Keybridge

'Keybridge House' a BT Telephone Exchange, previously occupied the site. A large concrete podium and tower, it filled most of the block and presented a series of unengaging facades to the street. Options for keeping and adapting the existing building were explored but the almost 5m-high floor to ceiling heights in the tower, specifically constructed for their original telephone exchange function, precluded successful conversion.

Key requirements for redeveloping the site focussed on breaking down the mass of the existing building, introducing permeability through the site and improving connections, reinforcing and activating street frontages, introducing a mix of uses and developing a more appropriate architectural language for replacement buildings. A number of existing buildings around the site's periphery also needed reintegrating into the city fabric. Even on a site this small, the disposition of the public realm would be required to play a key role.

The project was delivered in two phases. Phase One establishes most of the residential buildings. Two red brick contemporary mansion blocks present a strong edge to South Lambeth Road, their rooftops enlivened with white terracotta penthouses that read like a mini terrace of houses, while shops and restaurants animate their ground floor frontages. Two tall buildings play a significant role within the composition. The tallest at 35 storeys relates to the scale of the emergent context on the other side of the railway viaduct but at the same time its pared back brick facade belongs to the architectural character of Keybridge, and its massing steps down in response to the shift in context towards Vauxhall Park.

On Wyvil Road, a terrace of stacked maisonettes is the smallest building in the development, providing 10 affordable housing units. Its scale, character and materiality relate closely to other housing in the area and by abutting the Vauxhall Griffin pub it restores that building's function as a bookend to the terrace.

Phase Two develops the contextually rich architecturally language and character of the first phase with the use of the same red brick, and details that are responsive to its Victorian neighbours. The plan to expand Wyvil Road Primary school preempts an anticipated increased in demand for local school places as the significant amount of residential building currently on-site in the VNEB area steadily completes. Robustly constructed in brick, the school occupies space at the base of a third, lower residential tower and will have generous flexible areas for open-air play and informal learning. It has an efficient and logical plan that successfully negotiates between the requirements of the building's upper residential floors and the school below, with out-of-hours community access provided to the school's facilities.