All the homes would be connected to local travel information exploiting the innovations of the internet. The product of inspiration and experience the proposed design offered a degree of innovation and sophistication that exceeded the high ambitions for the project. Home Projects Greenwich Millennium Village. Planning authority. We use cookies to personalize content and to analyze our traffic.
Built using some of the most advanced technology this development seeks to establish new sustainable methods of construction for the future. The village will be a beacon for 21st century living, with new technologies in the home and environmentally friendly modes of transport.
Over the past decade RSA Geotechnics have carried out a number of geotechnical and geo-environmental site investigations connected with the Greenwich Millennium Village project. Most recently we have completed ground investigations for Phase 5 of the development which involves the construction of a number of residential blocks up to eleven storeys in height, with associated access roads, car parking, amenity areas and ancillary buildings.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information. Having studied sustainable housing design, I have developed a strong interest in socially responsive urban design and I am curious to understand how the design, linking, and sculpting of spaces can influence the way people behave and interact with one another.
I want to understand more about how design can help to create a strong community network. With this in mind, I went to visit the village to analyse first-hand to what extent I believe the objectives of the development have been achieved on such a high profile project with the aim of achieving social sustainability. The concept of transformation through urban regeneration has become incredibly topical in recent years, especially with regards to sustainability.
Particular elements of concern often include; public health, community building and environmental protection. GMV was a cutting edge development at the time, that ticked all of these criteria boxes for achieving sustainability. But on top of this, I was interested in determining further changes that have occurred since initial construction, particularly in the areas that were built first, with regards to social sustainability and inclusion.
Has this time, combined with effective design, allowed for the establishment of a strong community? A mixture of uses commercial, social and communal with facilities a short distance from every home and mixed-tenure aimed to create a diverse and inclusive community where social interaction is facilitated and encouraged. My previous landscape architectural studies, specifically those focused around urban regeneration that seeks to enhance pedestrian experience and the study of sustainable housing design, with a personal focus on community creation, have informed my analysis.
Such studies, along with additional reading, have provided a foundation from which to critique the success of the GMV building massing, sculpting of space, and allocation of space to communal facilities in an attempt to create an inclusive and strong community network. Examples include: prioritising pedestrian experience, paying attention to the transitional gradient between public through communal to private spaces, providing protection, comfort and visual interest to spaces as well as activating edges to encourage staying.
The number of people staying in an urban space is an indicator of its quality, and staying is a facilitator of social interaction.
There are a number of types of interaction, from passive being alone in the presence of others e. All of these are vital in the creation of a strong community. This was the first part of the village that I reached when I arrived, having walked from the tube station. The rectangular courtyard is enclosed by shops and communal facilities on two sides and then by crossroads on the others.
The hard-surfaced area was particularly empty, which may be the result of a lack of seating or resting places combined with the exposed nature of the space. There is no barrier between the space and a busy road. Street trees would be a simple solution to this, acting as a more permeable barrier and providing a level of enclosure, making users of the courtyard feel safer.
It would also aid in addressing issues of both noise and air pollution. The level change and steps around the edge are a wasted opportunity and could have been designed with seating as a dual purpose as well as being better integrated with the adjacent shops.
A more permeable transition from the interior to exterior of the shops and into the courtyard space may also encourage use and thus interaction between users. The soft area of the courtyard was used significantly more during my observation time. Shelter and enclosure combined with explicit seating opportunities, in the form of benches, encouraged people to use these spaces and stay in them.
This affords all types of social interaction to then occur. Designing to encourage social interaction seems to have been more successful in the soft, planted side of the village square. Another aim of GMV was an emphasis of public over private spaces.
The relationship and transitional gradient between ownership of spaces is something that must be carefully considered in effective design to encourage interaction and to help build a community.
Despite it seeming counter-intuitive, it is important that not all spaces are completely publicly accessible when designing for community so that residents experience interaction at different levels of intimacy too. Street trees are particularly effective in creating a transitional social gradient as they are a more permeable boundary marker and they can provide shelter, enclosure, seasonal interest and even play opportunities as well as subtly defining ownership of space see Fig 3.
Although, the resulting experience is dependent on the species and maturity of the tree, and can therefore evolve over time. Surface materiality is another method of defining ownership of space in a subtler manner, for example, smaller sett sizes of paving are often used to indicate more private areas see Fig 4. In the residential streets throughout the village, it is clear that these design intentions are there, however it seems to have worked more successfully in some areas than others. This is predominantly down to residents themselves and how they choose to take ownership of spaces.
For example, where hedges surrounding private gardens have been neglected by homeowners and allowed to grow over 2 metres tall, this creates a harsh boundary between the gardens and the communal space adjacent to it, with no views in or out. Whereas when hedges have been maintained at a lower height, there can still be interactions of all types between homeowners and neighbours or pedestrians.
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