The 2024 Brick Awards Shortlist is now live, and we’re pleased to see Forest Road is shortlisted in the Medium Housing Development category.

Designed for Pocket Living, Forest Road provides 90 affordable one-bedroom homes for local first-time buyers and makes excellent use of an under-utilised site, to provide 100% affordable homes. Forest Road is situated opposite the William Morris Gallery — the Grade II* listed former home of the Arts & Crafts activist in the London Borough of Waltham Forest.

For Forest Road, Gort Scott has evolved the language of brick and precast concrete decorative details first developed at nearby Gainsford Road (Gort Scott for Pocket Living, completed 2018), maintaining visual continuity across the two schemes to create a relatable identity whilst giving Forest Road its own distinct character.

Inspired by the curved bay windows of the William Morris Gallery, lintels are gently concave to catch soft shadows that animate with changing light. All precast elements are coloured to match the pink/red tones of Floren Vecchio brick. The material palette contains a mix of warm white, grey, plum, pink and red tones acknowledging the diverse colours of surrounding buildings, with a storey-height band of darker bricks forming a base to the building.