Providing 98 new homes on the site of a former car-park in busy East Ham as part of a mixed-use retail and residential development.

The site was a former Co-operative retail building, with the existing redundant basement is still in place, as it had been used as a car park for many years.

The development provides 98 new homes, with two storeys of retail at ground and first floor levels. A podium above provides external amenity space for the residents. Three blocks extend between 2-9 storeys above the podium. This creates blocks with distinct identities and maximises use of the site, whilst minimising the impact to the surrounding properties.

The structural solution takes the form of a reinforced concrete frame, with a large column grid in the retail space and a smaller gird for the residential slabs to keep these to a minimum, cost-effective solution. The proposed structural scheme is to utilise a reinforced concrete frame, with a large column grid in the retail space and a smaller gird for the residential areas, delivering a minimum-depth, cost-effective solution. This approach required the introduction of a transfer slab at the podium level, which is also used to support the heavier weight of the landscaping.

The scheme was originally envisaged as utilising a Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) frame above podium level. However, we had concerns that this approach would not deliver the most sustainable solution. We developed a reinforced concrete alternative solution, calculating the embodied carbon associated with the two alternative schemes and demonstrated that by careful placement of the columns in the retail and residential units to minimise the depth of the transfer slab, the alternative reinforced concrete framed solution delivered lower embodied carbon than the CLT alternative.

The sustainable drainage design looked to maximise as much of the above-ground attenuation as possible. By calculating the attenuating properties of the landscaped podium we were able to keep the below-ground drainage attenuation tank to a minimum, whilst still meeting the targets of the Local Authority and the wider London Plan.