Southern Quarter, Oakfield, Ryde Urban Village scheme Southern Housing Group

Short listed for Housing Design Awards 2007

The Southern Quarter scheme is a housing regeneration project that not only seeks to repair the land back to an useable status, but hopes to repair a run down area of Ryde on the Isle of Wight.

The affordable housing scheme is championed by Southern Housing Group (SHG) with aid from Southern Space, SHG's in house development company (68% affordable units for Southern Housing Group and 32% sale units for Southern Space). This creates a high quality scheme for the residents of Ryde secured with additional funding from the sale component of the development.

The scheme comprises of 30 houses and 119 Flats on a 2 hectare site.

The ambition for the architecture was to create a new identity and sense of place for the area incorporating the following.

• Urban village feel
• To take advantage of the good views across the valley
• To provide an attractive roofscape from the other side of the valley
• Create a good relationship between larger flat blocks and houses
• Design that works with the sloping nature of the site
• Create good architectural legibility
• A sympathetic mix of traditional and contemporary

The layout creates a series of linked spaces and good permeability to the wider community. The architecture also relates to the scale of the existing adjacent buildings while creating its own identity and place.

For further information contact Andrew or Panos