The Stonebridge Hillside Hub is a key scheme in the continuing regeneration of the Stonebridge Estate in West London. It is a major resource for the 4,000 strong culturally-diverse local community; it aims to bring people together, improve local health, enable educational, leisure and community initiatives, encourage investment in the local housing market, provide much-needed retail space and give a new focus to a previously deprived part of the borough. The mixed-use building provides a health centre, a community centre, a convenience store, a café, open-market and shared-ownership apartments, private car parking, a garden and a public piazza. Extensive consultation with the users and the local community was a hallmark of this scheme’s development.

The building replaces a derelict multi-storey car park that attracted serious crime and anti-social behaviour. It is formed of two 6-storey wings joined by a three-storey community centre - a strongly articulated central building with a curved zinc roof and a private landscaped garden at the rear. The lower three storeys of the west wing contain a Primary Care Trust health centre (NEAT Excellent). The lower two storeys of the east wing house a new convenience store with a two-storey car park at the rear. The four upper floors of both wings contain a tenure blind mix of shared ownership and privately owned apartments (EcoHomes Very Good).

The building has two public entrances. Visitors enter the health centre at the lower ground floor on the west side or the community centre at the ground floor on the south side from a public plaza framed by the scheme’s distinctive white brick prows. Internally the building is designed so that the individual functions spatially overlap. Visitors could use the IT suite in the community centre and enjoy a cup of tea in the café, before popping down to the health centre for a dentist appointment or shopping at the convenience store.

The larch cladding was designed to achieve three scales of grain:

• Firstly, Siberian larch was specified for its tight, uniform grain. Sapwood was excluded and the untreated wood should weather to a consistent silver grey.
• Secondly, the elevation was separated into bands of horizontal boards separated from each other by zones containing vertically fixed boards and windows. The horizontal timbers run around the cantilevered balconies wrapping them into the composition and the overall effect is of large scale vertical and horizontal grains woven together.
• Thirdly, two differing sizes of horizontal cladding board were used. Again, this gives the façade a textured ‘corduroy’ feel of light and shade when viewed from the surrounding streets. Both board types have thirty degree chamfered tops and bases to aid shedding of water and to prevent staining and warping. The boards are fixed with a gap between them small enough to prevent water ingress but large enough to allow air to circulate around the timber. A subtle detail occurs when the horizontal timbers wrap around the balconies where the thinner boards are omitted to allow a greater degree of transparency to these outdoor living areas.

The project was procured under a Design and Build contract with the contractor having a significant influence on specification. A typical result of this is to be seen in the apartment windows which have a very high performance specification but are aesthetically disappointing, in this case because of the very chunky frames. This shortcoming resulted in a particular timber detail being formulated where the vertical and horizontal boards sit in front of the windows, overlapping the thick frames so that, looking at the building, an elegant juxtaposition of glass against timber is seen.

The timber envelope achieves a U-value in excess of 20% above Building Regulations and all timber is from FSC certified sources.

This bespoke feature ceiling runs from the community centre and café over the triple-height health centre entrance atrium and into a GP waiting area, uniting the three spaces spatially. It is made from douglas fir timber boards treated to Class 0 surface spread of flame and, like the external larch cladding, two different profiles of timber are employed to create texture and shadows across the ceiling surface. This also enables lights and ventilation grilles to sit neatly within board widths.