Award-winning architects draw up blueprint for affordable homes on Bishops Avenue site known for its array of abandoned mansions
Mon 20 Nov 2023 05.10 EST
It is one of Britain’s most expensive streets, earning the moniker “Billionaire’s Row”. Yet The Bishops Avenue in north London also has areas of dilapidation, with mansions there having been left derelict for decades.
Now, Britain’s leading architects have drawn up a blueprint for building hundreds of affordable homes on the avenue. According to designs drawn up by firms including Mae, which last month won the Stirling prize, the UK’s most prestigious architecture award, there is room for up to 300 homes on one particular site.
The proposals have provoked questions about how soaring land values, offshore property ownership and weak national and local planning powers have deepened England’s housing crisis. This week, councils said the number of unoccupied homes in England had risen by nearly 60,000 since 2018 to more than a million properties.
In the past decade, the housing waiting…
