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This year鈥檚 Housing Design Award winners prove that recessions need not eradicate design quality. While the residential market still struggles to emerge from its considerable economic woes, these schemes show that the traditional rubrics of good design, public consultation, innovative procurement models and an incentivised public sector can still deliver housing quality in bad times as well as good.

In fact, such was the quality of this year鈥檚 entrants that Design for Homes, the advisory body that champions residential design quality and which has overseen the awards since 2004, has suggested that previous winners might have struggled to attract the same recognition in this year鈥檚 roster.

Yet the awards, like the industry, are far from immune to the downturn. This is the first year Design for Homes has had to self-finance the awards and the organisation has made a digital database of all the submitted schemes commercially available for the first time.

So what are the common themes that have characterised this year鈥檚 winners? A marked improvement in the quality and provision of public realm for one, with good public spaces finally emerging as an integral component of many schemes and not merely an optional add-on. Housing blocks are also getting smaller, enabling 鈥渂ite-size鈥� production of housing units better placed to respond to the unpredictable economy. More houses are being built than in recent years, in marked contrast to the time when high land returns kept the market awash with flats.

But one of the biggest trends is the reinvention of traditional housing types. Re-imagined terrace houses are popping up all over London, tenement-style housing makes a comeback and even deck access is back. It will be ironic indeed if it is a new empathy for the past that enables the market to achieve design quality in the perilous economic times ahead. The schemes profiled here are winners in the completed category.

St Andrew鈥檚, London

Architect: Maccreanor Lavington, Allies & Morrison, Glenn Howells
Developer: Barratt Homes
Contractor: Barratt Homes
Local authority: London Borough of Tower Hamlets

The 3ha, east London site is just to the south of the new Olympic park. The residential masteplan has been designed by Allies & Morrison, which also designed one of the scheme鈥檚 three blocks. The other two have been designed by Mccreanor Lavington and Glenn Howells. Mccreanor Lavington鈥檚 Block B is a 230 unit, 12-storey complex that expresses strong angular geometries and is clad in distinctive striped brickwork. It also has projecting balconies decadently finished in gold, perforated, powder-coated steel. These intricately patterned metalwork panels were inspired by cast-iron fragments from the Victorian hospital that previously occupied the site and also reference the Arabic ethnic diversity present in the area.

Interlocking scissor-maisonettes are located on the ground floor, wheelchair accessible penthouses feature on the top floor and standard flats are distributed on the levels in between. The scheme is marked by generous and imaginative provision of amenity space. As well as the decorative balconies, enclosed room-size winter gardens punctuate the corners and sumptuous roof terraces frame stunning views of familiar London landmarks in the distance.

Peabody Avenue, London

Architect: Haworth Tompkins
Developer: Peabody Trust
Contractor: Mansell Construction Services
Local authority: City of Westminster

Peabody Avenue succeeds in resurrecting two of the most derided elements of 19th and 20th-century mass housing respectively: the tenement block and deck access. That it achieves this convincingly on a site bounded by railway tracks is all the more impressive. Haworth Tompkins鈥� L-shaped block closes a long range of 1870s tenements. With its sandy coloured stock brickwork, rusticated on the ground floor, continuous roof-line and vertical window bays, the architecture borrows heavily from its Victorian neighbour and merges seamlessly into its local context.

But innovative modern flourishes are also what help give this building a special architectural identity. One of these, boldly, is deck access circulation. Although this is not expressed on the facade, covered internal 鈥渟treets鈥� lead to single-aspect units in the building鈥檚 western range. Another dynamic feature is the series of large, cantilevered balconies that project over the west facade, facing on to the railway tracks. Significantly, these generous spaces are communal, so reinforce a sense of shared community.

Trees Extra Care Housing, London

Below are the 鈥渦ncompleted鈥� and 鈥減roject stage鈥� schemes. The full Housing Awards 2011 database can be viewed

Avenue, Safron Walden, Pollard Thomas Edwards Architects

Bank Hall, Chorley, Riches Haley Mikhail

Bold as Brick, RCKa Architects

Cambridge and Wells Court, London, Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands

Portobello Sqaure, London, PRP Architects

St Bedes, Bedford, PRP Architects

The Guts, Manchester, Mae Architects