BAA was appointed to replace a redundant office building in the centre of Abingdon with 14 new homes. The offices had been let but recently vacated, with little prospect for future lettings. Our brief was to create mixture of one, two, three and four bedrooms homes at medium density, without compromising on amenity space, or clashing with historic patterns of development in town.

Abingdon has a large market square at its centre with four roads leading out of town. Historically the spaces between roads were divided into long narrow pieces of land filled with larger buildings facing a main road, and with a combination of market gardens and smaller buildings to the rear. Our project follows this historic pattern of land use, creating a terrace of family houses sharing courtyard space with a higher density apartment building on Stert Street, a main road leading to the town square.

The front building has nine apartments facing Stert Street. At the rear, a new short terrace of five houses backs onto Old Station Yard. A combination of roof terraces, a shared courtyard, and private gardens to the larger homes provides an elegant resolution to the potential conflict between local town planning, higher density development and high-quality amenity space.