RESIDENTIAL

“Servite Houses (now Optivo) is affiliated to the Housing Corporation and provides over 44,000 affordable homes across London, the South East and the Midlands. Located in Hackney, the site was a brownfield site, once occupied by predominantly low level light industrial warehouses.

It is bounded by residential buildings on two sides and light industrial warehouses and workshops on others. Over the years the area had suffered from neglect. All access is along the narrow Mackintosh Lane and Crossrail’s proposed Line 2 will provide a new railway station immediately next to the development.

The scheme provides 270 sq.m of workshops, 6 one bedroom flats, 26 two bedroom flats, 1 three bedroom flat and 7 four bedroom townhouses with off-street parking. A rear private communal garden is also provided for all residents.

The three-storey townhouses were built employing Modern methods of construction (MMC) with Off-Site manufactured modular units fully fitted out in the factory, transported to the site and then erected by stacking them as pods. The twin five-storey blocks of flats were constructed in timber frame to reduce the loading on the foundations, speed up construction on site and were delivered to site “just in time” to overcome the site constraints – the scheme fills the site completely with no storage space. Materials used include a combination of red and buff facing brick, grey facing bricks, mild steel sections to the balconies, sustainable timber cladding, man-made roof slates and timber windows.”