The Deck Access Housing Design Guide: A Return to Streets in the Sky

***Winner of Architectural Guide of the Year at the Architectural Book Awards 2024***

The Deck Access Housing Design Guide is the first practical design guide to deck access housing. It focuses on the contemporary use of deck access housing, sharing practical guidance and providing in-depth case studies, while also presenting historical context about this flexible and evolving housing type.

Despite a chequered history that saw it linked with urban decay and social malaise in the 1970s and 80s, deck access housing today, after a 40-year hiatus, is fast becoming the default solution for mid-rise housing in the UK, and London in particular. This is in part down to architects’ renewed interest in post-war Modernist typologies, but also due to specific planning standards that favour the qualities – dual-aspect plans, ‘public’ front doors – of deck access design.

This comprehensive, professional guide spotlights the best contemporary deck access housing in the UK and throughout mainland Europe, explaining and analysing exemplars in detail. Illustrated in full colour throughout with plans, elevations, photographs, project data and annotations, case studies include both new build and retrofit projects, in public housing, co-housing and Third Age residential projects.

Good architectural practice flows from an informed understanding of cultural and design history coupled with practical guidance and clear analysis of case studies. That is what this book provides for anyone interested in, or involved in the design and delivery of, deck access housing.

Featured architects from the UK:

AHMM · Apparata · Cartwright Pickard · Collective Architecture · DO Architecture · Hawkins Brown · Haworth Tompkins · Henley Halebrown · Levitt Bernstein · Maccreanor Lavington · Mæ · Matthew Lloyd · Pitman Tozer · Pollard Thomas Edwards · Proctor & Matthews · PRP · RCKa

Featured architects from mainland Europe:

ANMA · Arquitectura Produccions · Atelier Kempe Thill · Bureau Massa · DAMAST · Estudio Herreros · Fink + Jocher · KAAN · LEVS · Martin-Löf · MEF · Muñoz Miranda · Passelac & Roques · Waechter + Waechter

Andrew Beharrell is a former director and senior partner of Pollard Thomas Edwards. Andrew Beharrell has designed and delivered many award-winning projects throughout his 40-year architectural career. He now lends his expertise to PTE’s research and development group Knowledge Hub, maintaining and improving design standards across the practice. He has co-authored and edited a series of influential reports on topical housing and planning issues, including Superdensity, Altered Estates and Distinctively Local. He is a regular speaker at housing industry events.

Rory Olcayto is writer and critic at Pollard Thomas Edwards. A former editor of The Architects’ Journal and chief executive of Open City, the organisation behind Open House London, Rory has worked in architectural practice, as a videogames designer, and a journalist, in Glasgow, Liège, Istanbul and London. He has written and edited books on Mimar Sinan (The First Starchitect), Richard Rogers (British Museum World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre) and Charles Rennie Mackintosh (The Hill House: Not Forever). Rory studied architecture (BSc and MSc) at the University of Strathclyde.