Architecture studio Harp and Harp has completed a residential development in London that demonstrates how suburban densification can be achieved sensitively while addressing the city's housing crisis. The project, named 158 Purley Downs Road, features seven family homes with pale bricks, red roof tiles, and pale green window frames in a characterful interpretation of the area's Arts and Crafts-style architecture.
Located in the suburban village of Sanderstead, Croydon, the development replaced a single home and large garden as part of the now-revoked Croydon Suburban Design Guide initiative. This program, announced by the Mayor of Croydon in 2018 but canceled in 2022, aimed to alleviate housing shortages through suburban densification. The project faced significant opposition from local residents throughout its planning process.
"The project faced a really difficult planning process with significant organized NIMBYism that opposed its planning and delivery at every step," studio director Steve Harp explained. "While on the one hand we understand the concerns, we are now at a point where we are in a crisis of housing with the capital and a huge number of new homes need to be built quickly to address this."
Harp emphasized that the project serves as an example of how intensification can provide good quality housing at higher density while delivering interesting design that works sensitively within existing neighborhood character. To minimize visual impact, the development is organized into two separate blocks separated by car parking areas. A three-unit block occupies the footprint of the former home to the north, while a four-unit block sits on the former garden site to the south.
The architects employed several design strategies to make the blocks appear as varied terraces rather than a single homogeneous development. These include setbacks, individual front doors, irregular dormer window placements, and subtle material differences. "Understanding that the character of the area is defined by larger detached and semi-detached houses, and to not want to disrupt this visually, terraces were designed to read as fewer larger units – a trick also often used on the terraces of the garden city movement," Harp noted.
The material palette reflects the surrounding context while adding contemporary character. The smaller block facing an adjacent road features pale brickwork that references the rendered facades of neighboring buildings. The southern block uses red brickwork in various bond patterns and tiles laid flat on their sides like bricks, responding to the contrasting appearance of nearby structures. Both blocks are unified by pale green window frames and doors, and each features a distinctive "sliced" corner with a porthole-like window.
"The material choice follows the overall design strategy for the site, which is to use a palette of materials that feel both sensitive and comfortable in their suburban context without slavishly replicating what is there now," Harp explained. Inside each home, the layout centers around a central stair and bathroom core, with living rooms facing the street and kitchen-dining areas opening onto individual gardens through folding doors.
The bedrooms are positioned beneath steeply pitched roofs, maximizing the use of space while maintaining the suburban character. This project joins other recent examples of suburban densification, including similar developments that have successfully replaced single dwellings with multiple family homes while respecting neighborhood context and addressing London's ongoing housing shortage.
