Housing For Single Parent Families

Usk is a small town in Monmouthshire with a strong sense of community. The housing project site is located on the west of the river, poor transport routes shared by pedestrians, cyclists and cars made pedestrian travel challenging and isolated site 1. The aim of this project was to improve connections, by forming a new community on the west of the river, and utilise the abandoned railway line running parallel to the site to improve pedestrian routes to town and connect Gwent college; by forming a new cycle and pedestrian path.

A new community will be created through the user demographic of the scheme. One parent households, with dependent children, accounted for 32.3% of homeless cases. South East Wales has the highest levels of lone parent families, 8.4%, equating to 45,400 families. Collaboration between community workers and volunteers, the existing community, and single parent families, will form a new community on the once isolated site, whilst also providing new employment opportunities, support and a safe home for single parent families and their children.

Based on the traditional almshouse typology as an example of communal living, the scheme is centred around a central courtyard with private seating areas for children to play; additionally access to private south facing gardens. This space is overlooked by each of the ten dwellings, through a series of balconies and viewing platforms, to ensure that the parents can easily keep an eye on their children from inside their home; with kitchen and home offices also placed facing the courtyard. Double height ceiling voids above the playrooms allows connection between parent and child at all areas in the dwellings. Recessed porch entrances add shelter, and an additional level of privacy between the communal and private spaces. Between the courtyard an dwellings, a walkway, typical of almshouse, used by residents as access to private dwellings, adding a further level of privacy, as well as a place for interaction between residents. The scheme consists of ten dwellings (three large family homes, four small apartments, a wheelchair accessible apartment and two apartments with riverside views), and shared facilities such as bike storage, laundry facilities and onsite counselling rooms, each space designed uniquely to ensure space efficiency.

The walkway also acts a divider between the private and public areas used by the community; the onsite childcare facilities, community gardens, and community workshop space. These are all accessible via a landscaped ramp into the bank leading to the railway line cycle path. The scheme is driven by the industrial history of the site though its corten steel, and brick materiality, and daggerboard and arch window detailing. The scheme meets passivhaus standards, with walls of u-value 0.10W/m2K, utilising solar gains and PV panels.