Located at the intersection of two London boroughs, Selby Urban Village re-envisions a disused secondary school and underutilised playing fields in North London into a dynamic mixed-use neighbourhood of approximately 202 homes with new sports facilities, revised open spaces and a diverse collection of community uses which encourage collaboration.
The Selby Centre is an important civic space which has long played a significant local role. It is one of the foundations of the area’s culture and identity and provides a place for local businesses, organisations and people to come together and to share, learn and participate.
The centre is currently housed in a former school and a collection of different buildings which are worn out and no longer fit-for-purpose. In rethinking the site and the wider neighbourhood, the model of a social and working hub generated by the old building was something the community wanted to keep and so it’s ethos will live on.
With an emphasis on inclusivity, our masterplan proposals introduce a new range of affordable council homes types and establishes a new Selby Centre with new buildings and spaces designed to enable an overlapping programme of community uses that includes sports and exercise, business, enterprise, childcare, social events, education and play.
Located at the heart of the project alongside Bull Lane Playing Fields, the new centre enables activity to spill out into the landscape and allow local people to reclaim and use this urban green space which has become physically disconnected from nearby homes. To break down these barriers, ecological areas and community planting is proposed along the edges of the fields to animate these thresholds and new pedestrian and cycling routes will draw people into the park.
Engagement with The Selby Trust who manage the Selby Centre as well as local businesses and residents has been fundamental to our understanding of local requirements and in testing possible solutions and options. Through the strategic placement of homes, streets, public spaces, civic uses and community-focussed buildings across a variety of scales, our masterplan scenarios seek to overcome divisions between different urban areas and provide a framework to tie the neighbourhood together.