Ordsall Housing is a newly developed, community-focused residential project for Salford City Council and its local housing company, Dérive. This development spans two brownfield sites in Salford, located north and south of Robert Hall Street.

The project will create a total of 274 new mixed-tenure homes: 137 two to four-bedroom houses and 137 one to two-bedroom apartments across several buildings on a 4.06-hectare plot divided into two sites. The construction includes three apartment blocks of four and five stories, while the houses vary between two and four storeys. With a minimum of 40% affordable housing, the scheme adheres to the ‘Salford Standard’, inspired by Passivhaus principles, meeting the Future Homes standard and employing a fabric-first approach bolstered by renewable technology.

The Council aims to achieve high sustainability levels with an emphasis on low energy consumption and minimal carbon emissions, conforming to the ‘Salford Standard’ and integrating renewable technologies. Local suppliers and tradespeople are engaged to minimize transport emissions and support the regional economy. Additionally, the entire site features full wheelchair accessibility via level thresholds, tactile paving, wide doorways, and inclusive design principles.

The apartments use a lightweight pre-panelised Metframe structural framing system, incorporating 160mm thick composite metal decking upper floors supported by load-bearing Metframe walls or steel beams and columns. The houses are constructed using timber frames, with some external garden podium areas built from reinforced concrete (RC) columns and beams, featuring flat slabs in between.

A single-story RC frame podium structure over a parking area provides a communal courtyard space for one of the apartment buildings, featuring both blue and green roofs. Gardens were raised to the first floor of both townhouses and apartment blocks to create meaningful amenity spaces and conceal parking and service areas.

All the structures are supported on piles and ground beams. The facade comprises masonry cladding with isolated timber panels and curtain walling, which are base-supported and laterally restrained back to upper slabs or steel beams.

Due to numerous public sewers crossing the site, drainage has been challenging, necessitating various off-set easements agreed with UU before construction. The proposed drainage incorporates several Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) features, including blue roofs, swales, rain gardens, and detention basins. Given the site’s constraints, additional below-ground surface water attenuation is provided through oversized pipes and a mix of concrete and geocellular attenuation tanks.