Abbey Wood Affordable Net-Zero Housing

Haptic has won planning approval for six affordable, contemporary, net-zero-carbon homes for council home-building scheme, Greenwich Builds. The project directly replaces a disused garage site on Viola Avenue in Abbey Wood, helping to deliver much-needed new housing for local people in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, southeast London. The client commissioned Haptic to design new and truly affordable homes across seven small sites in Abbey Wood. Working in close collaboration with the council, the design team, and in consultation with the local community, Haptic has designed 23 new homes in total across these sites.

At Viola Avenue, the simple form of each two-storey building creates a clear rhythm along the street frontage, while maximising the green space around the buildings for future tenants to enjoy. Generous layouts and volumes optimise natural daylight and ventilation. The relatively low building heights will avoid undue impact on neighbouring residences, and the one-bedroom homes will offer an open and spacious street presence, with each new house well set back from one another, and the street. The material palette for the development, selected to complement its surroundings, and deliver a robust, low maintenance building, will feature pale red clay bricks, with a range of detailing, complemented by a matt green powder coated finish for all visible metalwork, including window and door frames, and canopy soffits. The landscaping around the buildings is designed to carefully embed the scheme into its new surroundings, and will enhance on-site biodiversity by +300%. Larger trees will signpost each individual house entrance, offering intuitive wayfinding, and bringing a leafy character to Viola Avenue. No onsite car parks are provided; instead, active and healthy transportation modes are promoted by providing ample and safe external storage space. Directly replacing a site that attracted anti-social behaviour, the all-electric, energy efficient homes will be net zero carbon and fossil-free in operation, helping to improve living standards for all residents, while creating a safe, sustainable and healthy place to live.

Speaking to Architects’ Journal about the project , Timo Haedrich, Co-founder and Director at Haptic Architects, said: “The shortage of affordable housing remains a major issue, and in London, the challenge is exacerbated by the scarcity of available land. With that in mind, small infill and brownfield sites can offer part of the solution. While we still need to think at scale to address the issue as a whole, we believe small sites have a great deal to offer too.

When Greenwich Builds approached us to collaborate and assemble a design team to explore multiple small sites, we embraced the challenge. There is a clear benefit in treating these as a connected network of sites—maximising efficiencies while taking a creative approach to each individual plot and delivering sustainable, context-sensitive designs. We developed layout and massing models that were tested across the entire series of sites, requiring only minor adjustments where necessary. This approach allowed us to focus sharply on each individual plot while keeping the bigger picture in view.

Our recent project on Viola Avenue exemplifies this approach. The scheme transforms a disused garage site into six net-zero-carbon homes, demonstrating how underutilised plots can be reintegrated into the existing urban fabric to deliver much-needed housing.”