LIVING AT HELENA COURT, HIGHLANDS GARDENS
Photo: T. Gilling
Current improvements

Helena Court is a beautiful Victorian building with spacious and pleasant gardens. It requires a good deal of attention to keep it to the standard leaseholders and residents will expect of it. Reversing years of neglect, the Residents Association's priority in the 1990s and early 2000s was to get a grip on maintenance works from routine cleaning and gardening to bigger items like regular internal and external painting, fire safety, electrical re-wiring in the common ways and repairs to brickwork and the roof. Multi-year maintenance plans make provision for such works.

Since 2003, the Association has undertaken a gradual programme of improvements. These have included re-paving the front pathways in sturdy and attractive herringbone brick and some restoration work in the gardens. From 2010, work has begun on restoring the front and back areas adjoining the building in stages and on restoring hedges that have suffered disease. Damaged walls will be repaired without major redesign. The entire rubbish bin and basement areas, however, do require design work. The first drawing, which includes the entire front area and thus the full extent of works to it is given on the left hand side below. The works to the rubbish bin and basement areas have been designed in depth and are presented on the right hand side using an easy-to-use interactive 3-D walkaround program. Our thanks go to Laurence de Vaz and George Okines for producing this design concept in such a user-friendly way.

First design concept for the full front area works.

 

Click on the image to get the look and feel of the bin and basement area redesign in 3D walkaround mode. The viewing software you'll need first is available free here.