Tanner Street Estate

Barber in this project again tackled the issue of designing a substantial mixed-use scheme, this time consisting of 250 living units and community, work and retail spaces in its novel terrace/courtyard hybrid. Altogether, it creates a distinctive higher-density urban quarter in Barking. The scheme essentially develops the Donnybrook Quarter model to create a lower cost and thus more widely applicable system. Jestico & Whiles were the collaborating architects on the project to help with the construction phase, but the research and design was done 100% by Barber. Research issues again involved how to use the program requirements and site conditions to create innovative high-density housing, but this time with particular emphasis on techniques for reducing costs in mass housing provision.

Once more, the Tanner Street Estate also sought to build on the ideas of Donnybrook in how to revive and strengthen the use of the urban street as a crucial social device. Hence it should be read in conjunction with ongoing housing projects by Barber that are currently in the design stage for English Partnerships in Morecombe, Milton Keynes, etc. – as well as those being done for other developer-clients in London, Exeter and elsewhere. All these schemes are conceived as research exercises in how to achieve socially sustainable models of mass housing, this being linked to technical innovations by testing out timber frame or metal frame construction in the variants. The Tanner Street Estate itself was warmly reviewed in the architectural press, including Building Design (16 March 2007), pp. 10-13. It was given a Housing Design Award (2005; shortlisted again in 2007), and it won a 2007 RIBA Regional Design Award (2007). Barber has given nearly 50 public lectures on his housing projects, most recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran, Iran (October 2007).