Centaur Street Housing
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The communal stair cantilevering out toward the railway arches
Michael Mack and Alex de Rijke Download Original
Inner-city residential apartment building built alongside London's Waterloo Station
A residential apartment block based on an idea for a new housing typology for brownfield sites, a hybrid of the European horizontal apartment and the English vertical terrace house. The development transformed a derelict site to homes in an inner city environment.
Each apartment is organised as a large, open double-height living space, with adjacent bedrooms and stairs forming a buffer to the railway. The transformation of the traditional apartment plan responds to changing living and working patterns of contemporary urban households.
The generous size of the units, materials and spaces created, allow the regeneration concept, of sustainable and flexible fit, to be realised.
The building appears to be a wooden coat over a concrete frame. Closer inspection reveals all to be concrete. Internally, walls are textured concrete. Externally, they are clad with fibrous cement, mock-timber rain screen of augmenting proportions. Other than in situ concrete, all components are prefabricated.
Data
- Begun: Sep 2001
- Completed: 2002
- Floor area: 618m2
- Sector: Residential
- Total cost: £862,227
- Tender date: Jun 2001
- Procurement: JCT Intermediate
- Address: One Centaur Street, Lambeth, London, SE1 7EG, United Kingdom
Professional Team 
- Architect: dRMM
- Project architects: Alex de Rijke, Michael Spooner, Sadie Morgan
- Client: Solid Space Developments
- Quantity surveyor: Measur
- Structural engineer: Adams Kara Taylor
- Services engineer: The Monalco Partnership
- Landscape architect: Jennifer Coe
- Construction manager: White Associates
- Main contractor: Parkway Construction
Suppliers
- External planking: Eternit
- Cladding extrusions, fixings: Fischer Italie
- Timber Windows: Scandinavian Window System
- Frameless glass louvres: Colt International
- Timber decking: HLD
- Internal glass balustrading: Elite