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Moss Side\'s Regeneration Success thanks to BTP\'s Design

We are delighted with the outcome of our innovative design to replace a row of dilapidated shops in Moss Side with high quality housing for client Mosscare Housing overcoming the challenge of working around two properties, whose owners couldn't agree a sale.

324–342 Moss Lane East was a run down three storey terraced block of shops with flats above, which for many years had been in very poor condition, with only two of the properties still occupied in 2013 and the rest boarded up.  

BTP Director, Malcolm Knight said: "As specialist architects we were able to help resolve the 'stalemate' issue that Mosscare Housing were up against. By cleverly designing and orchestrating a plan to build the new homes around the existing two, we were able to guide Mosscare through the project, enabling them to demolish seven units and build six new houses in a separate block with only a front elevation linkage to the retained two properties."

This was a particularly challenging project due to the unsafe nature of the existing structures, making it inaccessible in places. Chiefly, the retention of two properties between two building sites, the safety of occupants and the detailing of substructures and drainage, required complex design work.

 The scheme was designed as a single block with the two original properties integrated, so that the eye would slide over them without registering either their difference in appearance or their dilapidated condition.

The new block features strongly distinctive coloured bays with different tops using contrasting high pressure laminate boards and zinc sheet as finishings, along with careful sizing and proportioning of windows to align elements horizontally with the scale of the existing buildings.   Decorative brickwork was introduced as a reference to traces of this on the retained elements as well as providing relief and decoration to the east gable end at Fernleaf Street. 

Jon Benson from Mosscare Housing, said: "We are grateful to BTP for finding a workable and successful resolution to the issues we were up against with this project. Now we have excellent, modern accommodation in an area that was calling out for regeneration."

The accommodation provides Mosscare Housing with six 3-storey houses, a two-person flat and a four-person flat to modern space standards and energy performance, with the new houses achieving Code 3 level under the Code for Sustainable Homes.        

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