Cliveland Street, Birmingham

Forged from the industrial heartlands of Birmingham’s historic Gun Quarter, Cliveland Street delivers 52 crafted apartments that reflect the distinctive character of their surroundings. The development stands on the former site of an ammunition factory — a reminder of the area’s manufacturing legacy that helped shape Birmingham’s industrial identity. Replacing the demolished factory building, the new apartment scheme has been carefully designed to acknowledge this heritage while introducing contemporary canal-side living. Its materiality and structural form respond to the robust industrial context, creating homes that feel rooted in place rather than imposed upon it.

The site presented tough constraints. It is a brownfield plot with a history of industrial use as a former ammunition factory, requiring careful consideration of ground conditions. Its canal-side location introduced further complexity. The building sits immediately adjacent to the waterway, with the ground floor level positioned lower than the canal water level. This created a heightened risk in relation to groundwater and lateral water pressure, requiring a robust structural and retaining strategy to protect both the new building and the stability of the canal edge.

A piled foundation solution was developed to address the brownfield ground conditions and provide long-term structural stability. Given the building’s relationship with the canal, detailed engineering design was undertaken to manage ground retention and resist lateral pressures from the adjacent towpath. A steel transfer structure was introduced at lower levels to efficiently support the light gauge steel frame (LGSF) superstructure above, enabling architectural flexibility while maintaining structural robustness.

Through considered engineering and coordinated design, Farrow Walsh enabled the successful transformation of a constrained industrial site into a distinctive canal-side residential development.