Agar Grove wins two gongs at London Planning Awards 2019

Agar Grove Estate scooped the Mayor’s Award for Good Growth and the Mayor’s Award for Sustainable and Environmental Planning at the London Planning Awards 2019.

Designed by architects Hawkins Brown and Mae Architects with landscape architecture by Grant Associates, the scheme to regenerate a 1960s housing estate is the largest of the London Borough of Camden Council’s community investment projects.

The Good Growth award recognises Agar Grove’s inclusive design, reflecting the Mayor of London’s ambition to create a city for all Londoners, as expressed through the Mayor’s ‘Good Growth by Design’ programme.  The Award for Sustainable and Environmental Planning acknowledges the scheme’s high energy performance standards.

Agar Grove Estate was conceived in 2012 as an exemplary project, showcasing high sustainability standards and a ‘fabric-first’ approach to increase energy performance.

Work started on site in 2013 to create 493 new homes for new and existing residents, of which, 345 will be built to the very high Passivhaus fabric performance standard.

The public realm concept of interconnecting streets and squares is a key element of the estate’s design concept and provides a new urban fabric to the site. The aim was to move away from the dead-end routes and poor connectivity associated with the original estate.

At the heart of the new estate, a garden square provides a landscape of pedestrian and cycle priority circulation routes, play spaces, garden and park planting, and seating. Individual residential units and apartment blocks all open out onto the garden square and the adjoining new streets, creating a sense of cohesion and access to outdoor space.

The awards are the latest addition to a string of accolades to be given to Agar Grove, which won a Housing Design Award in 2015.

The first phase of the development was completed in April 2018.