Golders Green Road is a new six-storey residential development featuring high-quality apartment units and a full basement level providing secure car parking. Vertex provided full Structural and Civil Engineering Design services for the scheme, which maximizes the footprint of a tightly constrained urban site, with the basement extending fully to the boundary line on all sides.
One of the primary challenges was the integration of drainage and Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) within an extremely compact substructure, where minimal space existed between pile caps. Delivering a compliant and buildable civil design required careful planning and close coordination with the contractor. In addition, the building steps back progressively at each floor level, which demanded extensive design collaboration to minimize the use of transfer structures and ensure an efficient vertical load path throughout the reinforced concrete frame.
A further complexity was introduced by the presence of a pedestrian bridge adjacent to the site, owned by Transport for London (TfL). This required formal liaison and engineering justification to demonstrate that the new permanent structure would have no adverse impact on the integrity or operation of the existing bridge infrastructure.
The superstructure comprises a reinforced concrete frame using flat slabs, shear walls, and columns to optimize structural efficiency and flexibility for residential layouts. The basement was constructed using a contiguous piled retaining wall system, forming the full perimeter of the site and enabling maximum basement area within the tight site boundaries. Civil engineering design addressed the challenges of a densely packed foundation layout, successfully accommodating all drainage routes and SuDS elements within narrow tolerances between pile caps.
Vertex’s proactive and collaborative approach with the wider design team ensured seamless integration of architectural and structural requirements, while managing complex site constraints and third-party interface with TfL.
