Tustin Estate’s Manor Grove: A Love Letter

Date: 2022

Sustainable small sites housing that’s big on community.

Sketches and renders for Manor Grove, Tustin Estate

Following a Southwark Council competition, JA Projects as part of a team led by the dRMM has been working with local residents to redesign the Tustin Estate near Old Kent Road in Southwark. JA Projects’ housing proposal to deliver new innovative in-fill housing across two small sites in the Manor Grove area of the estate will provide 14 new homes for existing residents of Tustin Estate as part of Phase 1 of the development.

JA Projects’ design propositions have been shaped through engagement with local residents and the study into what makes the existing character and identity of the Manor Grove special – its terrace typology, integration within the wider estate and relationship to local manufacturing. The resulting design is therefore a love letter to Manor Grove, which reinterprets, reimagines and caringly embraces the existing look, feel and activity of this pocket of London. 

Designed for social rent, and located on small gap sites, the proposals make the most of their constraints, embracing the street, nature and proximity between neighbours. Rather than being expressed as individual terrace houses, the buildings are articulated as blocks, in the same way as the existing Manor Grove homes.

The accommodation consists of two distinctive rows and includes a range of typologies and sizes. All new homes have front doors onto the street and private gardens to the rear – the home layouts responding to a resident-led manifesto and Southwark’s design standards. Every home is dual aspect and has a recessed, covered porch. All living spaces, bedrooms and bathrooms have generously sized windows. The two perpendicular blocks are connected by a corner building which defines a new pedestrianised play street connecting Manor Grove to the wider estate whilst introducing diversity into the public realm through unusual, non-native planting. 

Viewed within the wider Tustin Estate development, these prototypical homes have a little more flex to trail innovative arrangement and construction techniques such as occupiable roofs and clay block walls respectively.  A firm sustainability commitment, set out early on in the design process ensures the design contributes positively to tackling the climate emergency and biodiversity loss. 

The planning application for the Tustin Estate Regeneration project was submitted in April 2022 to  Southwark Council for approval. The project is expected to go on site in Autumn 2022.