Common-sky

London is blessed to have a conglomeration of experimental post-war high-rise social housing. It has successfully provided a quick re-housing for the population with its modern modular construction method. These post war housing also encompasses a range of renowned brutalist architecture which are fought for preservation in recent decades. Now, many of these housings are facing threats of demolishing due to poor serviceability, safety and community management. This provoked many developers to flatten the existing estate to build new buildings to tackle the overwhelming London’s housing crisis.

In our proposal, instead of restocking housing by demolishing the current, existing estates should serve as scaffold to building new communities. Existing community density and building proportions will guide the new housing density and structural composition respectively. The proposed housing attachment will revitalize the community life by creating a flexible common space in between the new and existing in the sky. This space aims at recalibrating the social programs relevant for revitalizing the shared community between current estate’s residents and future tenants. We call this the ‘common-sky’ typology. Alton Estate in Roehampton will be used as a testing bed for this new typology.