The answer to the housing crisis? – Colin Wiles
January 18th, 2017
“I think Grant Shapps is on to something with his latest plan to encourage people to live on boats.
Here in Cambridge we have hundreds of people living on boats along the river. Some of them are a bit ramshackle and lack decent sanitation but the occupants seem to like them and they are affordable and close to the centre of town.”
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/home/home/bring-back-the-slums-28505
Old link
http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/ihstory.aspx?storycode=6517514
In case you missed this, tongue in cheek clearly.
The human mole – zero aspect hotel rooms
December 9th, 2016
“I think a decision like this lets down the whole of the West End. We are supposed to be a world-class city, which means showing the lead to others.” She added that visitors would be treated, “like a bunch of troglodytes in an underground cave”.
This is a joke right? I’ve parked in that car park, way underground back in the 1970s. Not in a million years would I have imagined somebody planning to park people underground and make them pay for the privilege. Is it April 1st yet?
Zeilenbau orientation
December 8th, 2016
Churchill Gardens Pimlico – Powell and Moya
On reading Lewisham, the Notopian future of London by Owen Hatherley the other day, I was struck by this sentence.
“This particular part of the development is darkened by the canyon-like effect of tall blocks looming over a narrow service road, something avoided by postwar council estates, what with their green space and carefully arranged orientation to the sun.”
[…]
“Third, the new vernacular, so long as it coexists with a developer-driven urbanism which sees spaciousness as so much wasted, unrentable space, means little more than politesse curtain-walled over plutocracy.” [Owen !!!]
Moving on, the estate that comes most quickly to mind and probably to any member of the C20th Society or DocomomoUK is Churchill Gardens by Powell and Moya.
Urban Splash – Saxton : 4 into 2 won’t go
December 4th, 2016
“…the space has been divided to ensure that each apartment is substantial in size.” [boggle] -> Award
Google Leeds tower blocks The Parade – images
A few years ago Urban Splash bought two derelict council housing blocks which were due for demolition, at Richmond Hill in Leeds. During the “deep retrofit” (partial demolition) the project stalled and Kickstart funding was required to restart it.
Urban Splash stripped the blocks back to the concrete skeleton retaining the lift and staircase cores, then doubled the density by refitting the blocks with over 400 single aspect flats disregarding the original layout of over 200 dual aspect flats.
Why not build directly if you own the land?
November 30th, 2016
Click for full image
There was a time when the [London] borough or shire would employ their own architects, quantity surveyors, civil engineers, clerk of works and direct labour force and just get on with it. In London of course it would have been the LCC and later [from 1965] the GLC. Those days may have gone in most cases but we need them back.
One Regent Place Manchester – Fulcrum
November 27th, 2016
The benighted dwellings 910 and 1008 will receive their only sunlight for a few minutes a day to the bedroom – providing the sky is not overcast
The other day I received an email. Here’s a paragraph from it.
“Thank you for your enquiry with regards to a new development in Manchester called One Regent provided by Fulcrum. It would be good to have a chat at some point to understand your requirements for investment as there is a lot of stock we can provide direct from the developer with no fees attached.”
Dublin downgrades its housing standards
November 25th, 2016
I’ve recently been alerted to the fact that the Dublin government has downgraded its housing standards in the revised Dublin City Development plan 2016-2022
and also in the Design standards for new apartments 2015
I was looking through the blog statistics and found a search from Australia for apartments with dual aspects which prompted me to click the search term which led me to this newspaper article Proposal to relax minimum apartment standards about the Dublin Governments revised city centre apartment standards.
Modular construction – notes
November 17th, 2016
This isn’t an article, it’s two links and a few thoughts. I found a KPMG paper today on modular construction and a linked one from Design for Homes.
Smart construction report 2016 – KPMG
Modular Steel – Design for Homes
Brief references to the whole subject would be the (unintended) extended life of World War II prefabs, designed for ten years some of which have lasted sixty years. The present and ongoing housing crisis. The shortage of skilled tradespeople in the construction industry, the need for a lot of housing, quickly, all over the UK.
In some minds prefabricated housing is still hampered by memories of Ronan Point in 1968 but that was an entirely different house of cards, the system was used way above its intended height and the bolts were left out or not properly connected.
A quality architectural image was critical to the client in order to overcome the possible utilitarian perceptions often associated with system-build housing. – Murray Grove
Kate and Rowan at the old Biscuit Factory
June 22nd, 2016
Kate Macintosh talking to Rowan Moore
That’s Dawsons Heights above them on the screen. The event held at the offices of Karakusevic Carson Architects in the old Peek Freans biscuit factory in Bermondsey was well attended by a majority female audience and largely consisted of Kate talking about her career and her work in an entertaining manner.
Kate is a hero to lots of women architects and planners for breaking down gender barriers in the profession. Apart from her architecture, she set up the women architects group at RIBA – so her political work on gender in the profession was really significant. – Tom Cordell
Download the audio from the link below:-
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiY79RxZ46DM3Vg0o8uG71mKS-Wc
The talk begins at about eleven minutes in.
A transcription of the talk is available here:-
Kate Macintosh in conversation with Rowan Moore transcript
Whether or not it was carried out with the aid of my recording remains to be seen. I wasn’t aware of any other recording going on on the night.
Owen Hatherley on Slow Burn City by Rowan Moore
May 30th, 2016
“Both mayors elected so far, and the two major candidates this time, have offered the same solution, differing only in degree—a relentless offsetting, whereby the proceeds of runaway property speculation are proposed to be redistributed, usually by a legal requirement that developers build a percentage of “affordable” housing on or off the site, or pay for a bus stop, or fund some nice pavements and benches.”
“All of this relies on trying to inveigle the private sector into behaving more nicely. In a city where for nearly a century public bodies once directly built and directly owned thousands of high-quality homes and let them to people on low incomes at low rent, this is a staggering failure of imagination.” – Owen Hatherley writing in Prospect Magazine.