The Eades, Walthamstow
Project Overview
The Eades is a build-to-rent residential scheme in Walthamstow, East London – two towers of 34 and 27 storeys with a communal podium terrace for residents. The outdoor space had to work hard on a tight, elevated site: somewhere green and genuinely usable for people living in a high-density development, rather than a terrace with a bench added as an afterthought. The brief ran across the whole landscape – planters, seating, screening and shade – with everything expected to hold together as one considered scheme and meet the standard a premium residential development is judged by.
The Design
The scheme brings together several elements that each do more than one job. Raised steel planters of varying depth run through the terrace, the deeper units carrying established trees and larger planting while the shallower ones hold grasses and shrubs, so the greenery reads at several levels rather than as a single flat border. Timber-slat steel-framed benches are built in alongside the planting, so people sit among the greenery rather than looking at it across the paving.
Cut steel screens with a woodland branch pattern give the terrace structure and a degree of privacy, filtering light and views rather than closing the space off. Steel pergolas anchor the whole thing, with a canopy for overhead shade and a frame that carries climbing planting as it establishes. The pattern on the screens picks up the planting around them, so the metalwork ties into the landscape rather than standing apart from it.
Key Features
The planting is the starting point rather than the finish. Because the planters are deep enough to hold real root volume, the terrace carries established trees and substantial planting on a podium deck where nothing could go into open ground – which is what lets the greenery do genuine work rather than just soften the edges.
The material palette holds the scheme together. The same dark metalwork runs through the planters, the bench frames, the screens and pergolas, so a set of separate elements is perceived as one deliberate landscape. The timber on the benches gives a warmer surface where people actually sit, and stays comfortable in full sun where a metal seat wouldn’t by the middle of the afternoon.
The pergolas and screens handle shelter and shade between them. The canopy takes the overhead sun off the area, the screens filter it at a lower level, and as climbing planting establishes on the pergola frame it adds to both the shade and the cooling.
Outcomes
The terrace works as a single considered landscape: planting, seating, screening and shade all pull in the same direction, turning an exposed podium into somewhere residents actually want to spend time through the warmer months.
It reflects what people living in urban developments increasingly expect from outdoor space – not simply somewhere to sit, but a landscape worth being in. The combination of deep planting, integrated seating, decorative screening and shade shows how the individual pieces of a scheme, thought about together, produce something better than any of them would on their own.
Project Details
Location: The Eades, Walthamstow, London
Product: Raised steel planters of varying depth; steel-and-timber-slat benches; cut steel decorative screens; steel pergolas with laser-cut decorative panels
Finish: Anthracite powder coat
Panel Design: Laser-cut woodland branch motif
Setting: Elevated communal residential terrace
