Clever planning creates a vertical community

Project: Enclave Croydon
Award: Gold, Residential Interiors: Residental Developments (Apartments) 2024
Location: London, United Kingdom
Design Practice: TiggColl
Client: Outpost Management

Enclave Croydon, a new 50-storey build-to-rent residence, is the tallest modular residential building in Europe and intended to help address London’s housing shortage. Creating social spaces that foster community within a vertical building was key to its success.

“The priority was not only to deliver a high-quality place to live but to also create a welcoming environment and home for the residents despite the scale of the building by celebrating the social spaces,” Tigg Coll said.

By splitting the amenity space across six floors the areas were broken down into characterised floors giving them their own specific identity and purpose, helping to humanise the scale to a more individual domestic experience. 

The judges said: "The challenge of purposing a vertical structure for communal use and interaction is huge and this is solved through clever planning and considerations of human factors on this project."

They added: ""The design of this project is clearly based on the pillars of sustainability focusing on wellbeing, social value and sustainable materials and that itself makes it a winner."

The material palette is inspired by Croydon’s architectural heritage. Having a strong mid-century feel, each level is given its own distinct identity but threaded together as a single narrative leading through the building to create a series of homely and comfortable spaces that people want to inhabit. The ambition of the interiors was to create a sense of home which flows throughout the building from the entry point, seeking to break down the large scale of the development.

Design highlights

TiggColl developed bespoke furniture for key areas to complement and enhance the design, such as the reception desk, sky library joinery and bar. The planning requirements demanded an extensive number of communal kitchens in addition to those within the units, however part of the brief was to innovate how these were distributed to enhance amenity and avoid multiple cooking floors. TiggColl therefore developed bespoke joinery to house concealed kitchens within meeting rooms, co-working and social spaces throughout, maximising the flexibility of use and increasing diversity of the offering.

The layout also maximises the exposure to daylight in most of the lively and social spaces such as co-working lounges, meeting rooms, libraries and dining spaces while keeping the darker spaces for screening rooms that do not require views to the outside or light at the core of the building.

Photo credit: Paul Karalius, Taran Wilkhu, Peter Landers