Our design principles

As we are developing our design approach (which we have been discussing with planning officers at Southwark Council), we have carefully considered several key factors and principles. These include:

• The context of existing and emerging taller buildings in the area
• The Council’s site allocation – which designates the site as suitable for tall buildings
• Impacts on local views and on neighbouring residents and businesses
• Southwark’s need for as many high-quality new homes as possible – including affordable and family-sized homes
• The need to include a significant amount of public open space within the development

Our consultation to date has identified strong support for affordable housing and public open space on the site as local priorities.

Our design approach seeks to respond to the considerations set out above, maximising the potential of the site to deliver new homes and attractive public open space, in line with Southwark Council’s aspirations and the feedback we have received so far. We are focused on designing a high-quality, sustainable development that delivers these exciting benefits, while acknowledging our neighbours’ needs and priorities.

Illustrative sketch showing new public piazza

Design approach

All proposed buildings within the Borough Triangle site are being designed with the emerging context of the Elephant and Castle cluster in mind.

Our emerging proposals will include buildings ranging in height, with taller buildings on the western side of the site, by the railway. Remaining buildings bordering Newington Causeway and Borough Road will respond to the height of nearby mid-rise buildings.

Ilustrative ground floor plan

Illustrative sketch view

This emerging approach will allow us to deliver a significant number of new homes on the site in addition to substantial public open space. We are planning to provide more information in the coming weeks, following further discussions with Southwark Council.

We are aware of the important issues around the impacts of tall buildings and are continuing to engage with the Council and other local stakeholders to refine our designs and ensure we deliver buildings of the highest quality.  We will be publishing further information on this design approach shortly – but would welcome your initial feedback in the meantime via our new survey

Next steps – Environmental Impact Assessment

Given the scale of our proposals, we will need to submit an Environmental Statement to Southwark Council as part of our planning application, which assesses the environmental impacts of the proposals. As an initial step, we are planning to request a scoping opinion. This will set out which topics we will need to cover within the Environmental Statement.

We are aiming to submit the request to the Council by February. This will include information on the ‘maximum parameters’ of the development i.e. the maximum number of homes/amount of space which could be delivered. The Council will assess this information and provide feedback, which we will use to prepare our Environmental Statement and inform the continued development of our plans.

Please do get in touch with us at contact@boroughtriangle.com if you have any questions at this stage.