The RIBA-managed-contest for up to 250 market-priced and affordable family homes is part of the North Shore project, a £300 million joint venture between Urban Splash and Muse Developments. The scheme will comprise a hotel, 65,000 sq m of office space, plus 900 residential units.

The announcement comes just a week after Urban Splash confirmed it is to lay off an unspecified number of its 280 staff due to the credit crunch.

In the design brief for the contest, Urban Splash claims that young couples with children are forced to get a “style lobotomy and move to Noddyland” because of the lack of flair in new-build family homes.

Simon Gawthorpe, managing director of Urban Splash’s Yorkshire office, said: “There’s a view that the family housing typology has been ignored for the past decade. We’re looking for a different approach and questioning that typology, we’re trying to be provocative. The difficulty is making sure it’s still deliverable.”

Gawthorpe refused to comment on the redundancies, but added: “We’re very much committed to this scheme and very excited about family housing. It’s almost a blank piece of paper.”

 

The riverwalk

Housing specialists have expressed mixed reactions to the news that Urban Splash is moving into the family homes market.

Matthew Goulcher, managing director at Levitt Bernstein, welcomed the idea but warned it could stretch the developer’s “brand”.

“Affordable housing is the wrong place to experiment,” he said. “The thing about Urban Splash is that people who inhabit its schemes are buying into a concept. I’m not sure if it works when you apply that to mass housing.”

But Ben Derbyshire, managing director at HTA Architects, said it made sense for the developer to move into family housing.

“The agenda is heading that way anyway, and they’re following it,” he said. “There has been a grotesque oversupply of small apartments in high-density schemes. That bubble has burst.”