accordialiving website?”
by Evelyn, UK
Monday, October 13 2008, 3:21PM
“I have been following the Accordia scheme for some time.
While I don't think 'mass housebuilders' have been designing wonderfully in recent times, I am not convinced that this is the way ahead either.
Communal space - it so rarely works. Accordia has also blocks of flats, I suggest people do have look at the design. I wonder how they will look when the wood has been painted, replaced, etc?
These schemes are OK if all children are well behaved, fine if you don't wish for a bit of privacy and your own front door, onto the outside world, wonderful if the landscaped seating and planting is maintained into the future ... but it so rarely is, is it?
www.accordialiving dot co dot uk has many more images.”
by David, Bath
Monday, October 13 2008, 2:52PM
“Evelyn might be guilty of cut-and-pasting other people's comments, but that doesn't make her wrong; the BBC website now has the Accordia design on it's front page.
Message was edited on the grounds of taste by Hugh Dixon, Bath News & Media”
by Evelyn, UK
Monday, October 13 2008, 2:45PM
“Strangely, the government 'Pathfinder' scheme is still destroying swathes of terraced housing, with their private back yard spaces, along with the communities which they housed! Apparently in that case terraces are not deemed desirable places to live!
I recommend the SAVE Britain's Heritage website, and read the report on Toxteth Street and the associated docs re the recent public inquiry.
With regard to the Stirling Prize, one commentator on the Architecture Scotland website had this to say today:
"...shortlist for the Stirling Prize which...starts out as an invitation to architects to submit entries. In the case of the Stirling, the invite is to the RIBA¿s Regional Awards, with the winners in each area put forward for RIBA National Awards. The winners of the latter provide the longlist of projects from which the final five are selected for Stirling Prize consideration. Readers of previous Wraps will understand that the judging of the RIBA Regional and National Awards is entirely equitable and therefore immune to any accusations of eclecticism, elitism or edifice-ism. The AJ of course sponsors the Stirling Prize and the final selection is therefore dependably, quintessentially British: entirely honourable and absolutely above the kind of machinations that are all too often discernible in the kind of award schemes that operate in less well developed parts of the world..."
Let's not forget who the architects of the Western Riverside Scheme are.
Even more blocks of flats - which in so many areas of the country are now being demolished!
However, the architects will now be able to say they are 'award winning'.
Awards by architects to architects, in order to say they are 'award winning'. It's all rather self-perpetuating really.”