Co-Mobility Hub

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) are emerging across the UK and Europe as retrofitted solutions for existing places and as strategies for new places. In the case of the Phoenix, the majority of parking as well as deliveries will be managed within a bespoke Co-Mobility Hub, which removes the need for parking on streets or within basements within the body of the neighbourhood. Blue Badge parking and pick up / drop off is on street, close to the front doors of homes. The removal of parking allows street design to be safer, cleaner and much greener in the form of trees and rain gardens.

In addition to parking the Co-Mobility and adjacent buildings will house other supporting mobility services. These include electric car hire (car club), bike parking and cargo bike hire, car repair and maintenance, a public toilet and a solar power station on the roof.

Phoenix Place (shown below) will become a busy place where local people go to access car hire, collect parcels and access car repair services.

Foundry Workshops

The Foundry Workshops will provide the makers’ workshops for light industry and tech manufacturing businesses, making use of the existing structures of the existing Foundry Workshop building made on the site by Every’s. They will provide basic, flexible work space with shared equipment and facilities for use by the young businesses that will be housed here. It will include a taproom and open space which connects to the Foundry Yard, as well as a mezzanine that connects into the Belvedere.

Foundry Workshops floor plans schematic

Every Hall

Every Hall makes use of the existing structures of the old Hammonds Building. It will provide the Community Canteen, meeting spaces, coworking space and a winter garden. Again, the mezzanine in this building connects into the Belvedere, and the canteen connects to the Foundry Yards.

10m

Every Hall floor plans schematic

Flexible Co-Working / Event Space / Canteen Winter Gardens Canteen Kitchen Meeting Space WC’s Back of House

7.9 DENSITY

The density proposed for the Phoenix is lower than the core of historic Lewes despite the fact that it is being built at a time when the UK population is in excess of 67 million and the population in Georgian times when much of the high street was built was thought to be around 6 million.

The combination of all of the factors and drivers impacting on the masterplan ultimately result – after testing in the LVIA and other studies contained in the Environmental Statement –in a metric of housing density, expressed as dwellings per hectare.

It is often suggested without reference to solid measures, definitions or precedents, that any given density is ‘high’ or ‘low’ with the further supposition that ‘high’ is bad and ‘low’ is good, when in fact sufficient density is essential to a viable neighbourhood.

The example of Kensington & Chelsea is instructive. This, the most expensive part of the UK and the second most heavily populated local authority area in England and Wales, has the highest residential density in the country. For many discerning people, Kensington & Chelsea is evidentially a particularly appealing place to live even though it is extremely dense. Clearly, there are other factors at work here; These amount to what might be called, ‘amenity’ – the ‘pleasantness’ or ‘attractiveness’ of a place.

The density arising from the masterplanning work for the Phoenix is 95 dwellings per hectare. According to a national study of density by the government’s Commission for Architecture and the Built environment (CABE), this puts the Phoenix at the lower end of what it calls, ‘Historic Town Infil’ and just below midway in the metric for ‘urban villages’. The Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) argues in its paper,’ Double the Density, Halve the Land Needed’, that most brownfield developments could be planned at 100 dwellings per hectare or more and goes on to set out the many reasons why what it calls, ‘higher density living’ is positive for residents.

The resultant number of homes at the Phoenix is ‘good’ density in that it passes environmental tests, LVIA review, is leavened by plentiful, accessible and vibrant public space and other amenity, accessible to a wide range of community and other facilities and services in the neighbourhood and adjacent town centre, and benefits from easy access to the open green spaces in the town and surrounding countryside. Moreover, the diverse, high quality architecture and textured, carefully articulated surfaces of the buildings proposed, the proportions of block height to street, courtyards, adjacent block and important edge conditions, meant that the quality of the experience of living, working and visiting here will be pleasant and appealing.

90-95 dwellings/ha.

Executive homes 5-10 dwellings/ha.

Recent developments

Suburban semis 15-30 dwellings/ha.

Lewes Historic Centre 80-90 dwellings/ha.

Garden cities 30-40 dwellings/ha.

Older housing types

Victorian terraces 60-80 dwellings/ha.

Lewes New Development 95-105 dwellings/ha.

Urban villages 75-125 dwellings/ha.

Alternative approaches

Historic town infill 80-140 dwellings/ha.

Density scale of typologies based on CABE Density Report