Urban Regeneration: Park Hill Flats Sheffield | PDD

Urban Regeneration: Park Hill Flats Sheffield

By PDD

on September 13 2011

Last week saw the 50th anniversary of the opening of the notorious Grade II listed Park Hill flats, located high in the sky over Sheffield hilly landscape.

Described as the ‘walkway in the sky’ the Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith, 2 mile long designed structure has gained notoriety through its stark, huge aesthetic, being influenced by Le Corbusier’s Unite d’habitation in Marseille, France.

Park Hill was jubilantly completed in 1961 – and was seen by locals as a great alternative  to the Victorian cramped, anti-social back-to-back housing that was in its place before. Park Hill’s inhabitants were carefully re-homed with their neighbours, with terraces and walkways being named after their former streets names to keep a homely community feel.

By the 1980’s Park Hill had gained notoriety as a bad area, with locals blaming neighbouring Sheffield Wards  as instigators of the crimes that were tarnishing the area. Like many other apartment blocks built in the 1960’s, the apartments themselves were also falling into a state of disrepair, and Park Hill was losing the lustre is once beamed across the city in the early 1960’s.

The building carried on moving further into decline up until 2004, Urban Splash and Sheffield City Council took on the behemoth task transforming Park Hill into an attractive, inclusive and affordable housing option for Sheffield’s community.

Urban Splash has just announced that the first phase of work on the transformation has been completed, and on October 8th a portion of the available spaces will be available to buy.

The designers and architects on-hand have worked hard not to compromise the impact of the exterior, whilst updating and simplifying internal logistics and injecting a good dose of contemporary modernism into the flats’ interior design.

So far, there has been a strong emphasis on concrete, celebrating the exterior of the structure whilst still being innovative in their approach.

The one and two-bedroom apartments will be available to buy from £90,000 and a portion of the apartments will be used as social housing.

For more images please see here

Tags: