A proposal for 39 age restricted apartments in a central location to the south east of Reading town centre, adjacent to the Royal Berkshire Hospital and Reading School.

Surrounding context of Victorian villas has a lot of interesting brickwork detailing and prominent gables. These features form the basis for our design. The overall building design consists of a series of gable forms facing the street. The brief and plan form requires a pair of windows across each gable. Panels of patterned brickwork set back from the main wall tie these windows together and bring a coherent symmetry to the gables. Balconies are not a common feature in the area, so to provide outdoor amenity balconies are partially enclosed within the gables to form an integral part of the building. The building mass is composed into a series of blocks of equivalent size to the surrounding Victorian villas.

We undertook a detailed study of the historical local brickwork and reviewed numerous possible brick patterns as part of the design process before settling on the final brickwork detail.