High Road Ilford

High Road Ilford

Redevelopment of a car sales garage to 25 luxury apartments

Project year
2019

Size
1660m2

Client
Private developer

Location
Redbridge

Pinchin Architects were initially appointed to produce Building Control and Tender drawings for a redevelopment project along Ilford High Road that had been granted Planning Permission for 25 new luxury apartments. On reviewing the scheme, Pinchin Architects believed there was an opportunity to improve the overall aesthetics of the scheme and the apartment layouts whilst keeping the project within the same budget.

Using a Section 73 Application which allows for minor material amendments to a granted planning permission, the scheme was carefully modified in line with comments from the Local Authority. The originally proposed elevations used render and melamine panels which we believed would require constant maintenance and would age badly. Instead, we proposed two complementary modern grey bricks; a light-coloured grey for projecting elements, and a darker grey for the recessed parts. This change would provide a subtly varied and hardwearing material that would age well on the busy High Road.

Moving from a rendered scheme to brick would add some additional cost to the overall project, so to offset this, we improved the efficiency and stack-ability of the proposed units. This allowed the scheme to come in within the original budget.

Working closely with the Local Authority, the client and the design team, we were able to deliver significant improvements within a short timescale without having to revisit the original planning permission.