Scalloped facade ensures "strong civic presence" for London housing block

A scalloped facade of white brickwork overlooks a public square at Albion Street, a housing block in east London by local architecture studio Bell Phillips.

Located on the site of the former Albion Street Civic Centre in Rotherhithe, the 3,027-square-metre project provides 26 homes for social rent and shared ownership, alongside retail spaces and a public square.

For the housing block's design, Bell Phillips sought a "common language" between two distinctive Grade-II listed churches that bookend the site – the 1920s St Olav's Norwegian Church and the 1950s Finnish Church in London.

To the northeast, the older church informed a larger, five-storey red-brick block, which sits on a large plinth containing retail spaces to complement the existing shops on the opposite side of the street.

By contrast, the smaller southeastern block nods to the more modernist style of the Finnish Church, finished in white brickwork with a distinctive scalloped facade overlooking the public square.

"The two-storey red brick plinth responds to the horizontal banding of the traditionally-styled Norwegian Church, while white brickwork is used to tie together with the tone of the Finnish Church," explained Bell Phillips co-founder Tim Bell.

"The materials palette suits a building that seeks to achieve a strong civic presence, and enabled the creation of a distinctive scalloped façade that sits comfortably alongside its similarly characterful neighbours," Bell added.

"Both of these architectural elements are new, unexpected, and intriguing, but simultaneously harmonious with the existing architecture."

Albion Street contains a mix of one-, two- and three-bed apartments, with the building's shallow depth meaning that the majority are dual-aspect.

Living spaces have been positioned away from the north of the plan and the busy Rotherhithe Tunnel Approach, instead overlooking the street to the south from white-steel balconies atop the red-brick block's two-storey plinth.

At the southeastern end, balconies are deep-set into the scalloped white-brick facade to provide privacy from the public square below, which was upgraded with the area's popular Scandinavian markets in mind.

Where the block steps back at the fourth floor, a shared roof terrace has been created for residents.

Albion Street marks the first stage of a two-phase project by Bell Phillips for Southwark Council, which will be followed by a second block of 50 homes on the neighbouring Renforth Street.

The studio, founded by Bell alongside Hari Phillips in 2004, recently completed a housing block in Marylebone, which featured a similarly scalloped facade in pale brickwork, and added a series of mirrored pavilions to a science campus in Oxfordshire.

The photography is by Kilian O'Sullivan.

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