Keeping it old school: homes built from 180-year-old Stoke Newington school scoop top housing prize

Nine properties carved from a Georgian schoolhouse, a converted YMCA and an ultra-luxury Canary Wharf tower block beat entrants from around the country
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Becky Davies24 November 2017

New homes awards are usually given for buildings built from scratch, but a top national prize has just been won by a development in a 180-year-old former London school.

Nine houses have been created in Stoke Newington’s Grange Hall complex formed from a late-Georgian building that not only served as a school but later a social club, snooker hall and even a warehouse.

Judges of the WhatHouse? Awards were impressed by the way developers Cubitt Greystock had restored the original building but sympathetically made new homes using the latest technologies.

The panel, led by Rupert Bates, editorial director, said: “While historic fabric is respected and retained wherever possible, new work is celebrated so the building is still readable.”

The dormer windows were repaired and retained but with modern glazing installed, pocket doors helped make the most of the unusual spaces and there was even room to provide mezzanine decks and terraces.

West Hackney National School was attended by local children for over a century until the Sixties, since when it hosted various businesses, while falling into disrepair.

The judges added: “Meticulous renovations such as this require an architect’s eye, attention to detail and problem solving at every step.”

Grange Hall retains the bright and beautiful dormer windows of the school
WhatHouse?

Other gold award winning London projects include Best Apartment-winner Blake Tower, a former YMCA in the Barbican inspired by the Sixties architecture with amazing City views; Dollar Bay in Canary Wharf, which topped the Luxury and Interior Design categories for its 31-storey glass tower using cutting-edge technology to cut bills, including the construction of a unique air cooling system that uses water from the dock to provide an eco form of air conditioning; and best mixed use development One Tower Bridge that not only includes 420 apartments, but a 900-seat theatre.

Best Partnership Scheme was shared by Woodbury Down in Finsbury Park, with Hackney council and Genesis, for the transformation of a run-down estate and creation of 5,500 homes, and the Lexicon in Islington, by Clarion and Mount Anvil, a 36-storey tower with 35 per cent affordable apartments.

The top Sustainable Development prize went to Elephant Park at the Elephant and Castle, for providing 11 acres of community space among 2,500 new homes; regeneration gold went to Royal Arsenal Riverside for resuscitating an historic but derelict Thames-side site into a residential and cultural hub; and the top Public Realm prize went to Heritage Walk & Kew Bridge West in Brentford, with its beautiful park with specially commissioned artwork, animal-shaped seats for children, the words of poem by Alice Oswald woven in steel along the walkway and giant oak table by sculptor Alison Crowther.

Best Exterior Design went to Riverlight in Battersea, six luxury apartment blocks, with 75 per cent of the land devoted to landscaped public space.

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