The Royal Institute of British Architects has named Chowdhury Walk on Daubeney Road in Clapton as the winner of the Neave Brown Award 2024. 

The award recognises the UK’s best new affordable housing.  

The development consists of eleven new houses built on a former garage site and is part of Hackney Council’s new council homes programme, which focuses on using ground around underused garages and car parks on their estates to deliver new homes.  

The houses were finished in summer 2022, with seven of them being for social rent and four of them for private sale.  

Jessam Al-Jawad, founding partner at Al-Jawad Pike, the architecture studio appointed by Hackney Council to design the housing development, said: “[Chowdhury Walk] demonstrates what is possible when a local authority elects to develop its own brownfield sites to address housing need and enhance the local neighbourhood.”

“The design shows that even with a limited budget, creative solutions can produce social housing that offers moments of joy. It’s a clear commitment to tackling the housing crisis by employing young local architects to deliver innovative solutions for the community.” 

The two-storey houses were built with features such as triple-glazed windows and solar panels on the roofs to help residents reduce their energy use, and they are rotated in a way that makes them stand out from the traditional British linear terrace house formation. 

The development has a staggered look. Pic: Rory Gardiner via RIBA.

Al-Jawad said: “The gesture of twisting the houses came about for several reasons. The first of which was, essentially, to break up what would otherwise have been a long block of repetitive windows and doors, and we wanted to create something that had a play of light, a play of mass, and sculpture to it.” 

Karen, a neighbour of Chowdhury Walk, said: “When I saw the plans for that, usually you see the best design, and then I just assumed it would be scaled back and it wouldn’t have that staggered look. It would be just a block, like all the other blocks. And I was really happy that it was true to the plan.” 

The council named Chowdhury Walk after Dr Abdul Chowdhury, who worked at the Homerton Hospital and was campaigning for additional protective equipment for frontline workers during the coronavirus pandemic until he died of Covid in 2020.