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Kevin McCloud’s grand design for British housing | feature

The Sheet — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:46:44 +0000

The Channel 4 presenter turned enlightened property developer just wants to make people happy, he says

A former editor of mine was fond of saying, as he watched his eminent colleagues accept toxic invitations to advise on projects such as the Millennium Dome, that "journalists can't do things". We might spend our lives telling others how to save the euro, or select an England team, or design a skyscraper, but when it comes to organising people to achieve a shared aim, we tend to lack patience or the ability to work towards a deadline months rather than days away. Writers tend to be individualists, looking for new discoveries, not methodical team players.

The same could be true, with knobs on, for TV presenters. So it is striking that Kevin McCloud, presenter of Grand Designs, should now be trying his hand as an enlightened property developer. For years, he has cast his eye over the hopes, follies and struggles of people trying to build beautiful homes for themselves. Now he is daring to show how it should, or could, be done. "I would get on a train to go from one location to another," he says, "and pass another 5,000 houses in Ilfracombe or Norwich or Aberdeen and they would all look the same. I thought, 'Is this the best we can do?' "

Five years ago, he set up a company called Hab (Happiness Architecture Beauty) in order to "build houses that make people happy". The recession has slowed its progress, but its first creation, a 42-home development in Swindon called the Triangle, is now complete. Next month, Channel 4 is screening Kevin's Grand Design, a two-part documentary about the project, which was achieved in partnership with the housing association, GreenSquare Group. When it is suggested that the attention these programmes will attract will be a double-edged sword, he says: "It will be a one-edged sword with the blade laid across my throat."

He is addressing the great British housing problem. For decades, it has been plain that new houses are unimaginative, overpriced, undersized and resistant to the kind of technical improvement that is standard in industries such as car making. Changes in planning law, to improve design or make housing more accessible, are forever tried and forever failing. The rather daunting task he has set himself is to deflect the glacial flow of change, to make "a very significant difference from conventional development".

With his trademark energetic enthusiasm, he reels off technical details about attenuation tanks and swales. He wants to create a truly sustainable development. So the Triangle's open spaces are designed to soak up rainwater, so that the risk of flooding is lowered, the pressure on Swindon's drainage is reduced and the planting remains lush in hot weather. It has what Hab's design director, Isabel Allen, calls a "muddy, soggy landscape" which has the added benefit that it is fun for children to play in it.

The external walls of the houses are made out of hempcrete, a material that is not only highly insulating but, being made out of a plant – hemp – takes more carbon out of the atmosphere than it puts in. The houses also have chimney-like objects on their roofs, which are actually ventilators, that help the houses to cool naturally.

"Anyone can build an eco-home," he says, "but it doesn't solve anything. There is nothing to stop them turning up the thermostat. What's more interesting is the way people live and behave." So the Triangle has allotments and polytunnels where people can grow their own food, and a car club and a scooter club that make their use of transport less wasteful. He sees such things as more important than the design features of individual houses.

Most of all, McCloud wants to create a community. The houses of the Triangle are arranged in traditional terraces, enclosing a kind of village green. Here, children can play on slopes and interestingly arranged logs and splash in water. Conventional swings and slides are avoided, however, on the grounds that these would mark the place as only for children and alienate the adults and teenagers who, it is hoped, will also enjoy the green.

Part of the point of the allotments and polytunnels is to bring people together and such things as barbecues and Halloween parties are encouraged. Irrigation is achieved with old-fashioned water pumps – more fun than standpipes – around which residents might gather. Each house is fitted with a "shimmy" – a touch-screen computer that McCloud calls a cross between "an iPad and a parish magazine". This enables residents to exchange information, help and advice and tells them about upcoming events.

Of the 42 homes, 21 are what is called "social rented", which is for people on the local authority's list of people in need of new homes. Eleven are "intermediate rented", which is at 80% of the market rent. Ten are "rent to buy", which means people rent them at below-market rates, with a view to saving for a deposit and ultimately buying their homes. There is therefore a mixture of people: teachers, retirees, single mothers formerly in council hostels, families who were in accommodation for the homeless.

The Triangle is so designed that no distinction is made between the house types. This, says McCloud, is "unlike schemes, including one that won the Stirling prize" – he means the Accordia development in Cambridge – "where the houses for sale are lovely and the social stuff is behind a wall".

It is striking, with all this ingenuity in the design, how very plain-looking the houses are. Any Grand Designs fan expecting another of the exotic creations featured in the programme will be disappointed. They are pitched-roofed, in straight rows, partly inspired by the railway workers' cottages that Brunel built in Swindon. Their elevations are in shades of cream and grey that echo the existing terraces and semi-detacheds of this part of town.

Glenn Howells, the architect of the Triangle, says that "the conversation we had was, 'Do we have the nerve to do something very, very normal?' With Kevin, everyone was expecting it to be more eye-catching, more televisual. People go there and say, 'Blimey, it looks normal.' That's the point." The idea of the terrace, he says, "started a long time ago and it will go on for another 500 or 600 years. It is such a good form". The only problem is that "there is a perception in the housing market that it won't sell, so developers have to make things convoluted, even though those to-die-for streets of Islington, where Boris Johnson lives, are all repetitive".

The aim, says Howells, is to "prove you can do excellent ordinary housing that sells and that people want to live in". It is about little things achieved within the standard budget for housing association developments – apart from a little additional support for some of the more adventurous environmental features. Bedroom doors are placed away from corners, so it is possible to place wardrobes behind them, and windows are larger than in most new housing. Ceilings are higher than standard on the ground floor (which means, to stay within budget, they are lower upstairs). The porches include space for bike racks, so that they don't have to be lugged through houses from the back garden, which makes it more likely they will be used.

On the outside, architectural expression is sought in such things as oversize rainwater pipes, which, together with change of hue from one house to the next, and vertically proportioned windows, help to define individual houses. In front of each house are gabion walls, gabion being the form of construction used in road embankments, where loose stones are placed in wire cages. Here, they screen parking spaces, so that cars do not dominate the appearance of the space.

McCloud says that "the design of spoons and the design of cities is one process" and it is the totality of the Triangle's inventions that matters. He is particularly keen on the importance of landscape design. Usually, says the Triangle's landscape architect, Luke Engleback, his role is to "decorate masterplans by others". Here, Engleback was involved from the outset in shaping the concept and form of the development.

McCloud keeps saying that "it's about the residents – it's their happiness that will determine the success of scheme". It will take years to find out if it really works but, meanwhile, I am introduced to 64-year-old Maggie Lowton, who was forced out of her home of 38 years by negative equity. "Since I started my affair with Kevin," she says, she has bought into his dream. "We love the house and feel privileged and proud. It's lighter, airier and easier to clean. It feels too nice and too new." The architectural aesthetics are of secondary importance. "People say, 'What are those stones for?'" she says of the gabions.

She says you can see a community forming, even if there are some points of friction – "you do hear snippets, like someone parking in someone else's space". As a Christian, she is wrestling with the problem of other people's faiths, including paganism. "Perhaps we can have a multi-faith Christmas tree," she says, "but I don't know how to do that… maybe we can have a pagan log." She wants "it to work for everyone. I want Kevin's dream to come true. What a waste if it didn't".

For McCloud, the dream seems to originate in a love of the organic. "I grew up in the countryside – Bedfordshire. I was interested in birds and bees and flowers and mushrooms." He says there is "a spiritual dimension" to living with nature that he wants to give to the residents of Hab's developments. The village where he lived was also the kind of place where "kids played in the street on their bikes, and if a car came round the corner, it had to slow down".

Realising this dream requires a great deal of technical grind, of dealing with planners, highways authorities, water suppliers. It requires responding patiently to officials such as the one who, Engleback says, objected to fruit trees on the grounds that "someone might slip on a berry". McCloud's celebrity means that "doors are opened a little more quickly", but also that "it is very important for local authorities not to be seen to be granting us the smallest favour. We can't cheat or push or cut corners".

The Triangle has required an exceptional amount of effort by Hab, GreenSquare, their architects, engineers and other consultants, all to achieve a simple array of row houses which – albeit without such high environmental performance – would once knocked have been knocked up almost without thinking by builders. Larger developments are now on the way in Oxford and Stroud, but McCloud is not expecting these to be much easier. The hope is that others will follow the example.

He acknowledges that the Triangle is not as advanced as some of the continental schemes in Tubingen, Stockholm and elsewhere which were his inspirations. They "emerged from a culture of planning and construction that is far more evolved, and far more sophisticated, than in Britain," he says. "But," he adds, "I feel we have hit on the grail. We have made a very significant difference from conventional development… we're 90% there, and to do it in Swindon in a difficult economic climate – I'm happy."

He thinks he is doing better than the Prince of Wales's Poundbury. "One positive thing about Poundbury was the way perceived ownership of the public realm meant the residents adopted it," he says. But "one of the failings is the way the external appearance is at the expense of internal architecture". In order to achieve the look of old cottages, "you get low ceilings and tiny windows".

The Triangle is in a tradition of model villages beloved of aristocrats, princes, of Brad Pitt in New Orleans and the Bordeaux sugar-cube manufacturer who commissioned workers' housing from Le Corbusier. Such places can be over-scripted, too much about fulfilling their makers' picture-book fantasies about contented communities. There is a whiff of this with Hab's gooey talk about "making people happy", although they are conscious of the need not to over-control. "If they decide they don't want to grow food and just want to park cars, we'd be a bit upset," says Isabel Allen, but in the end it will be up to the residents.

Maggie Lowton sounds a note of caution by citing other communities in Swindon that started well but went downhill. No amount of forethought and attention to detail can guarantee the success of the Triangle. But at the very least it is an imaginative and well-designed project, which achieves about as much as can be done with its budget. It focuses on what matters most and gives itself the best chance of success. Which is far more rare than it should be in British house building and a much better application of celebrity philanthropy than most.

Rowan Moore

Eco-home developer BioRegional Quintain to shut

The Sheet — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 08:50:59 +0000

Property developer behind environmentally sustainable schemes will halt work after Middlehaven first phase

The UK's highest-profile sustainable developer, BioRegional Quintain, is to be wound up after its parent company, the property developer Quintain, decided to focus on the London market.

BioRegional Quintain, originally set up as a joint venture by the influential environmental charity behind "One Planet Living" and Quintain in 2005, will finish the 80-home first phase of the Middlehaven scheme in Middlesbrough, and then wind itself up.

BioRegional Quintain's chief executive, Pete Halsall, told this week's Building magazine: "It is extremely sad but it is part of a wider decision of Quintain's board to focus on its core business. My understanding is that Quintain wants to be able to express sustainability in its developments in a different way."

Halsall confirmed that the venture would shut, with the loss of five jobs. It leaves the Homes and Communities Agency's (HCA) £200m, 750-home Middlehaven scheme without a residential developer for its later phases, raising fears for the project's green credentials.

BioRegional Quintain will also withdraw from the London Development Agency's prestigious One Gallions project in east London, where it was selected in 2007 with Crest Nicholson and Southern Housing Group to build a model 260-home environmentally sustainable development.

At its peak before the downturn, BioRegional had a £350m development pipeline on six sites. Its most successful scheme was the award-winning One Brighton joint venture with Crest Nicholson, which completed last year and included allotment spaces for residents to grow their own food on the roof of the development.

The joint venture was dedicated to the 10 principles espoused by BioRegional Quintain's "One Planet Living" philosophy, including the need for developments to be zero carbon and zero waste, to use local food, and promote residents' "health and happiness".

Wembley developer Quintain bought BioRegional's share in the joint venture last year. Halsall, who will leave the business, said the move did not mean that the kind of development promoted by BioRegional Quintain was a thing of the past, and that he would shortly be announcing a new venture dedicated to "deep green" developments. "There is still tremendous potential. Quintain has to focus on its primary portfolio right now but this kind of development is absolutely still the future."

The firm's demise was lamented by two Stirling prize-winning architects, both of whom have worked with the developer. Peckham Library architect Will Alsop, who was the master planner on Middlehaven, said: "It is very sad news. This was a company very committed to doing things in a more responsible way."

Peter Clegg, of Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects, which designed One Brighton, called the development a "great shame".

"It was a joint venture between some of the most conscientious sustainability thinkers of the past 10 years and one of the more significant developers, which had significant resources," he said.

David Curtis, HCA executive director, said: "While this is disappointing news, we remain firmly committed to Middlehaven. We are in discussions with BioRegional's parent company, Quintain Estates, to find the best way forward for their work at Middlehaven."

Lord Foster reveals £50bn Thames Hub project

The Sheet — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:33:41 +0000

Ambitious Thames estuary plan to include international airport, railway and housing with new freight and energy infrastructure

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realised." These famous words are attributed to Daniel Burnham, the ebullient American architect and planner who reshaped Chicago, extended Washington DC and championed the City Beautiful movement of the late 19th century.

On Wednesday Lord Foster announced a plan so big that even Burnham would have been impressed. The Thames Hub, a £50bn project devised by architects Foster and Partners, planners and builders Halcrow and Volterra, a consultancy group of British economists, aims to revolutionise Britain's often creaking and largely inadequate national transport and energy infrastructure.

From a proposed new Thames Hub, comprising an international airport, railway terminus, freight depot and port along with a new Thames Barrier sited all together in the Thames estuary, a new four-track high-speed orbital passenger and freight railway would run around the north of London before joining main lines to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester, Hull, Felixstowe, Cardiff and Southampton.

Aiming to take thousand of container lorries off the roads, this radically enhanced national transport "spine" would also carry power lines and communications cables, cutting down on the need for new pylons. Built to a continental loading gauge, the railways would connect directly with high-speed passenger and freight lines in the rest of Europe.

New homes, hi-tech factories and other workplaces would be built around existing and new railway lines with tens of thousands of new homes connected directly to an ultra-modern transport network. Most new homes in Britain are currently scattered on the fringe of old towns and across the green belt with little consideration for transport and other infrastructure.

"We need to recapture the foresight and political courage of our 19th-century forebears, " said Foster on Wednesday, "if we are to establish a modern transport and energy infrastructure in Britain for this century and beyond."

The Thames Hub and the "spine" are bold plans indeed. "They're born out of necessity, enthusiasm and frustration," says Foster. "In Hong Kong, a decade ago, we were able to build a major new international airport and all the associated infrastructure including a new island reclaimed from the sea within four years. If Britain wants to compete with rapidly developing global economies, it must sort out its infrastructure and, if this is holistically planned with real political commitment it can also be a thing of beauty and environmentally friendly."

"I know it's against the national grain to come up with big plans and we'll be accused of playing Napoleon, but we have to get the debate going and show what a difference a radical new infrastructure plan could make to Britain."

"Infrastructure is the key", says David Kerr, group board director of Halcrow. "Britain ignores development and investment in infrastructure at its peril. Look around the world and you see the way in which China and Latin America are investing heavily in infrastructure. They see it as a passport to strong economic development."

Bridget Rosewell of Volterra says that, if implemented, the Thames Hub plan would generate £150bn in financial benefits alone. It has also been planned to save the green belt from rapacious commercial development, to generate hydroelectric power from the tidal Thames and to beautify transport corridors around London and along the country's main traffic arteries.

"If it went ahead, even in part," says Foster, "the very realisation of the plan would create thousands of skilled jobs in engineering, manufacturing and construction alone."

Although Britain has rarely been a country of grand plans, these have existed. The building of the railways, sewers, National Grid, motorways and water supplies are all examples of how Britain has made it in the past. Huge infrastructure projects like the city of Birmingham's water supply from the Elan Valley, completed in the early 20th century, prove how such works can be breathtakingly beautiful as well as discreet and highly effective. They can also be highly controversial, politically sensitive and hugely expensive.

"The cost of not doing anything will ultimately be much higher," says Foster, an architect used to moving mountains in the far east. "We've stuck our heads up like coconuts in a funfair expecting them to be knocked down. But we need to do something soon, and this plan is national, aiming to redress the imbalance of the economies of north and south."

Could it happen? Could we soon be flying in and out of one of the greatest ports in the world where fleets of modern aircraft, ships and trains power Britain's economy into a newly competitive age? Will we live in fine new homes connected to brand new transport, energy and communications spines and hubs? Or will we decide it's business as usual in little Britain and carry on building junk housing on what were once meadows and unsustainable supermarkets and shopping malls on the land that's left and between overcrowded roads and railways? Foster and his team have offered a big-spirited vision of Britain, but do we have eyes to see it?

Jonathan Glancey

Saturday interview: Fiona Reynolds, National Trust director general

The Sheet — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 23:09:52 +0000

National Trust chief Fiona Reynolds believes planning law is the biggest test yet of the government's claim to be green, and is leading the backlash against the plans

I sit in the beer garden of a Cotswold pub – long before it opens – on a perfect autumn morning. Strands of spiders' silk, untethered from their webs, float through the air, visible only for a second when they catch a glint of sunlight. The leaves on the trees look golden in this light, and the fields stretch out in front as far as you can see. Could there be anywhere more beautiful than right here, right now? Count yourself lucky, you think, for England's green and pleasant land. And for its planning laws.

"I know we're sitting in a very privileged part of the countryside now, in terms of landscape," says Dame Fiona Reynolds, director general of the National Trust, as she sits down on a picnic bench and tries to get her collie-spaniel cross Lucy to sit too, "but this has all been protected through good planning and the moment you let good planning go, it's lost for ever." Reynolds doesn't have the look of a victorious warrior returning from battle – she is far too measured for that – but she could be allowed a small, self-satisfied smile at the firestorm the National Trust helped inflict on the government's National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) consultation. Reynolds took the step – for the first time in her 11 years at the National Trust – of writing to all four million members and asking them to support its campaign against the consultation that could be the biggest change to planning regulation in several decades. Most potentially devastating, the Trust warned, was prioritising economic growth over longterm protection of the countryside when it came to planning decisions. Their petition was signed by more than 200,000 people and David Cameron stepped in and wrote to the National Trust, pledging to protect the "beautiful British landscape." The consultation closed last week, and the months of waiting have begun. "We've just got to hope the government is really listening. I'm passionate about protecting the countryside, and the need to get it right. If you get it wrong what you lose, you lose for ever."

She says she was "hugely impressed" by the response of the National Trust's members. "I think it's one of those things about our nation – and we're a very urban society now – but we do love the countryside, it's something that seems to be part of our character and our sense of what England is. I think people were shocked, particularly that a Conservative-led government should appear not to be passionate about the countryside. It just felt wrong."

The coalition is "so preoccupied with growth and of course we have every sympathy with that, but it's about what kind of growth, what kind of economy, and in a way the recession has given us a chance to think about the quality of what we do. We have 330,000 houses with planning permission that aren't being built because there is no money for mortgages, so the problems in a way are elsewhere. But given that we have a chance to build really well and intelligently – in a way a recession is a time to think positively about that. That's the disappointing thing: they felt they had to press the old 'growth at any cost' button."

The National Trust isn't a campaigning organisation, she says, and isn't about to become one, despite occasional forays onto the battlefield – it objected to the expansion of Stansted airport, for example, and against the government's proposed forests sell-off.

"[Campaigning] is dependent on the issue," she says. "I would not expect us to be doing it all the time. If we became rentaquote, that wouldn't be right. We reserve our voice for something that is really important, absolutely at the heart of our core purpose and touches what we stand for and where we make a difference. This felt like the single most important issue in the time I have been here. I think we should campaign on issues that are central to what we do and I suspect it would be rare, but when we make a contribution it matters. I think this is what this has shown." It is a "caricature", says Reynolds, that the National Trust is against all development. "We recognise we need housing, schools, the physical buildings where these things happen. Our big question is how we do it."

The National Trust is the biggest private landowner and biggest NGO, with an estimated one in 10 voters a member. Reynolds is head of a huge powerbase. Does this make her the most powerful woman in Britain? She laughs. "I wouldn't say that. I'm the luckiest woman in Britain because I have the best job in the country."

Are politicians frightened of her? "I don't know about frightened. I think they are listening, and that's absolutely right. I think the National Trust stepping up on this issue really made them think, and that's a good thing. They did the wrong thing with it by giving it this economic slant. I hope that our intervention will get us to a proper balance between social, environment and economic objectives. They're listening," she adds, "but we're not there yet. We don't know the outcome."

David Cameron's promise that his would be the greenest government ever is met by a small laugh. "I've yet to see it, put it that way. You can only judge a government by what it does. This is a big test and they haven't failed it yet because it was only a draft consultation, but it has to change significantly to deliver what the country needs."

When Reynolds was a child, growing up in Alston in Cumbria, her parents would take her to National Trust properties. She became a member of the organisation while she was still at Cambridge, where she did an MPhil in land economy. "I never thought I would end up running it, but I've always been intrigued by the National Trust. I love the sense of purpose. I love an organisation that has a long view back, but also a long view forward. We say to people we are going to look after places for ever for everyone, and I believe we will."

At 53, Reynolds has been in the job since 2001. "Now I'm suddenly feeling quite old," she says. "It's a bit of a shock, really. When I started, my children were small and now they're growing up." Her husband, a teacher, "did the stay at home bit. I couldn't have done this job as somebody who was also trying to be the number one carer, so I was very lucky that he was willing to do that, because it is very, very hard to be a mother and have a big job, to pursue a career. I know lots of people who found that impossible."

It's perhaps the main reason, she says, why there are so few women at her level. Does she think it is getting easier? "I wouldn't say it's getting easier, but it's becoming more acceptable to have unconventional arrangements at home. But I don't think it's that much better for women. It's that age-old tension – even if you're not physically responsible for the children, you're emotionally thinking 'should I be there?' or 'I'm missing that sports day – again.'"

Reynolds worked at the Council for National Parks, then the Council to Protect Rural England, before spending two years as director of the women's unit at the cabinet office under Tony Blair. When she got the job as director general of the National Trust, she was accused of being one of "Tony's cronies", though she insists she was not on social terms with the then-prime minister. But still, her appointment was controversial. "I was the youngest director general and the first woman, and it would have been surprising if people hadn't gone 'hmm'. But I hope my track record spoke for itself, and now my track record from being there for 11 years – we've done some great things."

Membership – and income – has swelled under her directorship, and the organisation is steadily modernising. She acknowledges "nobody will ever agree with everything the Trust does, I learned that early on. It's not an organisation that in the detail of what we do we can please everybody, and it's impossible to try." For instance, the Trust was accused of "dumbing down" (and "Disney-fying") for its recent efforts to, as Reynolds puts it, "bring houses to life" by dressing guides up and recreating scenes in rooms. "I'm completely unrepentant, because I think our job is to make history appealing and accessible to a new generation who haven't all learned history in school. Provided you are telling the truth and there's an integrity, so you're not simplifying or glossing over difficult stories in order to make something sound nice, I don't think it's dumbing down at all."

But isn't "glossing over difficult stories" what the National Trust became expert at doing? It is only in recent years, for instance, that the National Trust has acknowledged how many of its properties were built on fortunes from slavery. "I think we recognise that we didn't always tell all the stories," she says, adding that it is changing. "If you go to properties now you will see much more about where the fortune came from that built the house, some of the slavery issues. We are prepared to tell the more difficult stories as well."

I've always felt too nose-up-against-the-window in most National Trust houses I've been to, and an unease at the worship of its original aristocratic owners a visit seemed to demand.

"I'm not sure it's worshipping," says Reynolds. "I think it's curiosity. People are really intrigued by it. If you go to the back-to-backs [former slum housing in Birmingham acquired by the National Trust], people are just as enthralled by them. There, for a lot of people, you could think, 'that might well have been me', whereas in a great stately home, you think, 'actually I would probably have been the scullery maid'."

The family membership has swelled, Reynolds points out, which makes the demographic younger. There is still much room for improvement, though. I suspect low-income families are still a rarity – quite aside from the entry prices, it can be impossible to get to many properties on public transport – and Reynolds admits there are few ethnic minority members. "I freely recognise that, and we've been working with properties that are either located in urban areas, or close to large areas of different populations. For example, Wightwick Manor in the west Midlands is surrounded by a huge Sikh and Afro-Caribbean community, and they have been working specifically on how to involve their local community."

Providing people with access to nature still underpins the Trust's original purpose. "We're very concerned about [people decreasing contact with nature]," says Reynolds. "One of our founders, Octavia Hill, said something like 'the need of air, the sight of sky and all things growing seem human needs common to all'. She was saying it's as important to have access to beauty, and the ability to get out into the countryside – that's as important as the roof over your head and something to eat. Which comes back to the planning issue. I've got shelves of books at home about the early-20th-century and the conservation movement beginning, and through the 20s and 30s the Trust was very involved in establishing our planning system. It just felt right that we should be there now defending it."

Our time runs out and Reynolds has to go. My last glimpse of her is in silhouette as she strides across open fields, her dog racing off in front towards the sun.

Emine Saner

Response: Labelling new properties ‘Noddy boxes’ is simply unfair

The Sheet — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 23:06:02 +0000

We have to build the homes the country needs, at prices our customers can afford

The recent interview with Angela Brady, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, (Sense of space, Society, 5 October) made me wonder whether Riba has lost touch with the realities of housing delivery in a desperate attempt to chase headlines.

Brady labels "buildings passing for detached homes as 'Noddy boxes'". The article states: "It is a criticism she heard time and again during this year's party conference fringe meetings which outlined Riba's Case for Space campaign, a drive to persuade house-builders to raise their game as new homes become significantly smaller."

Representatives of the Home Builders Federation didn't hear this phrase used at the conferences, but we did hear how Riba's Future Homes Commission will "find out what consumers want and make recommendations to house builders"– it seems that Riba didn't ask customers these questions before they criticised the way new homes are currently built.

That contrasts with house builders who, in difficult economic circumstances, actually have to build and sell the homes the country needs. Our members are constantly talking to their customers and building the homes that they want at prices they can afford – if they didn't they would soon go out of business.

Our latest survey showed that 84% of new home buyers are satisfied or very satisfied with their new home, with 86% saying they would recommend their builder to a friend. The people who matter, those who buy and live in the homes – rather than those commenting on the industry – are happy. And if house builders, who are in stiff competition with each other, could easily build bigger houses that customers would prefer, why don't they?

Land supply is the key. For decades the planning system has not delivered enough land for the number of homes our population needs.

As Brady says, there is a compelling argument for new homes: "We've got a huge housing crisis, a shortage of 250,000 units a year. And there should be more opportunity for better housing." If indeed she does recognise this, she would be well advised to focus Riba's efforts on supporting us as we push for a robust planning system that will deliver the land for that to happen.

Land supply, viability, the burden of regulation, local authority design and sustainability demands – these are the issues that matter.

In private, Riba staff have constantly assured us that they want to work constructively with our industry. Unfortunately their continued insistence on using provocative statements about "Noddy boxes" is deeply discouraging.

Home builders, who all work with architects on the frontline, are struggling to cope with the economic malaise and credit drought, a battle over the new planning system and hefty environmental regulation. Riba must engage in the real issues – then we'll be happy to work with the Future Homes Commission.

Stewart Baseley

New homes must be fit for purpose, says leading architect

The Sheet — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:05:18 +0000

The new president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Angela Brady, wants to start a conversation on building better new homes

For Angela Brady, good design is a watchword. That means communicating its benefits on television, radio, at workshops for children, on public platforms and, in her new role, to the country at large.

The new president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) has a Channel 4 series featuring architecture in six European cities behind her. Right now, her passion is the lamentable design of much of the new housing in England. She does not mince words, labelling buildings passing for detached homes as "Noddy boxes". It is a criticism she heard time and again during this year's party conference fringe meetings which outlined Riba's Case for Space campaign, a drive to persuade house-builders to raise their game as new homes become significantly smaller.

Those Riba events, titled Leaving Legoland, attracted several hundred at the three party conferences. "The strong criticism that came from the audience was: 'We're sick of these volume housebuilders, the Noddy box houses in cul-de-sacs all around the country. We have to drive to improve them. They're not built sustainably. They're tiny, cramped.' And they've got a fair point," says Brady.

"People will say housebuilders have got a monopoly because they've got the land. We're saying there hasn't really been an analysis of how we live, what spaces we need, since 1961. So we're starting the conversation. Let's ask what people want."

That is what Riba is proposing with a Future Homes Commission, comprising experts from a variety of fields. With the average new home in England 8% below the recommended minimum size (which can equate to a bedroom) the institute wants to find out what consumers want and need, then make recommendations to house builders and developers.

When I mention that architecture seems to be an afterthought in many new houses, Brady interjects: "If at all." It's a serious point because, she says, many homes are simply constructed off-the-shelf from manuals; even the once ubiquitous term "architect designed" has been ditched. She thinks it is symptomatic of a "let's get something cheap, cheerful and quick".

But Brady's criticisms go further than house design; she thinks the layout and planning of new estates leaves much to be desired. She spent a year on a working group organised by the former Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment – an organisation, she laments, needlessly scrapped by the government – looking at the country's post-war new towns. "There was some fantastic planning then," she enthuses. "Just compare that with suburban sprawl, ribbon development, these sort of executive cul-de-sacs you've got to drive to and you can't even buy a bottle of milk on the corner."

Better models

Brady adds: "We need to really re-examine the way we live and play, and we need to seek better models for the next 20 years. We've got huge constraints, if you look at the pressure on the environment, and I believe we are the custodians of [that]. People are relying on architects, planners, to come up with the right answers – how to make the green deal, make homes more zero carbon. As architects, we've got so much to offer. Governments ignore that at their peril."

Brady studied architecture in her native Dublin and sought early inspiration in her career with work spells in Denmark, and Toronto, before landing in London. In 1987, she set up an architecture practice with her husband Robin Mallalleu.

Brady is the second female president of Riba and has a record of activism in the organisation. She was a leading light in Architects for Change, promoting the progression of women alongside black and minority ethnic groups. "You can inspire children who would never think of going into architecture that it's a worthwhile career," she says.

In the contest for president, Brady believes that her activism proved the trump card. "One of the reasons I got voted in was because I was the only person pushing diversity in our profession. We're only 18% women and I'd love it if we could push it to 40%." Therein lies a dilemma because women, she says, constitute 37% of students in the country's 44 schools of architecture . Brady says it's not hard to discover why so many women subsequently leave. "They are the main child carers; take a year out, and it's quite hard to get in again."

Another passion is de-mystifying architecture – "taking it to the people" and involving them in the process. She believes the profession needs to broaden its appeal, and evangelise. "This is what's missing, how are we architects going to help deliver the 'localist' agenda of the government?" she enthuses. "That means helping people make local plans, when there isn't the revenue there in the support structure. Communicating with neighbourhood groups, helping them draw up local plans, it's a long-term strategy that we want."

Proper consideration

Why, she asks, plonk houses miles from anywhere without the services to support families? "We want to make sure there is some infrastructure in place before people come and put housing down, to know that housing has been given proper consideration, is going to fit in, and it's not going to be yet more ribbon development."

And why, she wonders, build exclusive estates and properties for one privileged sector of society while housing others in separate enclaves? "If we look to Denmark and Holland, for example, they live as a community coming together without an 'us and them', the rich and the poor. It's much more social," she explains.

Brady is enthralled by the "rich mix" of the capital's culture even after over two decades in London. She is appalled that plans for a cap of £26,000 on the amount of benefits one family can claim a year from 2013 will undermine that mix, driving the lower paid out of the capital. "People have a right to live in the communities where they were born," she says.

That aside, she insists that the compelling case for many more houses should not mean poor design. "We've got a huge housing crisis, a shortage of 250,000 units a year. And there should be more opportunity for better housing. We need to build more sustainably, to cut carbon, it's a matter of convincing the contractors to build for the long-term."

No easy task. She has two years as president to make her mark.

Curriculum vitae

Age 54.

Status Married, two teenage children.

Lives Finsbury Park, north London.

Education Holy Child school, Killiney, County Dublin; Dublin School of Architecture.

Career 1987–present: director, Brady Mallalieu Architects; 1983-86: architecture graduate in London; 1982-83: trainee architect, architectural practice in Toronto; 1981-82: scholarship to study co-housing in Denmark.

Public life 2011: elected Riba president for two-year term; 2010: joins Riba trust board; 2000: founder, Architects for Change group within Riba, campaigning for greater representation for women and ethnic minorities.

Interests Painting, designing glassware.

Peter Hetherington

Park Hill estate, Sheffield’s notorious landmark, gets £100m revamp

The Sheet — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:04:28 +0000

Developers take gamble on formerly run-down housing estate, with first renovated apartments going on sale in October

For many people in Sheffield over recent decades, Park Hill was the last place you would want to end up living as a social tenant. It thus sounds little short of a miracle that around 1,000 people have expressed an interest in buying a flat in the vast postwar housing estate, a fortnight before the homes even go on sale.

It is, in fact, the first indication that a hugely ambitious £100m gamble on the rehabilitation of that most disparaged of architectural styles, postwar brutalism, might pay off. For more than 50 years Park Hill has been one of Sheffield's most famous – or, depending on your view, notorious – landmarks, looming vast and grey on a hill overlooking the city centre. It was designed in the late 1950s by Ivor Smith and Jack Lynn, a pair of idealistic young modernists, and replaced a badly bombed slum area.

While sticking to a tight budget, their blueprint incorporated a series of innovative ideas, including blocks which tapered down from 14 to four storeys as the site rose, giving a continuously level roofline, and a famous network of interlinked "streets in the sky" – ascending walkways wide enough for milk floats.

Park Hill was initially popular but its fortunes declined due both to design – the streets in the sky proved an ideal escape route for criminals – and poor maintenance, as well as the gradual replacement of original residents by short-term tenants and problem families.

By the 1980s Park Hill had a reputation, not completely deserved, as a decrepit no-go area. Probably the only thing which saved it was English Heritage's decision in 1998 to grant the estate a heavily protected Grade II* listing.

This in turn left Sheffield city council with a headache: not only was it forbidden from demolishing Park Hill, the listing meant scope for renovation was severely limited.

Eventually the council signed a deal with Urban Splash, a developer which made its name turning central Manchester's long-neglected Victorian warehouses into desirable homes.

After a tortuous and financially precarious seven-year project, on 8 October the first 52 apartments of an eventual 874 will go on sale, with another 26 available via a housing association. The developers also want cafes, shops and other businesses to occupy commercial units.

In a deliberate statement of intent, the first renovated block is that directly facing the city. While only a handful of show flats are completed, the exterior already presents an utterly transformed face – the crumbling concrete frame cleaned and repaired, window spaces expanded and grubby brick facings replaced by anodised metal panels in a cascade of vibrant colours.

Urban Splash says it has been "delighted" with the response, with about 1,000 people signing up for information ahead of the first sales, and strong interest from businesses.

If Park Hill is successfully reborn – far from a certainty for a project which has already required one public bailout – it will complete a 50-year full circle for the estate and indicate a possible wider shift in public opinion towards such postwar schemes.

While a handful have been adopted by private buyers, notably Trellick Tower in North Kensington and Keeling House in Bethnal Green, these are smaller in scale and, crucially, in fashionable parts of London.

Tom Bloxham, who runs Urban Splash, said he believed tastes have changed: "There was a time when they used to demolish lovely Victorian mansions just because they had a bit of damp and the windows were rotten. That seems crazy now, and it would have been crazy to demolish Park Hill. Park Hill is a quality building, and not just from a point of view of subjective taste.

"All the flats are duplex, they're all dual-facing, they're all full of glazing, they all have south-facing living rooms. It's a very, very clever piece of design and it will be a great place to live."

Some critics say the scale of redevelopment, which saw the block stripped back to its bare concrete frame, has been too significant.

"The project seemed to start with the premise that they had to fundamentally change Park Hill if people were going to love it and move back, rather than saying, 'This is incredibly interesting and a really good bit of design, and the problem with it is that it's been poorly maintained and run down,' " said Catherine Croft, director of the 20th Century Society.

"The cumulative total of all the decisions that have been made means there's not a lot of the historic building left."

The architects and developers, however, argue that such was Park Hill's reputation – its ubiquitous visibility from the city centre meant the crumbling facade became a shorthand for Sheffield's wider decline – a significant and visible makeover was vital.

But the estate's long and mixed history is celebrated in places, most visibly the retention of a famous piece of graffiti on a high concrete walkway, "I love you will u marry me", now etched in neon and illuminated at night.

The hope is that Park Hill will become simultaneously more accessible – new landscaping and the planned shops and cafes are intended so locals walk through the estate rather than around it – and more secure, with the "streets in the sky" sealed off by gates and concierges.

Bloxham sees a parallel with the origins of his company: "When we first started putting loft apartments in Manchester 20 years ago, people said we were stupid. 'Why would you want to live there?' they said. 'You can't even buy a loaf of bread.' Will it work this time? We'll find out soon."

How a 'palace' lost its lustre

Edith Bradbury and her husband, Ron, have lived at Park Hill long enough to experience its entire history of hope, decline and subsequent resurrection from a ringside sofa. They arrived in 1959, two years before the estate was finished, having come from a single room in a slum area.

"When we got here it felt like a palace," said Edith, 78. "In our old place we only had a Baby Belling cooker. You had to cook your chips on the fire."

At first, the estate functioned as well as the architects could have dreamed: "It was a lovely atmosphere and there was such a sense of community. The bingo was on at 7.30pm and you'd have to start queuing at 5.30pm to get in.

"There were two butchers, a Co-op, a dentist, sweet shop, chemist, even a bike shop. You were only a few minutes from town but you never had to go in."

Then came the gradual decline, as the shops and on-site pubs closed, long-term neighbours left and drug use escalated. Now, the couple are finally leaving, but only to move into a nearby retirement complex. "We'd stay forever but the stairs are getting tricky," said Ron.

Peter Walker

RIBA condemns ‘shameful shoe box homes’ now built in Britain

The Sheet — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:15:20 +0000

Architects' report claims new three-bedroom houses are being constructed 8% smaller than guidelines advise

The Royal Institute of British Architects has criticised the "shoe box" sized homes now being built in Britain. Ahead of its inquiry into housing needs, RIBA claims that many of the new homes being constructed are too small for the number of people expected to live in them.

The institute says the average new three-bedroom house is 8% smaller than the recently adopted standard for homes in London, with floor space of 88 sq metres (947 sq ft). That is 8 sq metres short of the recommended space, the equivalent of a single bedroom.

One-bedroom properties, at an average of 46 sq metres, are 4 sq metres short of the recommended size, it adds in its recent report The Case for Space.

RIBA suggests that potential buyers are being short-changed and fobbed off with "shameful shoe box homes".

The London Housing Design Guide, adopted in the past year or so, lays down, among other features, minimum space standards for new properties, based on factors such as the average quantity of furnishings as well as number of occupants.

The RIBA inquiry, to be conducted by Sir John Banham, a former director-general of the CBI and former chair of the Tarmac group, is expected to report by next summer and will feed into the government's proposals to alter planning rules. The inquiry will seek the views of architects, builders, planners and purchasers.

Banham said: ""There are some fundamental issues that need to be addressed to ensure we have more of the right kind of affordable homes in villages, towns and cities … new thinking and financing approaches will be needed."

Anna Scott-Marshall, RIBA's head of policy, said that the organisation's Future Homes Commission would address issues such as housing costs, building quality, design and layout, including factors such as the amount of light in a property.

"We need to look into affordability and the mechanisms that need to be in place to enable people to buy," she said.

Stephen Bates

RIBA Manser Medal contenders up in the air

The Sheet — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:58:19 +0000

Shortlist for prize honouring best new private home in the UK has revealed a common quirk among cutting-edge architects

Those suffering from vertigo should look away now. The shortlist for the prize honouring the best new private home in the UK has revealed an increasingly common quirk among cutting-edge architects to go alongside the perennial fondness for floor-to-ceiling glass: rooms suspended in mid-air.

Two of the six contenders for the 2011 Manser Medal, organised annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), display this trick, known in the trade as cantilevering. One, Ty Hedfan in Brecon – the name means "hovering house" in Welsh – cunningly circumvents planning restrictions against building along the river bank which adjoins the plot by sending out a glass-walled spur to hang above the water's edge.

More dramatic still is the self-explanatory Balancing Barn in Suffolk, pictures of which resemble on first glance an optical illusion. At least half of the long, slim structure hangs precipitously over the edge of a steep, grass incline. It looks as if an escaped railway carriage has run out of track or, thanks to the shiny silver cladding, like a floating barrage balloon.

The barn, which is available for public rent, is "completely bonkers and very playful", said Tony Chapman, head of awards at RIBA and one of the five-strong judging panel. Most alarming, he said, is the glass floor inside the far-hanging edge: "It's so potentially unnerving for some people that they provide bits of carpet you can put over it, if you want."

The appeal for the judges of Ty Hedfan's cantilever was as much practical as aesthetic, Chapman said: "They weren't allowed to build on the river bank but there's nothing in the small print which says you can't build over the river bank. We like things like that, which get one over slightly on the planners."

The other four contenders are a varied bunch, albeit within a prevailing taste for generous glazing which blurs the boundaries between home and garden, and materials which seek to blend the building with the wider landscape.

There is one urban dwelling, not strictly speaking a new residence: a mid-century, brutalist home in Highgate, north London, remodelled to open the rooms out onto a secluded garden.

Another triumph against the planners is Watson House, an elegant glass-and-timber structure in the heart of the New Forest, which was only permitted on condition it was invisible from public sections of the woodland. The most modest home – a relative term within a selection with budgets starting at £500,000 – is New Mission Hall in Sussex, a pair of conjoined structures on the site of a Baptist chapel which offers a blank, brick facade from the road before opening out into a glassed rectangle at the rear.

The final contender, in the Surrey stockbroker belt of Epsom, most closely resembles the stereotypical notion of a modernist house, from its over 700 sq metres of living space and curtains of walled glass grand enough to satisfy the most demanding exhibitionist to its occupants who seemingly own little more than a few discreetly tasteful items of furniture and art, their toothbrushes presumably locked well out of view.

Inside, however, the design was clever enough to avoid severity, Chapman said, featuring touches like a cosy family TV room deep inside the interior. "You go in there and your first thought is, 'yes, this is an expensive, grand house'. But as you go round it you find lots of lovely little things that make it very intimate."

Overall, he said, the shortlist was perhaps the most diverse in the prize's 10-year history. The inclusion of the pair of cantilevered structures had not been planned. "Maybe subliminally we paired them off," he said. "But I don't think we did it deliberately."

While it would be "slightly arrogant" for RIBA to assume the prize had a direct influence on the wider design of housing, Chapman said, the hope was it might provide food for thought.

"The whole point of the medal, I think, is to try and improve the standard of all housing. We would like to think that there were things that fed into social housing in Hackney as well as the next rich person's house in Surrey.

"The standard of housebuilding in this country is not great. In fact it's pretty poor. It would be good if we could even just inspire clients to ask for things they might not have otherwise considered."

The winner will be announced at a ceremony on 10 November.

Peter Walker

Constructive criticism: the week in architecture

The Sheet — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:53:45 +0000

A mix of models and houses this week ... with Kate Moss's big basement plans for her historic new home, while you can make your own Frank Lloyd Wright house with a little help from Lego

It is some house Kate Moss has bought in Highgate. A late-17th-century, Grade II-listed London townhouse, it has become the focus of media attention – and concern from locals this week – because Moss wants to give it the celeb treatment, with a steam room in the basement along with a new kitchen (to add to the existing two) and an MI5's-worth of CCTV cameras. What I like best about the story is that the house is said, repeatedly, to have been designed by the poet and visionary William Blake.

Poor Blake rarely had two pennies to rub together and could never have afforded to live here: the house was, in fact, built by a London merchant of the same name. But another poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, did live and die here, and the house was owned by the writer JB Priestley, too. Camden Council says it has received just one lone objection to Moss's underground plan, although Maya de Souza, a Green Party councillor for Highgate, has serious concerns about the basement works, which she believes could cause flooding in many other Highgate houses.

One property man who knows all about basement conversions is Jon Hunt, founder of the estate agent giant Foxtons. He's spending far more than Kate Moss paid for her house to excavate a four-storey hole in the back garden of his Grade II-listed house to build a sports hall and a museum for his Ferrari collection. His latest development, however, is very much above ground. The plan is for a new tower, replacing the Texaco garage on London's Albert Embankment, to be designed by Rogers Stirk and Harbour. This will be a challenge even for the property magnate: five proposals for towers here have been rejected in recent years; the last, in 2008, was for a 23-storey steel and glass tower by Make architects. Only time will tell if the Richard Rogers tower will rise up.

Meanwhile, what looks to be a very modest proposal by the Bowker Sadler Partnership – to build four two-bedroom houses and two two-bedroom bungalows for the Cheshire Peaks and Plains Housing Trust at Lower Withington – is causing distress among Manchester University scientists working at Jodrell Bank. That number of houses might seem insignificant, but the problem is one of location. Jodrell Bank, founded in 1945, remains a thing of ethereal beauty and globally esteemed research – its magnificent Lovell telescope, opened in 1957, is still the world's third largest steerable radio telescope.

As Professor ST Carrington, head of astronomy and astrophysics, has written to Cheshire East Council: "The potential electrical interference generated from this development is of considerable concern." This week, a spokesman for the University of Manchester said: "The University fully appreciates the need for affordable housing, but also wishes to protect Jodrell Bank ... many electronic devices used at home and elsewhere produce radio frequency emissions, intentionally or otherwise, and the radio telescopes at Jodrell Bank are extremely sensitive in order to detect extremely faint emissions from distant stars and galaxies."

Up in Scotland, a modest proposal has gone down so well that it might become a design template for a whole region. Konishi Gaffney architects' competition-winning design for the regeneration of the Clydeside village of Kilcreggan on the Roseneath Peninsula, 40 miles west of Glasgow, is an attempt to show that, by reimagining their neglected waterfronts, Clydeside villages can become not just more attractive to locals – top priority – but compelling places for visitors. So, here are new quays, waterside walkways and promenades, aimed at making Kilcreggan and other Clydeside villages newly proud of themselves.

Finally, here's a house you can make at home. The latest model in the Lego Architecture series is a 2,276-piece replica of Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House in Chicago, launched on 27 August. With its low lines and free-flowing interiors, the 1908 house is often cited as one of the first truly Modern homes. I'm not sure if a child of five could make it alone, but at least you won't need planning permission or historic building consent for this one.

Jonathan Glancey

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