This week Urban Design London attended Buxton’s Marklake Court site for a walking tour of our design and construct social housing scheme.

The 27 unit building has been designed to offer maximum daylight and has a number of eco features to the Footprint standard, including enhanced building fabric, combined heat and power boilers, photo voltaic panels on the seventh storey tower and a green roof on the fifth. The two reinforced concrete towers are connected by a three storey link building of maisonettes with rooftop communal terrace.

Formally a block of garages, the impressive new building is in a prime location less than 300 metres from the Shard with stunning views over the London skyline. Local residents from the Leathermarket Community Benefits Society will be renting the properties.

Bell Philips Architects together with Buxton hosted the tour for some forty or so visitors from various Local Authorities who wanted to see the challenges of building these new build units on a constricted site.