The Echoes
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Kilian O'Sullivan Download Original
The Echoes is a public housing scheme in the Essex borough of Thurrock.
The Echoes project is located at the Seabrooke Rise Estate, near Grays station. After successful consultations with the existing 1960s estate’s tenants, who persuaded the council that a new community centre should form part of the brief, a garage block and the site cabins have been replaced with 53 affordable dual-aspect flats contained within three London stock brick blocks that form three sides of a gated courtyard in a move to create three public street frontages.
The development is of mostly of three storeys, rising to four in part. The final side of the courtyard is the boundary fence of a railway cutting on the line to the port. Fifty-three flats are arranged in three linear blocks across the site, pulling away from the railway line to reduce the acoustic impact and create a secure communal garden, while pushing tight against the southern and western boundaries of the site to create an active two-sided street with the existing estate.
The cantilevered concrete balconies are clad in perforated and corrugated anodised aluminium panels. The perforations allow for the balcony appearance to constantly shift from opaque to translucent as one moves around the façade, whilst the corrugations add visual interest and give the aluminium a greater rigidity, ensuring that the panels are durable and robust.
The cladding panels are mounted onto a galvanised steel frame fixed at the base into the pre-cast concrete slab. Rainwater drains freely through the timber decking and is directed away from the building façade via a continuous cast in channel in the slab to a fabricated aluminium spigot at the front of the balcony. An anodised aluminium soffit panel is fixed to the underside of the slab to complete the balcony design.
Data
- Begun: Jun 2014
- Completed: Feb 2016
- Floor area: 5,695m2
- Sector: Residential
- Procurement: NEC3
- Address: Seabrooke Rise, Grays, RM17 6DS, United Kingdom
Professional Team
- Architect: Bell Phillips Architects
- Client: Thurrock Council Housing Department
- Structural engineer: Morgan Tucker
- M&E consultant: Atkins
- Quantity surveyor: Measur
- Service engineer: Atkins
- Landscape design: Anna French Associates
- Sustainability/code assessor: Atkins
- Arboricultural impact assessment : D F Clark Bionomique
- Project manager: Faithful and Gould
- CDM co-ordinator : Faithorn Farrell Timms
- Approved building inspector : Thurrock Council Building Control Department
- Main contractor: Wilmott Dixon
- CAD software used: Bentley Microstation
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