Location: Clapham Common, London

Client: Terry Georgiou & Paul Vasili - Ginkgo Group

Sector: Residential / Commercial / Mixed use

Architect: Marks Barfield Architects

Quantity Surveyor: Andy Tsielepi

Structural Engineer: Prime Meridian

Sustainability + MEP Engineer: Parker Wilson Consulting

Planning Consultant: GBS Architectural

Building Control: All Building Control

Principal Designer + Party Wall: JLL

Archaeology: Museum of London Archaeology

Daylight & Sunlight: GVA

Heritage Consultant: Lichfields

18-19 The Pavement falls within the Clapham Conservation Area. MBA were appointed with the aim of designing a high quality and sustainable residential building with retail/restaurant at ground and basement.

The site as it stands is currently an eyesore on The Pavement, as it was significantly damaged by fire I 1999 with the front elevation boarded up since. It had a long, complex, and troubled planning history.

The client and project team are aware of the significant importance of the site as part of the Conservation Area, as well as being adjacent to no.17 The Pavement, a fine Grade II Listed example of Georgian architecture. This led to us putting forward a strong and experienced team, with specialisms in heritage and conservation.

Our intention is to create a distinctive high quality contemporary infill that completes the terrace while respecting its heritage context. Our approach is to the develop a façade that learns from the Georgian façade of no.17, while avoiding any pastiche. We carried out significant analysis of the history and urban context of the site. We analyzed the geometry and proportions of no.17 and created an extensive series of studies illustrating the development of the front elevation at pre-application stage. We also undertook wide-ranging local consultation.

The final scheme we are submitting for planning maintains the scale and top floor set back as shown in the revised scheme we produced after our 1st pre-application scheme. However, we have created a hybrid as there was so much support for the richness of the 1st scheme. We have set back the 1st and 2nd floors from the building line created by numbers 17 and 20. This ensures our proposal isn’t dominant.

The materials palette consists of high quality natural materials which are intended to improve with age and weathering. The palette and setting out of the elevation sets out to:

- discontinue both the roofline and the parapet line, thus reinforcing the variation of scale typical of The Pavement character

- contrasting brick colour: this reinforces the varied character of the Pavement, avoiding ‘bland uniformity’

- contrasting shopfront: replicating the successful examples along the Pavement where shopfronts contrast to residential spaces above, providing visual variety and enlivening street frontages

- recessing the brickwork on the 1st & 2nd floors, drawing on the memory of the original pair of cottages on the site