Fabrik Coldharbour Lane Brixton SE5
September 19th, 2011
Does London really need more single aspect flats with low ceilings, inadequate windows, surplus ensuites and minimal storage?
As part of London Open House weekend 2011 I visited a two bedroom flat whose floorplan is shown below and it is that flat to which the comments apply. You won’t find Fabrik in the Open House 2012 brochure.
Wide hallway and corridor for Lifetime homes, bathroom door opens outward, why does the door always have to foul the corridor? Why can’t it slide away into the wall? Washing machine space in bathroom. Low ceiling, an architect friend told me 2.3m / 7’6″, certainly if you looked at the top of the door there wasn’t much more than 6″ above it.
The window sills are 4′ off the ground which means if you were sitting down you wouldn’t see out. The common desktop height is between 28″ and 30″. From the photograph below and measuring in proportion I make the window sill 4′ from the ground, .
My eye level is almost exactly 4′ (seated) so I would be level with the window sill but would have to stand to see out. Given that a woman or child would be shorter they have less chance of a view than I do. I have visited the flats, the sill height is the same in all three rooms with the only exception being the living room where there is a glazed door onto the balcony.
The largest room has a U shaped range of kitchen units at its unlit end but no partition or screen of any kind against smells and the sounds of cooking unlike Alexandra Road and the LCC tower blocks described elsewhere.
A fellow blogger has written about Claredale Street and I have quoted part of his blog here:-
“She said that only after you move in do you begin to notice the small niggles. She wasn’t a big fan of the open plan layout with the kitchen and living area combined because of the noise and smells from the cooking.”
Claredale Street article
There is an en-suite for one of the two bedrooms but little storage space for the flat. This is something many modern flats have in common, list below.
The washbasin is up against the wall. A left handed person wishing to shave or apply makeup will have no elbow room.
I took a quick look at the other floor plans and noticed that a couple of them are dual aspect on a corner which is not as good as dual aspect across the width of a building but a good start. Below is a one bedroom flat.
Being one bedroom it doesn’t suffer from the gratuitous ensuite syndrome of the two bed alternative, and has very little wasted space as a result. The bathroom is internal and the bathroom door opens outwards, but the sink faces a window and the “living room kitchen diner” would appear to be well lit.
There is no separation of the kitchen from the living room which would enable accoustic isolation from the two but perhaps with only a couple living there this is less important than with a family home.
While this is a welcome change from the two and three bed single aspect flats there are only so many corner flats you can put into a development and these are necessarily in the minority and while I haven’t been inside I would expect them to suffer from the 2.3m ceiling of the one on display for London Open House. Why the ceiling height is not listed as part of the dimensions I have no idea.
The problem with this layout is that redundant ensuite for Bedroom 1 which eats up space that might have been larger store cupboards, and puts an unwanted kink in the corridor. There is a perfectly adequate bathroom, the ensuite is unnecessary. It’s dreadful.
Where the 1 bed corner flat is almost bearable apart from the low ceiling and combined kitchen / living room this thing has been severely compromised by that ensuite. Clearly the architect will never live in these things or he/she would not have designed it like that.
This article is worth a look in the same context:-
Housing manual 1949 part two
Yes those are my comments at the end of the post, and valid they are too. The 1949 designed flat has a much better layout than the modern one.
Floor plans of houses and flats
If you’ve arrived here as a result of a Google search for floor plans then you need my fellow blogger at:-