Architect John Baulch, Group Director of LHC Architecture explains how he worked on the Culverdale affordable housing project from concept through planning to completion for his client TOR Homes part of the DCH group. Culverdale was commissioned by TOR Homes, who are part of the DCH Group and their existing site at Culverdale was massively underutilised with only 24 dwellings on it bungalows all of a similar size & use & what they really needed was a much greater variety of unit sizes varying from 1 bedroom apartments to 4 bedroom houses & they needed to make much better use of the site because land is so valuable particularly in a historic town like Totnes & so they asked for 39 dwellings for nearly a 100% increase of a range of units. there are some existing mature trees on the site a beautiful mature Oak tree right in the centre of the site which made master planning quite difficult & many of the development blocks were very narrow & in order to maximise the use of the site we had to come up with some fairly innovative house designs in order to deal with both the topography, the steep banks & getting sun into the properties. These houses at the bottom of the site, facing north, were the most challenging and for those particular ones we looked to design them as reverse living, putting the living space over garages and bedrooms at a lower level, so each of the houses had terraces and upper living spaces to maximise solar orientation and gain. We principally used white render & natural slate because there is a lot of that in Totnes but also vertical slate hanging & the blue brick @ lower levels which is very robust. Generous windows and a sort of contemporary feel but somehow when you walk round I hope most people feel it’s a natural part of Totnes. We’re very proud that the scheme won a national LABC Award for the best affordable housing project it’s not normally easy to win such awards with affordable housing where the budgets are very tight and the site is very difficult, such as the Culverdale site and so we are very pleased that it succeeded. Promotional PR film shot and edited by Exeter photographer / cameraman Guy Newman www.guynewman.co.uk

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