We are thrilled to announce two award wins in this year's Housing Design Awards: Melfield Gardens has been awarded a GLA Award and Manox has won in the 'project' category.

Melfield Gardens, located in LB Lewisham for Phoenix Community Housing, will provide 30 affordable homes for residents aged 55 and above, and two, four-bedroom homes for eight postgraduate students. In return for being ‘good neighbours’, the students will be charged a lower rent. Each will spend a number of hours assisting older residents, offering company or participating in the cultural and recreational activities that will take place in the communal spaces. As well as learning from this innovative social pilot, the client is keen to achieve a fully certified Passivhaus building as the first step towards a zero carbon future.

Manox is a mixed use neighbourhood of 410 homes on a brownfield site just outside central Manchester, along the Rochdale Canal, for clients ENGIE and NPL Group. The design features a variety of different family houses, with some apartment buildings at key locations within the masterplan. The new homes are a mix of shared ownership, build to rent, affordable rent and rent to buy. The scheme is designed to be low-carbon and energy-efficient with ecological enhancement across every millimetre of the site, water- and energy-efficient homes and maximised use of sustainably-sourced materials and minimised waste.

Design for Homes has produced a short film about some key design considerations for Manox, which you can watch here.

Thank you to Design for Homes, the HDA panel and our fantastic clients. Congratulations to both project teams and all the other winners for 2021!