The primary retail outlet has its main frontage to Forest Road and forms a new base on which three new housing blocks are arranged so as to form a communal courtyard garden court at first floor. The blocks are carefully placed both to respond to the immediate surrounding context and recent proposals on the adjacent site and the wider scale ambitions stated in the local urban design framework documents.

The largest block which forms a new ‘landmark’ corner on Forest Road and Blackhorse Lane sets up the aspiration for the six storey urban wall along Forest Road, this terminates as a triangular ‘gusset’ building which both forms a significant new corner and gives way to the scale of the existing Tryst public house on Blackhorse Lane.

The smallest block is used to resolve the street scale between the Mandora site and the Tryst Pub on Blackhorse Lane and is used to contextually ‘frame’ the pub within the centre of the whole composition.

The third block is located at the rear of the site and takes advantage of the light and air reserved by the retention of the existing pub with views out to Blackhorse Lane between the other two blocks, at the same time this block helps to spatially contain the communal courtyard space to maintain privacy and intimacy whist still allowing sunlight and air through to the Mandora block adjacent.