Adapting a Retail Park into a New Neighbourhood with a Mix of Homes, Workspace and Civic Amenities

Our proposal for this retail and light industrial plot in Enfield transforms a peripheral, low density, isolated, mono cultural site into a well-connected accessible, richly mixed sustainable neighbourhood.

Integrated flexible commercial workspace and retail space, is proposed beneath new housing on the periphery along the A10 and A110, introducing finer grain, mixed use development behind. Each space across the site is designed to work hard – inside and out – maximising the mix of uses, day and night.

Through adaptive re-use of existing retail structures and phased new buildings and landscape, this evolving neighbourhood integrated with the existing light industrial context to the east. Along the A110 the TFL planned introduction of cycle lanes, trees and plating, new buses and a reduced road carriageway transforms this route from Enfield town to the Southbury Overground station and the new Ponders End Crossrail Station beyond. Once a highway, it now becomes a high street with a mix of maker spaces, small shops and new housing above.

Two new routes link the high street with the new housing community functions mixed with health and education space. This opens onto a market square, which leads to a proposed crossing to the existing school and playing fields. This ‘hypermix’ strengthens the existing urban fabric.

A broad mixture of residential typologies thrives from ‘bare build’ where the residents can customise their own homes, through to family row houses and duplexes, mixed tenure apartments and flexible ‘HAPPI’ older persons housing, conveniently locations close the small scale health facilities.