Mixed Use Development, London
Mixed use development
Location: London
Status: Complete
A development of 5 high quality apartments over a ground floor and basement retail unit.
The ambition of the project to regenerate the site at 182 Balham High Road is rooted in a desire to create a commercially viable, socially and environmentally sustainable, mixed-use development that provides exceptional living and retail spaces.
The scheme looks to strengthen the Balham High Road streetscape by reinstating the original Victorian scale of the street and proposes an architectural language that draws on both the characteristics of the existing context and the original streetscape that was destroyed by a wartime bomb in November 1940.
View of the rear elevation
Our site at 182 Balham High Road, was part of the early stage of development of Balham after the introduction of a stop on the Crystal Palace line of the railway in 1856.
The building on the site at that time formed part of a terrace of large, four storey Victorian red brick buildings that were built over deep basements.
The Victorian language was rich in detail and had a powerful presence with banded highlights and stone accents that made for a powerful streetscape and an appropriate density for the burgeoning urban centre.
However a wartime bomb tragically destroyed the high street, the tube station and 67 lives of local residents within in 1944. The buildings that were expediently rebuilt in 1954 assumed a suburban scale rather than one befitting of a principal high road.
