The Akeman Street project in Cambridge involves transforming a brownfield site into a modern two-storey residential block with commercial space for the local community.
The design includes a reinforced concrete frame with a first-floor podium deck over double-storey traditional masonry dwellings. Innovative cantilevered designs were used for the front and rear elevations to protect existing roots and buried services, achieved by cantilevering the piled ground floor slabs and supporting elevations off an oversailing podium deck.
A below-ground surface water drainage scheme was implemented, incorporating SuDS. A permeable hardstanding system with controlled discharge rates and sub-base attenuation was used to filter and improve runoff quality before discharging to the drainage network.
