Fenwick Lane – Development Pack
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Fenwick Lane Houses Brooklyn, Cape Town Eight new homes on the doorstep of the city Completion – 2021 – designed by Wolff Architects 3 bed | 2 bath – from R 1.9m 2 bed | 2 bath – from R 1.7m 1 bed | 1 bath – from R 862k Studio | 1 bath – from R 575k Register your interest A design-driven development by Contents Welcome 2 About Fenwick Lane 4 Spaces for living 6 Great outdoors 8 Site specifics 10 Privacy + communality 12 Adaptability 14 Brooklyn 16 Proximity + access 17 Wolff Architects 19 Project team 20 Unit details 21 Purchasing 29 Contact us 30 Contents 1 Welcome We’re excited to be releasing more information about Fenwick Lane – a project we’ve been working on with Wolff Architects since early 2019. You might find that our description of this project reads a bit differently to that of others – and that’s because this project and our approach are a bit different. While we operate within the constraints of any other commercial developer, we’re interested in property development as a means of making and shaping a better city. The main ambition for this project has always been about access to the city – creating new opportunities for home ownership within Cape Town’s inner suburbs. As a departure from the investor-centric developments one sees going up around the city, we’ve imagined Fenwick Lane as a genuinely nice place to make a home. We hope you like what we’ve come up with. Gareth Pearson Founder + Director, Stadium Welcome 2 Fenwick Lane includes eight units the street. from entrance its own unit having across three separate buildings, each View – Corner of Fenwick Street and Diep Street 3 About Fenwick Lane Fenwick Lane is a collection of eight new homes in Brooklyn, a suburb just 4km from Cape Town’s CBD. We set out to create a place that is a pleasure to live in, close to the city centre, and within an accessible price range. The project is a provocation against the freestanding house – injecting a bit of urbanity into suburbia. We’ve designed a more compact, considered suburban home – placing quality before quantity and making better use of less space. The result is a great degree of liveability – at home and in one’s day-to-day experience of the city. We’ve also factored in a diversity of housing needs, and the inevitability of changing demands on these spaces over the short- and long-term. The thorough design process with Wolff Architects has resulted in a unique project made to stand the test of time and adapt to the needs of its residents and the world around it. About Fenwick Lane 4 mountain views. fantastic – The upper floor units enjoy high ceilings, a useful storage mezzanine, and mezzanine, high ceilings, a useful storage The upper floor units enjoy for the South-facing units View – Upper floor unit living area (Unit 1b) 5 Spaces for living First and foremost, these homes have been designed to be great spaces for living. Each unit has an open kitchen and living area, adjoined by bedrooms and ensuite bathrooms. Ground floor living areas enjoy stacking doors that allow for seamless indoor- outdoor entertaining, while the upper floor living areas enjoy a great spacial quality created by the high ceilings. Most units benefit from either Northern sun or magnified mountain views. The square bedroom windows are the width of a conventional door, thoughtfully placed to cast a great quality of light without jeopardising privacy or thermal comfort. Complementing volume and light, the smart use of simple materials adds texture and warmth to the interiors, while ensuring these buildings are robust and easy to maintain throughout their lifetimes. Each unit also has generous storage space. In addition to the bedroom cupboards, ground floor units have useful alcove spaces while upper floor units have storage mezzanines stretching the full length of each room. Spaces for living 6 Ground floor units have stacking doors that allow for seamless stacking doors that allow indoor- floor units have Ground living and entertaining.outdoor View – Ground floor unit living area (Unit 1a) 7 Great outdoors Private outdoor space is one of those luxuries that often motivates the purchase of a suburban home. We’ve given great attention to such spaces in this project, with all but one of the units having their own private yards. These are spaces to plant a garden, to braai with friends, to work on that weekend DIY project, to make your own. Their well-defined proportions make them comfortable spaces to be in, low maintenance, and easy to transform into something special. The ground floor yards are framed by a recess in the building facade – which creates a useful built-in seat or ledge for placing pot plants. Upper floor units have the additional feature of balconies that extend from the living areas – great spaces to enjoy a cup of coffee on a nice morning, or a drink while taking in the last light on a calm evening. Most of the yards also double as private off-street parking for a car or two, with the yards of the two smaller lane- facing units big enough for a motorcycle. Great outdoors 8 one that can be used and decorated in different ways. in different one that can be used and decorated – s private outdoor space is compact but comfortable, outdoor feel made to s private ’ Each unit Each a room like View – Ground floor unit yard (Unit 1a) 9 Site specifics Fenwick Lane is located in Brooklyn on the corner of Shaddock Street and Diep Street, with a pedestrianised section of Fenwick Street forming one of the boundaries. The eight homes are distributed across three buildings, each within the footprint of three separate erven. Each building has one unit on the ground level, with the upper level including one or two units. The scheme leverages the allowance for the addition of second and third dwellings on single residential (SR1) zoned properties in the City of Cape Town’s municipal planning by-law. The unique layout of the site allows for each unit to have a private entrance from the street, creating active edges along all three boundaries. Upper floor units are accessed via private staircases that are hidden behind the building facade. The lane runs along the Fenwick Street boundary, which we see becoming a great asset for the neighbourhood with the planting of trees and surfacing of a wider path. Site specifics 10 Shaddock Street 2 Diep Street 3 1 N Fenwick Lane The ground floor site plan shows the basic two-bedroom footprint of each footprint the basic two-bedroom plan shows floor site The ground fit together. yards private the seven building, with a sense of how Site specifics 11 Privacy + communality Possibly the most interesting feature of this project is the spatial relationship between the eight units. Each building is pushed up against the outer boundaries of the site, creating a more defined public realm. Ground level units have a hard edge along this outer boundary, opening up onto their yards within the interior of the site. Upper level units are orientated in the opposite direction, overlooking the street or lane. The result is that each unit enjoys privacy, internal yard spaces are comfortable and secure, and the surrounding streets are made safer with ‘eyes on the street’ from upper level units. With privacy protected, neighbours can go about their lives out of sight from each other. That being said, one isn’t moving alone into a freestanding home, nor is one moving into a massive complex where everyone is a stranger. The scale of this project presents a unique opportunity for a friendly community to form amongst Fenwick Lane’s eight new neighbours. Privacy + communality 12 “Privacy was an important consideration in the design – when the ground floor unit opens up in one direction, the first floor unit opens up in the opposite direction. Security is enhanced by a perimeter wall and by windows and balconies on the first floor overlooking activity on the street. On the ground floor, the houses have a fantastic connection with their outside spaces and on the upper floors there are great views over the neighbourhood.” – Heinrich Wolff, Wolff Architects This section drawing illustrates how ground floor units face inwards while floor units face inwards ground how illustrates This section drawing and lane. the street the upper floor units overlook Privacy + communality 13 Adaptability Something that many new developments seem to ignore is the simple fact that people have a diversity of housing needs, and these needs tend to change over time. We’ve addressed this with a range of unit sizes, but also through adaptability. The device that allows for this adaptability is in the basic two-bedroom floor plan. The built-in cupboards form the walls between the bedrooms and the central living area. If someone wanted one large open studio space, they could simply remove these walls. More useful though is the way in which one utilises the space of the second bedroom. A couple might only need one bedroom, opting for a larger living area or a home office. This space could be curtained off when having guests stay over, or converted back into a bedroom as their household grows. Alternatively, a downsizing household might find less of a need for the extra room, in which case it could be converted and rented out as a self-contained unit with its own front door. Unit 2a has the added benefit of a third room, which could be used as a bedroom, office, or storage space, or in the long-term this could even be used as a small shop with a hatch that opens onto the street.