CRUDDAS PARK SOCIAL REGENERATION Cruddas Park is located in Elswick, Newcastle Upon Tyne. The site formerly consisted of an existing 1960’s shopping podium and underground carpark which sits below Cruddas Park House a 23-storey residential tower block, with 5 towers located to the south of the site. The Cruddas Park Social Regeneration project focuses on the overturning of the monotonous production of housing estates cultivated on the edges of cities within the UK. The homogeneity of these developments led me to question the conformist and compliant role that architecture is taking and its manifestation of societal power relations. The Cruddas park site itself has a long history of poverty and political unrest. Riots throughout history have been protests of violence against the demolition of suitable terraced housing deemed “slums” under T. Dan Smith pushing out the poorest communities from their houses. Cruddas Park Social Regeneration is designed to combat these issues moving Elswick forward from its dark history. The sites challenges are within the topography, working with the existing structure and to design for Social Interaction on site such as intimate spaces, pedestrian routes, and communal facilities. To form connections through-out the wider community, my Cruddas Park Social Regeneration design includes a new pedestrianised street and the refurbishment of the Shopping Podium, the refurbishment of the existing Cruddas House Tower to create opportunities for social interaction, and also the creation additional terraced housing on site to integrate a broader demographic on site. The strong street network is designed to form social connections throughout the site and wider neighbourhood, creating new pedestrian routes bringing the exiting community back into the site from the wider neighbourhood. Using the topography of the sites landscape creates views over the River Tyne and helps direct people through and down the sites main pedestrian route to connect the lower towers to the main shopping podium. The atmosphere between my terraced streets is key to creating a community within the neighbourhood. These lie at the centre of my urban plan. The new pedestrian routes through the new modular terraced housing provide pinch points and expansion of within the V shaped streets to be communally inhabited. This active frontage of the terraced housing is formed within the design of the plans, providing the ground floor with around the clock activity with the use of the study and kitchen which both open out to the communal gardened pedestrian street. Ecology is important in sustainability and environment of the site to replenish the site of nature that will be lost with the populating of Cruddas park grass area that lay between the towers. To provide a biodiverse ecosystem and also educational development, improved health and wellbeing, recreation, tourism to the site, amenity, air quality. The provisions on the site to increase biodiversity consist of green roofs ,SUDS ,communal green spaces littered throughout the urban plan. These provide space for the plantation of trees and wildflowers, beehives, vegetation patches, and permeable paving throughout the site all protect and encouraging wildlife that otherwise would have been pushed away from urbanisation. Sustainability is furthered with the use of Timber prefabricated modules used throughout the terraced housing. This paired with passive house standards, MHRV, Solar Pv and Thermal panels and a Ground source heat pump provides an environmentally friendly urban plan with little carbon embodiment.
Abbey McGuire
abbeymcguire@live.co.uk
CV and Portfolio available upon request. https://www.linkedin.com/in/abbey-mcguire-32b700196