Dwelling Accordia

This new residential quarter in Cambridge provides a new model for communal living. With 22 different house and apartment types on a tight semi-urban site, Accordia is a high-density scheme which replaces the standard pocket garden approach with a series of exhilarating public greens, communal gardens and intimate outside/inside spaces created by rooftop terraces and internal courtyards. The project is the result of an unusual collaboration between three of the UK's highly regarded architecture firms - Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Maccreanor Lavington and Alison Brooks Architects - and demonstrates that volume housebuilders can deliver high quality architecture. Widely regarded as setting a new benchmark for housing, this multi-award winning project is the first housing scheme ever to win the RIBA Stirling Prize, one of the world's most prestigious architectural accolades. Dwelling: Accordia is written by Paul Drew, an architect and resident of the scheme, and Ivor Richards, an architect and architectural historian, both of whom provide a unique insight into what it is like to live in Accordia, as well as placing it in the context of contemporary UK, European and North American housing design.