Architectural practice astudio has been granted planning permission by London Borough of Barking and Dagenham for a second off-site housing development.
The project will utilise astudio’s groundbreaking building approach that reduces the cost of modular housing while providing high-quality homes. The development, Mellish Close in Barking, consists of one-, two- and three-bedroom flats and is targeted to be completed in 60 weeks rather than the 24-30-month time frame of traditional construction, providing the council with much needed homes more quickly.
The project will be delivered in partnership with regeneration company Be First and offsite modular manufacturer Rollalong. Manufacturing assembly will begin immediately and the project is expected to complete this year. astudio’s volumetric modular construction method enables the expedited assembly of low-energy homes: fitted out and manufactured offsite using precision methods of construction that will provide robust, high-design modular housing at less expense than traditional housing.
The homes are supplied on a turnkey standardised production basis, which minimises costs through bulk purchasing materials and components speeding up the production process and reducing the potential for defects during build. Multiple fixtures, fittings and cladding options both internally and externally are available, enabling each building to have a distinctive look and feel.
Modular housing offers one possible answer to the UK’s housing crisis — across the UK, local and national government now spend £2m a day on temporary accommodation for more than 77,000 homeless households under local authority care.
Richard Hyams, Co-founder and CEO of astudio, commented: “We are pleased to have secured this second round of planning permission from the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham for the development at Mellish Close. This is another milestone for the amodular design and build system, and demonstrates there is a better way to procure affordable homes far faster and at much lower cost than traditional construction techniques.
“That the UK faces a housing crisis is recognised all the way up to the corridors of Westminster. As a recent cross-party Parliamentary Commission has found, we need to build three million affordable homes over the next 20 years just to keep up with Britain’s housing needs. Given the scale of the housing crisis modular construction techniques such as ours must form part of the response of policymakers to address the UK’s housing crisis. To be given the go-ahead for a project of this scale tells us planners have begun to recognize this.”
