One Centaur Street

Solid Space Developments came to us in 2000 with the idea for a new type of housing for brownfield sites. It would be a hybrid of the European horizontal apartment and the English vertical terrace house. The site they had in mind was set hard against a Eurostar viaduct on its western side, with three-storey listed early Victorian houses on the east and street frontages to the north and south.

Given the context, the principle advantages of concrete were in its solidity and soundproofing qualities, but all other components were prefabricated. Off-site manufacture reduces the need for excess materials and reduces on-site time – increasing the project’s environmental credentials.

Each apartment is organised as a large, open, double-height living space, with adjacent bedrooms and stairs forming a buffer to the railway. The generous size of units, riser positions and flexible layouts mean that it’s possible to subdivide all the apartments into live and work, or double household units; a model for loose-fit living.

In the Guardian, Jonathan Glancey described it as a “minor masterpiece”. Local MP, Simon Hughes, described it as “a project that pushes at the edges of architecture both materially and spatially. It addresses the very difficult issues of location and site neighbours and is a whole new approach to housing.”

The development transformed a derelict site to create homes that offer light, air, security and an oasis in this inner-city environment.

A rough-hewn but elegant beast, we learned a lot from One Centaur Street, not least how to overcome the significant challenges of context and materiality. But our most important lesson was as residents there, where we worked, lived, fought, taught and danced; that the life of a building only truly begins when the occupants move in.