Oakfield

Nationwide are working to create quality, fairly priced homes that people want and need. We are working with them to take a fresh approach to development in Nationwide’s home town of Swindon as part of a commitment to find local solutions to a national housing crisis. The scheme provides 239 homes with a mixture of tenures, suitable for local people at every stage of their life, from first time buyers, to families and over 55s. The project aims to deliver a high quality benchmark for housing, which challenges the approach of the traditional volume housebuilder.

The conceptual framework for the development is based on creating a permeable and walkable new neighbourhood with a grid of streets and paths that respond to existing facilities. A single primary vehicular street connects Greenbridge Road and Marlowe Avenue. It feeds the dwellings via tertiary roads, which are designed to be overlooked to allow for safe, pedestrian priority shared areas. The development is designed to extend its positive influence beyond the site boundaries, improving the public realm around the shops, creating a new community hub near the Oakfield Project, a special education school located adjacent to the site.

The project has been developed through extensive consultation with the local community and in close dialogue with the council’s planning team. A Community Organiser has been employed to work with local people, giving them a voice in the community we’re collaboratively creating. Through research, different generations of people tell us they’d like to live side by side, which is unusual in new developments. Due to innovative design, people will be able to stay in their homes through to later life.

Team: PRP (Collaborating Architects) / Land Use Consultants (Landscape Architect) / Lichfields (Planning Consultants) / XCO2 (M&E Consultants) / Alan Baxters Ltd (Structural Engineers) / Calford Seaden (Quantity Surveyor)

Collaborators: Chris Brown Claire Bennie John Long

Status: Under construction