St Asaph Road

A residential-led reimagining of an underutilised car park in the heart of Nunhead.

Stefan Shaw Studio explored the development potential of a triangular parcel of land on St Asaph Road, currently serving as an underused car park for the adjacent Haberdashers' Aske's sports ground. Sitting within a suburban residential setting in Nunhead, Southwark, the site presented both a challenge and an opportunity: an awkward, elongated footprint bounded by the rear gardens of Ivydale Road, mature trees along its eastern edge, and a notable slope falling towards Nunhead Station.

Our proposal stitches eight new homes into the streetscape within a mews-scaled language that responds carefully to its neighbours. The scheme heals a broken stretch of street frontage where the wide expanse of parking had eroded the rhythm of the Victorian terraces, introducing active frontage, passive surveillance and generous landscaping that threads through the development. Green roofs, a warm brick palette and perforated screening soften the architecture and root it in its context, while careful massing protects the privacy, daylight and outlook of existing residents.

The result is a sensitive piece of urban repair: a development that draws on the scale and proportion of the surrounding housing stock, delivers high-quality family homes, and demonstrates how an overlooked backland site can be transformed into something that serves both new and existing communities.