The proposals for Dell Road will provide 37 new homes on a highly constrained site to the east of Grays Town Centre in Thurrock, Essex. This project extends the practices exploration into dwelling typologies which enable higher density, own door residential neighbourhoods on challenging sites.
With a sustainable density of 60 dwellings per hectare, the project includes a mix of two and three storey family houses alongside two distinct apartment clusters, ensuring a diverse and vibrant mix of demographics.
The proposal responds to this challenging, steeply sloping site both in terms of layout and the use of unique typologies that have been thoughtfully designed to work with the site.
The southwest apartment court marks the corner of the site, looking down Orsett Road and towards Grays town centre, setting the street scene. The row of terraced housing adjacent to the apartment court fronts onto Orsett Road, completing the building line along the street whilst active frontages enliven the space.
The existing landscape character of the site and its surroundings is enhanced through the continuation of the line of trees along Orsett Road, nestling the scheme within its context. Dwellings have been set out along contour lines where possible whilst the terraces onto Orsett Road step-up with the contours, adding interest to the silhouette created.
Due to the nature of the floodlit playing field to the northern boundary of the site, dwellings have been set back from this boundary. This has created an opportunity for parking to be arranged along the boundary and within a parking court.
The design of the new neighbourhood quarter has been developed to sensitively respond to the existing context and celebrate key elements that give the site its distinct character. The layout combines terraced, semi-detached and detached typologies alongside apartment courts that are linked by garden walls and distinctive threshold arches to establish an urban form that responds to the significant site contours and provide a series of defined, sheltered mews spaces at the heart of the new neighbourhood quarter.
A new mews street off the site entrance along Dell Road, serves as an internal shared surface spine, facilitating both vehicle and pedestrian movement through the development. The pedestrian friendly public realm provides level access for all new dwellings whilst garden access is provided through open ginnels where necessary. The archway threshold here (as adjacent to the southern apartment cluster) provides a defined frontage access to Orsett Road whilst delivering a sense of shelter and protection to the mews spaces and courts within the development.
The new homes have been designed to respond to the changing needs of modern-day living, allowing spatial flexibility in everyday family life and with an increased emphasis on purposeful home working spaces. All homes have kitchen windows that look out onto the street, creating an active frontage. Entrance porches rest on a plinth that also forms a bench, providing a defined threshold zone between the public and private realms and a space for interaction with neighbours. The brickwork material palette and projecting porch canopies add a distinct character to the streetscape echoing the decorative entrances of surrounding Victorian and Edwardian homes.
