Ada Street | Groupwork

The development was built in 2011/2012 aimed to produce an inexpensive, sustainable yet flexible construction typology to replace that achieved by Victorian mass housing.

Located off Broadway Market, south of London Fields, Ada Street accommodates 6 apartments above two small retail units in one of London’s poorer east-end areas, combining the largest number of different languages spoken in the city with the largest population of artists per square kilometre in Europe. This is reflected in the creative shops, bars and clubs and in the Local Authority’s more relaxed approach to design aesthetics.

The client expressed an ambition for utility and unadorned domesticity. The practice’s general strategy is to find a binding aesthetic form with a reduced material palette. The detail illustrates the extension of this logic through the use of fewer, yet standard products to reduce construction junction types, associated specialist trades, time on site and given the budget, a pre-empting of costs.

Externally, an insulated render system, certified to 24 degrees from the horizontal was to perform a multiple roles eliminating need for copings, sills, external gutters and drains. Primarily used to weather external walls and the upper pitched roof form, around window openings it forms reveals and returns to an integral sloping sill.

This reduction is followed through internally, where precast concrete planks are left as exposed soffits, and floors are power-floated concrete. This standard floor build-up was engineered to meet acoustic performance requirements without the need for suspended plasterboard ceilings or raised floors. The resultant savings permit the use of underfloor heating and 5 amp lighting circuits throughout integrated into the floor, allowing better room layout flexibility. The out turn construction cost was 70% of standard house building and in use feedback underlines that mass insulation reduces heating requirements by 50% from the standard family homes.