Camden chooses Tibbalds for £30.5m Holborn Housing Regeneration

Camden Council has appointed Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design and its HCA Framework-appointed multidisciplinary team to manage and deliver high quality design proposals for two Central London housing estates.

The £30.5 million project involves developing significant new mixed tenure housing through infill development on underused space at the Tybalds Estate and the Bourne Estate in the borough. Camden Council will undertake the development directly, working with the project team.

The Tybalds Estate sits between Theobald’s Road and Great Ormond Street Hospital and comprises 390 homes in nine residential blocks built in the 1950’s and 1960’s across a 2.3 ha (5.7 acre) site. This project will add about 80 new mixed tenure homes and significantly improve and upgrade the estate’s movement network, public realm and landscaping.

The Grade II listed Bourne Estate is one of the early and innovative housing estates, considered to have influenced later social and private housing in the UK and abroad. Completed by LCC in the early 19th century, it provides around 500 properties on a 1.4 ha (3.5 acre) site bounded by Gray’s Inn Road and Clerkenwell Road. This project will focus on the estate’s southern fringe, where – subject to planning – 78 new mixed tenure homes will be added on underused space, and surrounding public realm, play and sports facilities will be reorganised and improved.

Tibbalds is providing urban design, masterplanning, heritage assessments, design management, project management and stakeholder engagement expertise for the £30.5 million project. Kim Sangster Associates is providing project management, employers agent and cost consultancy advice. Other members of the multidisciplinary team include Campbell Reith and TGA Consulting Engineers.

The practice is currently coordinating a team that is gathering baseline site information on engineering, archaeology, viability, services, sunlight and daylight, party wall issues etc. and running a design team selection process.

Hilary Satchwell, Director of Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design, said:

“Our response to Camden Council’s brief puts high quality design at the heart of the project. The aim is to deliver outstanding regeneration that will meet the local community’s urgent housing needs as well improving under-used space.”

“While our objectives for both sites are essentially the same, the estates themselves are very different and we are developing specific approaches for each, informed by early and continuous engagement with stakeholders.”