Emma joined HTA in 2011, taking up a lead role in HTA’s Manchester studio in 2017, and has amassed considerable experience across a wide range of housing regeneration projects. She leads a team of talented designers within HTA’s Placecraft team focused on delivering sustainable extension in urban and suburban settings. Emma is highly organised with strong leadership skills and an ability to communicate with residents, clients, planners and technical stakeholders alike. She is a passionate advocate for transforming communities and optimising social value, as well as an architect with a clear vision for delivering better homes and places, making her perfectly placed to lead this project day to day.
During her time in HTA’s London studio Emma had a lead role on a number of estate regeneration projects including Dee Park in Reading, Yorke Drive in Newark, and Ravensbury Estate in Merton, South London. These projects are all characterised by similar conditions to Collyhurst being sites with low rise houses, often system built in the middle of the 20th century and suffering from a range of construction issues, being also mostly social housing but with a number of right to buy freehold or leasehold properties located across the site. The neighbourhoods suffered from poor quality public realm and poor connectivity contributing to high levels of social deprivation and problems of anti-social behaviour. These sites were characterised by low values and a limited history of housing sales, presenting extremely constrained parameters for design and delivery.
Emma’s passion for engaging with local communities to learn more about the challenges and opportunities of the local area, helped inform the right design solutions in each case and she has also been involved in several resident-ballot regeneration projects in which the existing community are engaged on the potential options and given a controlling vote on a preferred option. For all the projects listed here the residents voted decisively for a full regeneration approach involving comprehensive demolition and redevelopment of new homes. In each case Emma has been part of the team developing the design full and reserved matters applications. Key projects include estate regeneration projects such as Ravensbury Estate, Dee Park, Yorke Drive, and Joyce and Snells Estates, involving extensive resident consultation processes to develop options for regeneration.
Alongside her role at HTA, Emma delivers seminars and tutorials at Manchester University, building on HTA’s research in densifying the suburb, co-housing, age-friendly neighbourhoods and social value. Collaboration with the university includes a detailed review of the FEC Northern Gateway SRF, guiding student projects focussed on fair, equitable and inclusive urban design. In particular, this included a review of the Collyhurst neighbourhood of the SRF and consideration of regeneration options from a no-demolition perspective around the existing community. The unit ran alongside the ‘Age-Friendly Northern Gateway’ project, a live research project delivered by Manchester School of Architecture and MICRA (Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing). The project was commissioned by Manchester City Council and FEC to better understand how the Northern Gateway development can be more inclusive of older people.