The Market Road site is located close to the Caledonian Road in Lower Holloway and lies directly over the entrance to the Copenhagen Railway Tunnels, which run below the centre of the site at an extremely shallow depth. Providing an active street frontage and high quality residential accommodation on this demanding site poses an exceptional and extraordinarily difficult architectural problem.

PTEa’s response is to propose a simple frontage building with one wing running along Market Road and another aligned to the boundary to the west, to create a generous courtyard opening out to the railway embankment stretching to the north. On Market Road commercial units at ground-floor level create a well-defined urban edge and the flats above look south over Market Road Garden. Vehicles will be able to access the courtyard through a double height gated entrance; and the undercroft which is an essential component of the structural strategy for building over the tunnels will provide parking space for 35 cars.

This project will enable the regeneration of a redundant and contaminated site to provide five commercial units and 146 flats, of which 35% will be earmarked for affordable housing.
Construction will begin in 2010.

Client Tonenest
Value £24m
Dates 2003 - 2012