In November 2006 Terence O’Rourke, acting on behalf of the Galliford Try Partnership, submitted a successful bid to English Partnerships to prepare a masterplan for Northfields, a mixed tenure residential scheme on a 6.9 ha site in Colchester.

In addition to the design needing to respond positively to English Partnership’s best practice guidance, it also needed to adhere to the outline planning permission granted by Colchester Borough Council in January 2007. The permission required a right of access for vehicles through the site to a proposed new school, which would form the northern boundary of the site.

The development will create a new neighbourhood in Colchester, which will set down a quality marker of its time and place. The design responds to today’s lifestyle needs, is outward looking, welcoming, environmentally aware and robust.

Northfields is located within 10 minutes’ walking distance from Colchester North railway station. There is a high frequency train service to central London in 45 minutes. The site is bordered to the east by a strategic highway, the Northern Approach Road 2, which has an acoustic bund running along its length providing a physical barrier to movement.

The site

The site rises over 14m from the lowest point in the south-west corner. This change in level affords a direct visual link to the town centre sitting astride a ridge to the south. Also to the south is a retail park with an ASDA superstore, but this is isolated from the site by an area of relatively recent housing which blocks direct links to it. The housing estate presents a weak frontage to Turner Road, which forms the site’s southern boundary.

To the north is Colchester’s General Hospital and, lying in between, is land which is allocated as the site for a new school. To the east is a recently constructed health centre and link to the Highwoods Country Park. The northern part of the site was formerly used for ancillary hospital buildings, with the southern half characterised by a rough grassland slope containing a number of Lombardy poplars.

It was clear following the site assessment that Northfields needed to create its own character to deliver a new and more positive identity for this prominent area of the town.

Five principles were explored to ensure delivery of the vision:

• the need to respond to the existing site;
• creating a welcoming and well-connected place;
• promoting a bold and contemporary character;
• ensuring the delivery of quality homes where people want to live;
• designing a scheme which would work positively with the new school site.

Using these principles, a variety of different conceptual master plans was produced and tested until a preferred design evolved based around a clear hierarchy of streets and spaces.

The park

The principal spatial element of the scheme is the creation of a new park, positioned to take advantage of both good views over the town, and the south-facing slope to encourage recreation. The park intentionally uses the existing topography to open out to the southern boundary in order to encourage people from the surrounding neighbourhood to use the park. The location of the park allows for the retention of the Lombardy poplar trees.

At Northfields all public streets will connect and link up not only the park and the new school, but will also be orientated to allow people to move through the site and link to routes beyond. There are bus stops on Turner Road which will provide a high frequency service to the town centre. A street within the site has been aligned towards the North Tower on the General Hospital site, borrowing this feature in order to further assist legibility and placemaking.

The street pattern makes everywhere within the site easily walkable within 5-10 minutes. To encourage cycling, two routes have been formally identified running north-south and east-west. A 20mph design speed for highways means that all routes will be accessible to cyclists. Junctions are tabled to slow vehicles and to demonstrate pedestrian priority.

The main route to the school is designed as a formal avenue, ending in a small green when it meets the school site. Trees are planted at consistent intervals, and the space between used for on-street parking. The front boundary of properties is marked by dwarf walls and railings backed by clipped hedges. A parapet roofline is used to architecturally reinforce the formality of the approach to the school. To improve permeability, a mews forms a shared street through a larger block, fronted by houses to assist public safety and with solid walls, not fences, linking between the properties to aid private security.

Although the majority of the development is of perimeter block form in order to create a clear distinction between public and private space, the constraints created by the existing Northern Approach Road 2, its acoustic bund, and the steep slope in the southernmost corner of the site lent itself to a different approach.

To create a strong identity and to landmark the development within the town, four sculptural apartment blocks, ranging in height from four to seven storeys, rise out of the slope. This creates both drama and excitement at the junction and strong frontage to the park, providing significant numbers of flats with excellent views across the park and towards the town.

The curved design also helps to give more flats good access to daylight than a conventional building, and the generous balconies give each flat a very usable exterior living space. The social housing provision is pepper-potted throughout the blocks – as it is across the whole scheme – to foster a sense of inclusion.

By placing the parking beneath the buildings and utilising the slope for efficiency of construction, the park appears to flow into and around the buildings which encourages the use of open space by residents. Planting proposals for the green space use species that are tolerant of hot and dry conditions. Spaces such as barbeque areas encourage social activity in the park.

Essex style

The masterplan provides for the phased delivery of 463 dwellings, comprising 233 houses and 230 flats at a density of 68 dwellings per hectare. The materials chosen for Northfields – a considered mix of brick, render, timberboarding and interlocking slates – are designed to show a modern evolution of a traditional Essex style.

Individual dwellings are designed to be rated EcoHomes Excellent (Code for Sustainable Homes level 3-4). This involves the use of grey water recycling, passive solar, photovoltaics and improved levels of internal insulation, natural ventilation and daylighting. Waste recycling for both houses and apartments has been designed from the outset as an integral component of the building design. Every dwelling has cycle storage.

Houses are a mix of two and three storey, providing two, three and four bedroom dwellings, all with front and rear gardens. The one and two bedroom apartments are provided not only within specific buildings, but are also used to turn corners along the frontage to Turner Road.

Car parking is deliberately mixed between on-street residents’ permit parking, front drives, rear on-plot, small rear parking courts and secure underground parking for the apartment blocks.

Northfields is designed to be a new place in Colchester with its own identity that meets the needs of a wide range of residents, both now and in the future. The scheme is design-led, built around the park and links the way to the new school. It is designed to be a place where people will want to live.

The design process has evolved a synergy between professions within the practice and the client, engaging and involving both English Partnerships, Colchester Borough Council and the local Parish, to bring forward a deliverable scheme that meets a wide variety of aspirations. The phase one planning application was granted approval in November 2007.