Thursday 27 October 2016

From brown site to green light - and more

From brown site to green light

The green light was given following a public consultation by South Cambridgeshire District Council in June on the planning application by Bloor Homes.

This was for the first 92 of 10,000 homes being built on the old RAF Oakington base off the A14 north of Cambridge.

The plans included the look and feel of the new homes, spacing, layout, trees, landscaping and areas for children to play. The application also covered the layout and location of roads, paths and cycleways.


Cllr Tim Wotherspoon, South Cambridgeshire District Council’s cabinet member for strategic planning, said: ‘We already have a school building in place but the first homes being given planning permission, and building work being just around the corner, is a huge landmark.’

Kieran and the Chelmsford team have been working with Bloor Homes on the first phase of this long awaited new homes development in Cambridgeshire.

The 10,000 new homes will have an anticipated population of 24,400 - similar to Huntingdon up the road.

Getting to, from and around Northstowe will be simple and easy.  Northstowe has been designed with fully integrated transport choices in mind offering sustainable options that promote healthy living.

Nature will never be very far away to the residents of Northstowe and this will help to promote health and wellbeing.


Award Winning Barons Keep



Tom Jeffcoat of the Midlands office is about to start Phase 2 of the award winning Barons Keep project.

The award is the prestigious Hammersmith Society Environment Award

The project was described as a "sensitively designed new roof extension to a 1920s’ mansion block. The sweeping curving eaves of the new projecting roof complement the existing house style and create a crisp skyline enhancement."

Barons Keep is situated on the western edge of what was the Gunter Estate, the land purchased piecemeal by James Gunter from 1799 and mainly used as market gardens until it was developed for housing from the latter C19th onwards. Barons Keep was built in 1937, a U-shaped range of apartment blocks designed in ocean-liner style overlooking a private garden.


The orientation of the buildings was to provide each apartment with a view over the open land on the other side of Gliddon Road, formerly St Paul's School playing fields, but now occupied by Hammersmith & Fulham West London College.


The site is surrounded by a low brick wall with modern wrought-iron fencing and gates and low hedges, and a number of mature trees. At each end of the gardens are two circular beds planted with flowers and grass, linked by a rectangular grassed bed with one tree. The access roads are private and now used for car parking.


All the world's a stage

London’s Shaftesbury Theatre is as proud of its £5 million extension as a we (JMS) are proud to have been part of the extraordinary project.  that will update its technical capabilities and enable it to host larger productions.


The project was driven by the owners, the Taffner family, who have huge pride and they don't want a dilapidated wreck – they want a state of the art building for the theatre and its productions.

The development, on the roof of the West End theatre, introduced a new flytower, allowing the venue to stage larger productions with more complicated production requirements. Previously, they were only able to use the flytower to support a weight of around 12 tonnes. The newly completed tower will allow the Shaftesbury’s flytower to take weights of between 30 and 35 tonnes.



The new tower will also give the theatre space to store complicated scenery. Large pieces of scenery from the first act can now be stored easily, up and out of the way, into one of the galleries stage left and right. This provides a greater flexibility for producers to be more creative - essential for big West End productions.

The distinctive saw-tooth form is designed to accommodate windows and smoke vents, among other things. Strips of weathering steel clad the structure, giving it a burnt orange colouring that references the facades of neighbouring buildings.

The original Renaissance-style building was designed by renowned theatre architect Bertie Crewe in 1911 and was the first steel-framed playhouse in London. It features ornate stonework, a turret and an auditorium with an openable rolling roof.

"Whilst maintaining the grace and beauty of the Shaftesbury, we now have a contemporary addition that enhances the facilities of the theatre, giving us the capacity to accommodate the increasing demands of productions," said theatre chief executive James Williams.





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