Timber Wharf Housing

In 1998, Urban Splash and the RIBA announced a major international competition to find a new solution to inner city living. The brief envisaged adopting factory production methods to produce the 100 or so flats required.

Arca’s response provided a simple shell, formed from pre-fabricated, stressed skin plywood panels, braced by a large steel frame, and with proprietary curtain walling forming glazed ends. This shell had just one fixed component, the innovative Splashback – a user-rotatable factory-produced unit comprising pre-plumbed bathroom and kitchen equipment either side of a spine wall.

Winner RIBA Open International Competition 1999