HTA worked closely with Countryside Properties, Enfield Council and the New Avenue estate residents to design the 408 home scheme which re-provides existing homes for rent and creates new homes for private sale, an energy centre, a new nursery and community centre.  The comprehensive consultation process, which involved a series of workshops, visits, public events and engagement with the wider community led to the design receiving wide spread support from local residents and Enfield Council.

New Avenue is a unique site: set in a valley in a suburban neighbourhood, its 11 storey flat block and lower rise maisonette blocks are isolated and unconnected with their surroundings, and steep level changes within the site make access difficult. A river runs the length of the site in a culvert, and there is significant flood risk at the upper western section.

The brief required the replacement of 140 affordable homes, and the residents were supportive of the regeneration, but wanted no taller than six stories, and no flat roofs.  By engaging with the residents and council in the design process, and responding to the brief and site constraints, we have successfully increased height and density, and created a special and sustainable place to live for many years to come.

Our approach to the masterplan has been to reconnect New Avenue to the network of streets that surround it, and to create a mid-rise neighbourhood of mixed typologies around new landscaped streets and spaces, with homes that actively address these streets. Individual terraced houses with front doors, mews houses, duplex homes with apartments over, and mansion blocks, with a varied roofscape including double-height dormers, give a distinctive and domestic scale to the buildings, which are up to nine storeys. The streets are active landscapes, which include places for interaction, community gardens and swales.  They lead to generous sunken garden spaces which accommodate potential flooding and offer a different playable landscape for the community.