Ebury Edge is a temporary development by Westminster City Council, combining community space, a café, affordable work and retail spaces. Together, they give the estate a lively new street presence and shelter a shared courtyard at the rear, offering a continuous focal point for the community of the Ebury Bridge Estate throughout its phased re-development.
Westminster City Council is undertaking its most ambitious housing and regeneration programme of this time. Pivotal to the plan is the Council’s redevelopment of the Ebury Bridge Estate in Pimlico, situated a few minutes from Victoria Station and adjacent to Chelsea Barracks. Regeneration of the estate will provide 781 mixed tenure homes, including full re-provision of existing social housing, much needed family-sized units, and a right to return for all residents.
Ebury Edge reflects the City Council's dedication to creating a new exemplar for estate regeneration through a sensitivity not just to the end goals, but also the process of regeneration. Designed by Jan Kattein Architects with ARUP, two storeys of workspace units are arranged in a colourful timber-clad terrace along Ebury Bridge Road. Together with a café, housed together with a community hall in a distinct, single storey structure, these work to create an active edge to the Estate through its transition.
Workspaces are sized to provide an affordable foothold for small local businesses, with generous shop fronts to support retail activity at ground level. A basic fit out leaves them adaptable to the individual needs of a broad range of tenants while providing them with an operational framework to grow and inform the long term retail strategy for the site.
The building's colourful presence, including a high-level floodlit tower, reflects residents' desire to create an 'invitation' into the Estate. Hand tinted cedar shingles and feather-edge cladding retain the texture of timber grain, while their tones will shift and weather over the building's short lifespan. Community gardening is embedded at the heart of the scheme with a high level planting deck and scaffold 'trellis' which overspan the development. The lightweight timber structure was designed to minimise embodied energy and foundations, and can be dismantled into its constituent panels and re-assembled elsewhere once the site comes forward for long term development in around 4 years.
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