The Oren, situated in Hampstead, North West London, is a collection of 46 luxury later living apartments, designed with a strong focus on adaptability, sustainability and

community.

The site is situated adjacent to Golders Hill Park and will comprise a new residential building, with hotel-style amenity and service spaces located at ground level.

Our approach draws on the local tradition of high-quality, modernist residential buildings set within a landscaped site. The new building and landscape will aim to create a warm and welcoming home for its community of residents through appropriate scale, detail and use of materials.

The building has been ‘broken down’ into four separate but connected elements that respond directly to the landscape gardens, allowing the building both to emerge from the gardens and be nestled among them. A glazed link between these volumes offers views out, while allowing natural light in. The result is a more domestic character which relates to the immediate local, residential context. The building’s form separates the gardens, allowing the character of each to be developed.

Dual aspect apartments and specifically angled balconies maximise daylight, afford privacy and offer views to the landscaped gardens beyond. Each apartment possesses its own character, with a high degree of visual connection to the mature woodland setting, which is of particular importance for less mobile residents. Each ‘broken down’ building element contains no more than three apartments per floor, creating an arrangement of domestic-scale clusters and promoting engagement between neighbours.

Ground floor amenities include a courtyard garden, a healthcare and wellness centre which includes a swimming pool, a restaurant, a private dining/function room, a cinema, a multi-purpose activities space, a gym, and a large, highly adaptable lounge, which all help residents to maintain as active, social and independent a lifestyle as possible.

Daylight filled spaces and a warm palette of materials, including warm-toned brick and timber, create a low energy, highly sustainable building, as well as an environment that is attractive, homely and non-institutional in design.