Evening Standard New Homes Awards 2019: the winning new-build housing developments revealed
The Evening Standard New Homes Awards champion excellence across the housing spectrum from first-time buyer flats to innovative family homes, factory lofts and grand mansions.
Judged by readers, this year’s winners have everything buyers want — inventive design, hi-tech, low-energy features, thoughtful use of space, sustainability, glamour and value.
Grand Prix Winner — and Best London Home (developments of more than 100 homes)
THE GLASSHOUSE, CALEDONIAN ROAD, ISLINGTON
By London Square
Awesome King’s Cross regeneration has spilled over to Caledonian Road, for decades the scrag end of fashionable Islington. “The Cally”, as locals call it, heads north from the transformed railway station past Pentonville and Holloway jails. Cut through by train tracks and Regent’s Canal, the area’s industrial legacy had kept The Cally off the home-buying map.
A decaying Victorian factory turned into 25 low-energy homes and work studios was the first telltale sign of gentrification along The Cally. Now comes London Square Caledonian Road, with 252 flats in the Market Road conservation area that includes 10-acre Caledonian Park.
Developer London Square came up with this “place-making” scheme of restrained design. Five low- to mid-rise blocks clad in pastel-coloured bricks, with metal window frames and full-height glass, are set around landscaped courtyards and play areas. Cally Yard, a new creative business hub, is part of the scheme. Flats are bright and open-plan, with underfloor heating and a balcony. There’ll be an on-site gym and 24-hour concierge.
The Glasshouse is the focal point. This nine-storey block has a crisp white exterior and extensive glazing plus a swish hotel-type entrance lobby. Our winning two-bedroom flat has a generous 953sq ft of space and a triple-aspect open-plan living area. It was snapped up for £985,000.
Best London Home (developments of 100 homes or less)
THE FLORAL COURT COLLECTION, COVENT GARDEN
By Capco
Seen by many as the real heart of London, Covent Garden buzzes with the excitement of opera and theatre and the showmanship of the Piazza, which draws 45 million visitors a year.
The listed colonnaded market area has been a shopping hub since the Eighties. The last 10 years have seen a discreet makeover by Capco, the area’s main landowner, with a masterplan for a “modern luxury retail quarter” and homes to match.
Most new Covent Garden homes are the result of small-scale refurbishment, mainly office and warehouse conversions, or projects that blend new-build elements and heritage architecture. The Floral Court Collection is one of the latter. This stylish scheme of 29 flats is centred around a new public courtyard with restaurant, deli and florist. Architect KPF says the building’s stepped shape is inspired by the stacked baskets of the original market quarter.
Residents enter via an exquisite 18th-century lobby with concierge. Homes have “classic-contemporary” interiors featuring natural stone, handcrafted cabinetry and luxurious silk, velvet and leather finishes.
Best first-time buyer home
LANGLEY SQUARE, DARTFORD
By Weston Homes
North-east Kent’s industrial eyesores are vanishing, while imaginative regeneration is bringing stylish, affordable new homes for first-timers priced out of London. Dartford is a big beneficiary of the high-speed rail link connecting Dover to St Pancras, and is closer than many parts of west London to Canary Wharf and the City.
Langley Square is a new 400-home neighbourhood in the town centre alongside the train station and River Darent. The site has a fascinating history, first as a paper mill then as a plant for Wellcome pharmaceuticals, which produced cod liver oil along with medicine chests for the royal family and the explorers Scott of the Antarctic and Ernest Shackleton. The factory was wound down in 2008.
Developer Weston Homes has delivered value-for-money, imaginative, thoughtfully designed homes in an attractive setting overlooking a mill pond. Our winning two-bedroom apartment cost £260,000.
Best family home priced below £750,000
THE BOURTON, HAYFIELD VIEWS, OXFORDSHIRE
By Hayfield
This scenic new development of stone houses is a worthy addition to the ancient village of Great Bourton in the Cherwell Valley.
Our value-for-money winner, The Bourton, has five bedrooms, a double garage and cost £575,000.
Best Out-Of-London Home (development of less than 100 homes)
COPPERAS REACH, HARKSTEAD, SUFFOLK
By Facit Homes
Fronting a sandy beach and the River Stour in Suffolk, this low-rise, contemporary-design family house replaced a cramped Fifties weekend cottage.
Copperas Reach is more than twice the size, created by a specialist company that digitally designs and builds homes using a structure prefabricated in a factory.
This process means buyers can get eco-friendly, wow-factor interiors with extensive glazing and open-plan spaces.This red cedar-clad home feels part of the ecology of the waterfront setting. It cost £1.18 million
Best Out-of-London Home (developments of more than 100 homes)
THE GADWALL, THE RESERVE, WALTHAM CROSS, hertfordshire
By Higgins Homes
Lea Valley Regional Park — a 10,000-acre green space — forms the “back garden” of this design-led development of townhouses aimed at young families.
The clean-lined homes have Scandi influences, with weatherboarding and silver-grey brickwork. Prices from £549,500.
Best Conversion
HAMPSTEAD MANOR, LONDON NW3
By Mount Anvil
Hampstead Manor is the challenging redevelopment of a listed college campus into 156 homes spread across 13 buildings.
The site includes a chapel and splendid Kidderpore Hall, a Georgian mansion built by an East India Company merchant. Grand flats have been created in new and converted red-brick blocks, while new townhouses, partly subterranean, slot into a sloping plot of land
On a wide, leafy avenue near Hampstead Village and the Heath, the estate has the tranquil feel of a quadrangled and cloistered Oxbridge college. The grounds are freshly landscaped and there is a spa and underground parking. Prices from £975,000 to £2.75 million.
Best apartment
THE MANSION AT SUNDRIDGE PARK, BROMLEY
By City & Country
This “imperial country-style home in suburban London” is one of 22 residences carved from The Mansion at Sundridge Park, right, designed by renowned 18th-century architect John Nash.
The listed property boasts 13 original ceiling paintings, grand arched windows, ornate decorative plasterwork, an Adam marble fireplace, plus a highly unusual circular drawing room that opens on to a wide terrace.
What makes this converted historic property even more special is the spectacular location. The grounds were originally laid out in the 18th century by noted landscape designer Humphrey Repton. Edward VII attended shooting parties at the estate, before a private golf course was cut out of the valley. The mansion is reached via the estate’s lodge entrance and a half-mile driveway that runs alongside fairways, making for a fantastic sense of arrival.
The winning 1,658sq ft flat cost £1.2 million.
Best Family Home (priced above £1.5m)
THE WHITE HOUSE AT KIDDERPORE GREEN, HAMPSTEAD
By Barratt London
The sensitive redevelopment of a college campus, Kidderpore Green yielded 128 mainly red-brick Arts and Crafts-style homes in two-and-a-half acres. Working within conservation area constraints, architect Allies Morrison had to balance the site’s different urban contexts, bounded on one side by bustling Finchley Road and sedate Kidderpore Avenue on the other.
An old library became flats, while Hampstead School of Art, of which Henry Moore was an original patron, gained a splendid new contemporary-design pavilion and community hub.
The White House has 3,100sq ft of space, with four bedrooms and a garden. The lower-ground floor, earmarked for a gym or cinema room, has a separate entrance via a private underground garage. The property cost £3.75 million.
Best Family Home (priced between £750,000-£1.5m)
THE FARMINGTON, POLO FIELD, CANTERBURY, KENT
By Millwood Designer Homes
Millwood uses reclaimed materials to build architectural variations of traditional manor houses and farmhouses in the Kent, Surrey and Sussex countryside. Though new, the homes have a mature and weathered look.
The four-bedroom Farmington house cost £760,000 and has a Cape Cod-style clapperboard and red-brick façade plus a clay-tiled roof, and is set in a generous-size plot with detached garage and far-reaching views. None of the 18 detached homes at the site is the same.
Best Luxury Home
WELLINGTON HOUSE, ESHER
By Hyatt Group
Behind the classical façade of this French Provincial-inspired mansion is a lavish, meticulously crafted interior with Art Deco and midcentury modern flourishes. The gated private estate is a golden address in the Surrey stockbroker belt.
Boasting a colossal 16,000sq ft of space, at the heart of Wellington House is a dramatic helical staircase that appears to be suspended from the glazed roof above. A subterranean complex has not just a spa, but also a nightclub, cinema, wine cellar and gym, while the showpiece ground-floor living area connects via a frameless glass bridge to an open-sided loggia with views out to a swimming pool and manicured grounds.
Six sumptuous bedroom suites have his and hers dressing rooms, while the grounds feature a “magical pathway” through calming, Japanese-style gardens with pergolas, pagodas and fountains. Yours for £9 million.
Best Retirement Living Development
THE FARTHINGS, LEATHERHEAD, SURREY
By Beechcroft Developments
This new address for over-55s blends independent village-style living with additional support services provided by a neighbouring care home.
The 47 purpose-designed homes include an extra bedroom in case live-in care is required. Houses cost from £650,000.
Architectural Merit Award
BLACKFRIARS CIRCUS, SOUTHWARK
By Barratt London
Wide, boulevard-like Blackfriars Road is part of the new Cycle Superhighway running from Elephant & Castle to King’s Cross. Blackfriars Circus, with 336 new homes, replaced a cluster of outmoded Sixties office buildings and helped reinvent a streetscape from an earlier century.
The flats loom over a listed obelisk, a stone monument dating back to the 18th century when the circus, or roundabout, was the focal point of a grand, Continental-style, tree-lined avenue. As now, back then it was a key transport artery, part of a road network leading to Southwark Cathedral. Much of the historic fabric was devastated during the Blitz. But today the circus is the confluence of five major routes from bridges crossing the Thames.
Architect Maccreanor Lavington designed five buildings of varying height and scale, interspersed with internal courtyards and squares. The Delphini Apartments, a seven-storey block with a dramatic, glass-domed atrium, reinstates the concave frontage of earlier Georgian architecture and the circus itself, while hexagonal-shaped Conquest Tower is a new landmark. Rising 27 storeys, it is topped with a “crown” of thinning pinnacles and has a communal sky lounge. At the base of the tower is a five metre-high colonnade, strengthening the building’s relationship to the street and helping to animate shops and cafés. Many flats have winter gardens, instead of open projecting balconies with restricted use.
Another of the project’s outstanding design features is the use of architectural brickwork. Robust and almost utilitarian, the buildings are clad in high-quality decorative bricks in a palette of 50 different types — glazed, bronzed, greens and browns, whites and off-whites — that relate to the neighbourhood’s urban character and context, chiming with a classic Peabody Estate across the road. Only penthouse apartments remain for sale at Blackfriars Circus, priced from £2.5 million.