College Road, Croydon

Award Criteria

Architectural Excellence

Building on 101 George Street as the world’s tallest modular building, College Road will set a further record at 155m tall reaching approximately 20m beyond 101 George Street. College Road is the final piece in the jigsaw of the proposed development which creates a new public colonnade allowing pedestrian access from East Croydon station through to the newly refurbished Fairfield Hall and associated cultural quarter. This will form a natural extension of the public realm improvement and winter garden currently on site as part of the 101 George Street development. The taller of the two towers hosts a new kind of housing community for London. The co-living approach is a response to the emerging London Plan policy and seeks to establish an exemplar that can help define this form of housing. Through generous, carefully designed communal spaces the building encourages social interaction while making sure that each home is the right size to offer a place of retreat and privacy.

Technical Innovation & Sustainability

College Road is the latest and tallest building to be completed by Vision Modular Systems. College Road is 20m taller than its sister building 101 George Street, surpassing it as the World’s Tallest Volumetric Steel Modular Building. Like 101 George Street, College Road utilizes the Vision Modular System Modules for the residential part of the building. Building on the principles of 101 George Street, College Road incorporates a 2-storey open space with extra high floor to ceilings on Top of Tower A, in addition to external amenity spaces on both Towers. Such amenity spaces are a highly desirable feature on tall buildings. Developing an open plan modular solution to be incorporated into a residential building required the top floor modules to span further than standard room-type modules, requiring careful consideration of the loading and how this impacts the modules below, the installation methodology and the development of new site details for connections between the modules.

Cost Effectiveness

The speed of modular construction reduced the build time for College Road allowing a much earlier occupation of the building than traditional construction, estimated to be 50% faster than a similar traditional build. The client achieved a more certain cost of construction and earlier return on their investment. On College Road, the tower cranes for installing the modules were located on the core of each Tower. Through utilizing both tower cranes, the site installation team were able to reduce down-time and regularly install 70 module per week. At an average room size of 260 sq ft, this is approximately 18,000 sq ft installed per week.