We are pleased to announce that Southmere, a new mixed-use civic quarter for Thamesmead has won a Housing Design Award in the Regeneration category, whilst Mountfield Park in Canterbury has received the inaugural award for Best New Neighbourhood. The keynote speaker at the awards ceremony was Peabody Chairman Lord Kerslake who emphasised the need for design and construction quality and not just numbers.

Southmere forms the first phase of the South Thamesmead masterplan, one of Europe’s largest regeneration projects. Proctor and Matthews led a team of designers including architects Mecanoo to design a scheme that would help Peabody achieve their ambitious plans for the area. The design proposes a new Civic Square alongside 525 homes, a library and commercial uses. A new housing typology consisting of building ‘ensembles’ arranged around a shared raised garden divides the wider scheme into a number of smaller communities. At ground level each ‘ensemble’ enlivens the public realm with café and retail uses, entry lobbies and embedded courtyard spaces.

Stephen Proctor was invited to present the project alongside Dick van Gameren, Design and Research Director at Mecanoo and Ken Baikie, Director of Thamesmead Regeneration as part of the Wise Council Seminar Programme -  which highlights how partnerships between developers and local authorities are providing schools and jobs from deals for more and better homes.

Mountfield Park, a new neighbourhood on the southern edge of Canterbury, is the first development of a major urban extension to the city. The proposals develop a concept for a 21st Century Garden City with five distinct residential clusters, arranged to resemble the ‘gridded patchwork’ structure of surrounding hops fields and fruit orchards. The 140 homes offer a broad mix of housing typologies with space standards exceeding those of national guidelines.