The spaces are conceived to enhance local small businesses and enterprises. On the ground floor the programme is oriented towards retail and commercial space, while the upper level houses multiple workspaces. By means of removable light wooden panels, its structure is designed with sustainability in mind. The aim is to reduce assembly energy and transport capacity as much as possible. In addition, it is foreseen that it will be temporary.
Description of project by Jan Kattein Architects
Ebury Edge is a temporary development by Westminster City Council, combining community space, a café, affordable work and retail spaces. Together, they give the Ebury Bridge Estate a lively new street presence and shelter a shared courtyard at the rear, offering a continuous focal point for residents throughout its phased re-development.
Westminster City Council is undertaking its most ambitious housing and regeneration programme of this time. Pivotal to the plan is the Council’s redevelopment of the Ebury Bridge Estate in Pimlico, situated a few minutes from Victoria Station and adjacent to Chelsea Barracks. Regeneration of the estate will provide 781 mixed tenure homes, including full re-provision of existing social housing, much needed family-sized units, and a right to return for all residents.
Ebury Edge reflects the City Council's dedication to creating a new exemplar for estate regeneration through a sensitivity not just to the end goals, but also the process of regeneration. Designed by Jan Kattein Architects with ARUP, two storeys of workspace units are arranged in a colourful timber-clad terrace along Ebury Bridge Road. Together with the frontage of the cafe, housed together with a community hall in a distinct, single storey structure, these work to create an active edge to the Estate through its transition.
Workspaces are sized to provide an affordable foothold for small local businesses, with generous shop fronts to support retail activity at ground level. A basic fit out leaves them adaptable to the individual needs of a broad range of tenants while providing them with an operational framework to grow and inform the long term retail strategy for the site.
The building's colourful presence, including a high-level floodlit tower, reflects residents' desire to create an “invitation” into the Estate. Hand tinted cedar shingles and feather-edge cladding retain the texture of timber grain, while their tones will shift and weather over the building's short lifespan. Community gardening is embedded at the heart of the scheme with a high level planting deck and scaffold 'trellis' which overspan the development.
The lightweight timber structure was designed to minimise embodied energy and foundations, and can be dismantled into its constituent panels and re-assembled elsewhere once the site comes forward for long term development in around 4 years.
Careful work by JKA and workspace operators Meanwhile Space in establishing the spatial brief and engagement with local businesses helped the development to reach full occupation occupied just weeks after opening in winter 2020/21. Seven small retail businesses now have their first shop fronts, while ten other enterprises are getting a start in units upstairs and to the rear. Early market engagement helped to secure Fat Macy’s, an organisation which provides catering training for homeless people, as anchor tenant for the café., while the community space is providing a vital resource for childcare and well-being activities run by local groups.
As pandemic restrictions lift in spring 2021, the Ebury Edge is providing invaluable social spaces for residents to meet safely outdoors, as well as the infrastructure for local businesses to begin the process of economic recovery. In 2021, the project was awarded the NLA’s Community Prize.
