The brief called for a new residential masterplan on the shores of the River Tees, incorporating a new individual housing typology.Sited in Stockton-on-Tees, Middlesbourough UK, the project addresses a cold, wet climate rarely topping 20degrees and a tradition of working class row-houses and house-and-garden residential typologies, as well as a post-war legacy of medium and high-rise council housing.To the North of the site is established industrial land. To the East, a large-scale sporting complex. To the South is the river, with a river-front lineal park. Across the river is an established wall of 4-storey apartment buildings, and a university campus. To the West is future residential development.The plan includes a combination of mixed-use buildings, individual and attached houses. The periphery of the site to the North, South and East is ringed in apartments. On the Northern edge, the most hostile boundary, the apartments are 6 storeys high. They slope down in section to the south until they reach 4 storeys at the river's edge, in dialogue with the development on the other bank. These apartments form a outer protective ring to the development. Within the mini-city wall forms huddle individual and attached houses in a cluster pattern, as if shielding themselves against the cold. Their scatter-siting creates a network of small parks and intimate pedestrian spaces.The intention is to keep driving to a minimum. Carparking is situated underground, with only visitor parking on grade. The development includes community services such as a riverfront library, childcare and community centre, and retail development along its louder peripheral walls. Bikes are encouraged by the incorporation of safe bike lanes, and houses are densely packed.The houses and apartments themselves are conceived of as greenhouses for people. The houses are wedge-shaped boxes of translucent insulation. These thermal skins enclose black masonry boxes which house the private functions of living. The translucent skin acts as a solar collector and the internal thermal mass stores the heat energy for slow release over the nighttime. The greenhouse proposal reduces the need for heating and also allows lofty, large internal spaces where these would previously have been prohibited by heating demands.The public spaces of the houses, and what would have been the garden (the living, dining, cooking, socialising, growing) occur in the residual spaces between black boxes. The garden has been invited indoors and the indoor spaces have become a hybrid of internal and external function. In a cold, wet climate, residents can live in bright, spacious warm houses.The houses are planned to accommodate changing family-types. The black box spaces are multi-purpose and can be added to over time. The residual spaces are extremely flexible. Small studio apartment types for aging parents, separated couples or recalcitrant teens can be added to larger house modules. Equally, these modules can be used for working from home.The large mono-pitch roof forms are used to efficiently collect rain water and solar energy which is used to supplement the passive thermal design with wet-backed fireplaces. In summer, the houses are cooled by cross and stack-effect ventilation, and adjustable shading devices. Large portions of the outer skin can be opened, in the roof and wall planes, to create a truly ambiguous sense of indoor and outdoor/house and garden.The project creates an enriched series of in-between spaces.Within the ring-wall of apartments, the scatter-planned houses create a series of interior and exterior residual spaces, connecting residents with their neighbours and the community at large. The residual spaces create lovely pocket-parks and intimate pedestrian squares.Inside houses and apartments, the spaces of living are the left-overs. They are void spaces made between bits of specific program. They are flexible in use, and their character is spacious, light-filled and quasi-external: very unusual for this part of the world.