An innovative partnership between Council, developer and future residents, Marmalade Lane is a 42-home cohousing community in Orchard Park Cambridge.

Cohousing is a more mutually-supportive form of living that is well-established in northern European countries and which is gaining in popularity in the UK. TOWN, with its partner Trivselhus UK and supported by Mole Architects, was selected as preferred developer by Cambridge City Council and Cambridge Cohousing in 2015, following a quality-driven, two-stage procurement process. Working closely with future residents, TOWN submitted a detailed planning application in late 2015, with planning permission being obtained in 2016. Construction of the project commenced in mid-2017, following completion of RIBA Stage 4 design, and was completed in late 2018. The development has been recognised as a leading example of best practice, winning several national planning and design awards and being featured in a number of government reports and guidance documents.

Collaborative design.

TOWN, with Trivselhus and Mole Architects, submitted its proposed design for the project as part of the developer selection process, responding to the cohousing group’s brief for the site. This was evolved over a number of months through a highly collaborative process between the developer, professional team, and future residents, to the point of a planning application.

As part of this process, a number of workstreams were established, focusing on distinct elements of the design, including housing design, the common house, shared external areas, and environmental performance. For each workstream, TOWN ran workshops with members of the cohousing group with a particular interest in that area of the project, aided by expert members of the professional design team. The result was a scheme over which future residents felt a strong sense of ownership, and that met their needs, while also being deliverable and commercially viable.

Intergenerational Housing.

Laid out in a series of terraces are houses that range in size from 79m² to 125m², interspersed with a number of ‘Tyneside’ flats (terraces divided laterally into an upper and lower apartment, each with its own front door to the street). Separately, an apartment building houses ten generously-sized two-bedroom apartments that are accessed via the main door of the common house, and via an external deck access. These benefit from lift access and are designed following HAPPI (Housing our Ageing Population Panel for Innovation) principles – making them especially well-suited to older residents.

Modern methods of construction.

Two distinct forms of modern methods of construction were used at Marmalade Lane. Houses were built from the Trivselhus Climate Shield system, a closed-panel timber frame system manufactured in Sweden by TOWN’s development partner, offering high qualities of thermal performance and airtightness. Separately, the apartments and common house were built using cross-laminated timber (CLT). Triple-glazed windows and doors were incorporated throughout, along with mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) units. Air-source heat pumps were used for space and water heating.

People-focused public realm.

Car parking at Marmalade Lane was reduced as far as possible through negotiation with the planning and highways authorities. It is efficiently concentrated in a single car parking area to the east of the site, meaning the remainder of the development is mainly car-free. This means that substantial land area is available for more socially-valuable uses, including gardening and nature conservation. It also helps make Marmalade Lane an unusually safe place for children to play independently outdoors. Residents continue to manage their parking needs downwards, and have set up a car club as well as a shared cargo bike scheme.