Slingsby Place: how can you make a 'place' with just 28 homes?
Celebrating 100 years of social housing in Britain
Project date: 2019
Team:
Proctor + Matthews, Architect
Planit-IE, Landscape architect
BWA, Employer's Agent
Angie Hardwick, Artist
Green Estate, Meadows
South Yorkshire Housing Association’s Development Team , Client
How can you make a "place" with just 28 homes? This is a recurring theme for South Yorkshire Housing Association whose 6,000 homes are dispersed across Sheffield City Region in groups of 10-100.
And it's one of the themes I have been grappling with for the last 30 years.
We have started to work with the idea of narrative as a tool for place-making. This narrative operates at different levels or spatial scales:
#at one end of the scale the name alone might tell a story that gives the place meaning;
#at the other end of the scale the materials might connect the site to the South Yorkshire landscape, to all of our homes.
We want our homes to be consistent and come together as a coherent portfolio; and we also want them to be specific to their setting.
For consistency we have developed a Design Statement, co-designed with our customers, to ensure all of our homes meet our purpose: with South Yorkshire Housing Association you can settle at home, live well and realise your potential; we want your experience with us to be a joy and we intend to be here for the long term.
The checklist considers how the planning at site level, the features of the homes and the look and feel of the development can support our purpose.
We are also working on a Landscape Design Code with Planit-IE landscape architects to give the green spaces in our developments coherence and character.
For site specific narratives we ask our design teams to home in on the neighbourhood context.
Slingsby Place in The Manor in Sheffield, designed by Proctor + Matthews, makes a great case study. It also brings together some of the themes I have been exploring - my obsessions you could say - in the last three decades.
The naming of Slingsby Place, its distinctive homes, its ceramic signs, meadows and urban form tap into wider narratives that connect to women of steel, home and neighbourhood, Green Estate, The Manor, the city and the countryside beyond.
What's in a name?
Slingsby place is named after local legend Dorthy Slingsby photo by Nigel Barker
The site, formerly known as Seaton Crescent, has been renamed Slingsby Place in honour of Dorothy Slingsby, local legend, South Yorkshire Housing Association resident and one of the celebrated women of steel who kept the Sheffield steelworks in production during the Second World War and who are now commemorated in an award-winning sculpture in Sheffield city centre. She also volunteered in Manor Park into her 90s.
Her son said of the idea of naming the estate after her: “Mum would have appreciated the ethos behind Slingsby, after all it was affordable council housing that allowed her young family to have a home of their own nearly 70 years earlier. She was the first tenant in our house on Manor Park Crescent, and lived there from 1951 to 2017."
I love it when names of new places are authentic and rooted. So often they are plucked from thin air to represent some utopian idea that has no relationship to the actual place.
the homes are clustered as linear terraces with side gardens and walled courtyards
Locally distinctive homes
Proctor + Matthews are known for their high-density low rise housing with interesting layouts including side-hung gardens. Here detached and semi-detached homes are clustered as linear terraces with connecting side gardens and walled courtyards. The side-gardens work with the topography of the site allowing all the living spaces of each home to be directly related to the walled courtyard gardens. At the centre of the development the homes enclose a shared space that provides safe play for children and level access to the gardens and homes. Simple pitched roofs and red brick facades reflect the scale, form and colour palette of the surrounding homes. Feature panels pick out the entrances to the homes and the main features of the site. The layouts maximise useable living space whilst still providing plenty of storage. Storage is the requirement our customers highlight most consistently in their feedback to us.
Good neighbours
oversized ceramic mugs reference neighbourliness photo by Angie Hardwick
Angie Hardwick was selected by residents as the artist for a small public art project on the estate. Her proposal resonated with the group because it focused on the experience of moving into a new home and making connections with new neighbours.
Following a series of workshops with residents on site she has created oversized ceramic mugs that are fixed to the walls at key entrances. These reference both neighbourliness (sharing a cup of tea, borrowing sugar) and the flowering meadows that are a feature of the landscape and a connection with the neighbouring Green Estate.
Angie has written a presentation about creating the artwork, and how she worked with residents to design the final piece.
I like that both the artistic process and product relate to our customers. Public art commissions can so often result in an object that isn't connected to the people who live or work there.
Flower meadows
stunning perennial meadows courtesy of Green Estate
Green Estate, a social enterprise led by the inspirational Sue France, has for the last 20 years been growing, creating and managing perennial meadows under its brand Pictorial Meadows, co-owned with the University of Sheffield since 2004 and based on the research initially undertaken by Professor Nigel Dunnett.
These meadows have become a feature of Sheffield and South Yorkshire. We first used them as temporary habitats on the demolition sites across the housing market renewal areas in Sheffield and they were so loved by local residents that they have since been included as permanent landscapes in parks and roadsides across the city.
Nearby Rotherham has adopted them for their main roads. They reached international fame when they were used for the London 2012 Olympics.
Green Estate is located next door to Slingsby Place. The steep slopes either side of the new houses were an opportunity to create some stunning meadows - and at the same time to make a connection between our new residents and the facilities and experiences open for them to explore on Green Estate's urban farm and heritage site, Manor Lodge, where Queen Mary was held prisoner in the 1570s and 80s.
This landscape solution is not random: it suits the terrain, the context and most importantly it builds a relationship between our customers and their neighbours.
See and be seen
the homes are on high ground and have long views over the city
See and be seen, one of the five "big ideas" developed in north Sheffield 20 years ago, is part of a citywide narrative that uses the ridges and high points of our hilly city to exploit the views and to make visible its less discovered neighbourhoods.
At Slingsby Proctor + Matthews created linear terraces which navigate the contours of this steep site and enclose a defined and level shared space safe for pedestrians and children.
At one end there is a viewpoint over the Lower Don Valley; the layout of the flats at this end also capitalises on the views. Gables are set perpendicular to the contours to create a distinctive roofline.
I love that one of the ideas we developed in north Sheffield nearly 20 years ago has spread across the city and is still relevant today.
Park city
shared space for children and pedestrians
Sheffield has more green space per head of population than any other city in England. Its five river valleys bring woods and greenery from the countryside to the city centre; one fifth of the city lies within the boundary of the Peak District National Park.
Another of the five "big ideas" developed in north Sheffield was to create a web of linked green spaces across the city. In a small way Slingsby Place builds on this idea. (You can read more about this idea in the Live Projects post.)
Proctor + Matthews made the connections between the central space and the wider neighbourhood a major feature of the design. Flights of steps connect the shared space to the dramatic meadows either side and to the streets beyond.
The meadows and the routes connect visually and physically to Green Estate's farm, green spaces and the parks it manages across The Manor.
Even though the green space at Slingsby is very modest, it's great that it contributes to a bigger narrative about what makes the city special.
The Manor and beyond
emilie taylor with her pots that link chatsworth and the manor
Sue France‘s vision was that the area would become the Chatsworth of inner city Sheffield: that people would come to visit for the heritage, the green space, the events.
Green Estate has been instrumental in realising that vision taking on the stewardship of the Manor Lodge as well as a swathe of immaculately maintained parks and urban countryside. It has also developed workspace and artists' studios, including a ceramics studio, in partnership with Yorkshire Artspace, also a long-term partner and collaborator with South Yorkshire Housing Association.
Emilie Taylor is an extraordinarily thoughtful and gifted ceramicist who combines her experience as a mental health worker and artist to work in the studio and with communities in socially engaged practice.
She uses heritage craft processes to interpret and represent post-industrial landscapes. In 2013 she was funded by Green Estate, Yorkshire Artspace and Arts Council England on a year-long residency to explore the connections between Chatsworth and the Manor - two areas that on the face of it could not be more different - culminating in a series of pots and a walk from one estate to the other.
I have over many years championed the idea that arts and culture can help people develop a different narrative for the places where they live and by extension for themselves, in particular through seeing themselves as part of a bigger picture.
we received 259 bids for every 3-bedroom home