Mount Pleasant | Peter Barber Architects

Mount Pleasant is a beautiful new sheltered housing project for street homeless people set within a secluded and peaceful suntrap courtyard close to Grays Inn Road and High Holborn. The project is entered from a tiny lane through the arched doors of the Victorian hostel building.

The entrance is a light bright and airy space which opens directly out at a delightful roof terrace. The tree lined courtyard below is the principle circulation of the project, its main meeting space is in a sense the social heart of the place with little spots for people to sit, direct access to a laundry, shared kitchen, a consulting room and the apartments which surround it.

Two new apartment buildings, little houses really stand sentinel at the short East and West ends of the courtyard. A racy new building fronting Mount Pleasant reinstates the back of the pavement terrace evident in C18 maps.

The courtyard itself is formed by the demolition and removal of the central linking part of the original ‘H’ block hostel and the patching in of the long facades with reclaimed and new bricks in the London Vernacular.

The scheme is conceived as a collage of old and buildings - a kind of palimpsest.