Completed in 2005, Edge is a development of seven apartments and one penthouse set in a quarter of a hectare of landscaped gardens with frontage onto the River Thames at Strawberry Vale. The development was voted Best Apartment Building in the UK in the 2006 Mail on Sunday Sponsored NHBDA Awards, winning much praise from the judges for its ‘Clean Modern design that takes risks’.

The design is a direct response to its context. The use of large areas of full height glazing was designed both to allow light into the interiors and to maximise views. The building’s confident, restrained appearance is achieved by a visual simplicity to the detailing and a minimal palette of materials: glass, timber and render. Glass balustrades and frameless glass bays help blur the boundary between interior and exterior, providing spectacular uninterrupted vistas. External timber louvres provide sculptural detail and offer a different quality of light and enhanced sense of privacy to the interiors.

The interior layouts of the apartments are each individual in character, but all make maximum use of light and aspect. Materials include walnut flooring, American oak doors, stainless steel ironmongery and limestone and granite surfaces. The lower ground floor units enjoy private courtyard gardens, and all but one apartment at the upper levels have balconies or a terrace. Six of the eight apartments are triple aspect and therefore benefit from sunlight in different rooms at different times of day. Hot water underfloor heating is installed in each apartment as well as programmable lighting – providing flexibility and energy efficiency.

Apartments look across a Japanese inspired roof garden set with slate chippings, beach pebbles, boulders and reclaimed timber decking to a green vista of lawn sweeping down to the river. A gravel pathway provides access to the gardens and river and the apartments benefit from four river moorings.

Electrically operated security gates lead to a semi basement car park area; video entry system with internal colour monitors is provided to each apartment. Sustainable aspects of the design include an external insulating render chosen both for its high levels of thermal insulation and because it is self finished, thus requiring far less maintenance that conventional painted render. The oiled external timber cladding will not require further maintenance for several decades as it weathers down to a silvery colour.