Wokingham Centre Development
Wokingham
2018
The Courtyard is a 65-unit residential scheme in the centre of Wokingham. The scheme provides an alternative model to the redevelopment of backland sites to the common re-use as surface car-parking and provides important new homes in a sustainable town centre location, supporting the local town centre economy. The scheme is developed as a predominantly linear architectural form perpendicular to the High Street following the historic pattern of the site as a burgage plots. Proposed flats have been designed with an aspiration to meet Lifetime Home standarts and arranged within the buildings to maximise the number that are dual aspect.
The scheme aims to integrate with the conservation area and neighbouring buildings to create pedestrian friendly landscaped surroundings knitted into the surrounding routes and streets. The landscape treatment is broadly arranged into 3 main spaces. Two are linear ‘fingers’ of open space between the three basic masses of built-form. The third main space is a strip of landscape treatment between the new buildings and existing properties. The pedestrian circulation connects with, and strengthens the existing network of streets and spaces, creating convenient and attractive new links between the residential streets to the south- east of the site, and the local facilities within the town centre to the north-west.
Materiality for the proposed scheme has been influenced by Wokingham’s vernacular architecture. This has led to the proposed use of red brick for walls and plain clay tiles for the roofs combined with framed glazing and metal balustrading for balconies.
