Posts Tagged Money
Self-build: it’s time to go Dutch
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on November 26, 2011
With the government claiming self-build is the answer to Britain's housing crisis, we look at how they do it in the Netherlands – and whether it would work here
Half an hour by train from Amsterdam is a vision of a new Britain. On polder land reclaimed from the Zuiderzee lies Europe's biggest experiment in affordable self-build homes. Enthusiasts call it a model of sustainable development, a Grand Designs for the average man. Critics call it an ersatz city, a soulless architectural Legoland. But this week housing minister Grant Shapps declared Almere a "genuinely workable model" as he made self-build a major plank in the government's strategy for solving Britain's housing crisis.
Last year only one in 10 new homes in Britain was self-built. Plots are difficult to find, and finance and mortgage products restricted, while regulations and planning permissions are onerous. Faced with bureaucratic hurdles and frustrations, many potential self-builders abandon projects, sometimes after months of planning.
But outside the UK, self-build is flourishing. In Belgium, which like the UK is densely populated and heavily urbanised, more than six in 10 homes are self-built. In the Netherlands the figure is three in 10.
This week the government set out a vision in which an extra 100,000 self-build homes – it uses the phrase "custom-build" housing – will go up over the next decade in England alone. It wants to "kickstart a revolution" in which local authorities will for the first time be required to take self-build seriously, release publicly owned land to self-builders, and give government support to those taking the first step in building their own futures. For now, it is making £30m available as short-term project finance, and in March next year will unveil a formal action plan to turn the vision into reality.
The Homeruskwartier district in Almere, a city with a population of 180,000, is the first self-build project attempted on a truly large scale. Since 2006, self-builders have erected 800 homes, and thousands more are on the way. The local authority draws up the street plan, then makes the plots available at standard commercial cost. Local people, freed from any further planning restrictions, can then design and build whatever takes their fancy.
Jacqueline Tellinga, one of the driving forces behind the project, describes it as a return to the past. "Take a look at the buildings along the canals of Amsterdam. They did the same as we are trying to do. The plots were parcelled out, the buyers were given a few guidelines over things such as height, but after that it was left to the individual."
Building costs in Almere vary depending on how much the buyers do themselves, but she says they average from €800 per sq m to €1,800. That's around £72,000-£160,000 for someone wanting the same sort of floorspace as the typical British three-bed semi (around 105 sq m).
Keeping homes affordable is key to the Homeruskwartier project, which means creating plots for self-build flats as well as houses. Tellinga cites one group of 25 individuals who built a block of flats. Including the plot and building, the cost of each flat was just £69,000, without any subsidy. Cutting out the developer's profit – and those expensive marketing suites – saves a small fortune.
But self-build is not just about money. "What I like most is the way people develop their curiosity and skills – they bring ideas and test construction techniques more than any developer would. We don't insist on sustainability requirements, but it's amazing how much people just do it themselves," says Tellinga.
In Britain, the hurdles to a self-build revolution remain high. More than 80,000 people are registered on Buildstore's website looking for UK plots. There are virtually no ready-assembled sites such as Almere. Self-build lending is seen as more risky than conventional mortgages (several banks pulled out last year), and lending against larger community schemes is non-existent.
Building standards and codes are complex and expensive. "The number of planning conditions placed on domestic building work has grown inexorably over the years, and there is often very little difference between conditions placed on a single house and those placed on an estate of 100 homes," said a report from Nasba, the National Self Build Association, in July.
Deon Lombard, an architect from Twickenham, is sceptical that the Dutch approach will work in Britain because of the "stranglehold, inherent conservatism and lack of vision in the British planning system".
His own repeated attempts at self-build have fallen foul of Richmond upon Thames planners and the Planning Inspectorate, leaving his plot of land, purchased in 2001 in the hope of building a family home, lying fallow.
"The planning system in Britain is reactionary, incredibly tortuous and open to a wide range of interpretation. My experience of submitting planning applications, both for myself and clients, is that it comes down to the subjective views and prejudices of individual planning officers and inspectors, who can turn down applications using vague criteria such as 'unneighbourly development' or 'impact on amenity'."
Yet there are examples of successful self-build in Britain, even within large towns and cities. In Ashley Vale in Bristol, an action group succeeded against the odds (although this was in 2001) to self-build 26 detached and semi-detached homes, at a typical cost (including plot purchase) of £110,000. Six further flats were completed last year, which won a CABE Building for Life Award.
Jackson Moulding, who helped set up Ashley Vale, is a passionate supporter of self-build, but acknowledges the challenges. "The price of land has been bid up by developers who hold it in land banks. They are building for buy-to-let landlords who are charging tenants huge amounts. People are being left stuck with high rents and no control." Still, he is hopeful the new strategy will begin to unblock council attitudes, and encourages anyone interested in building their own home as part of a group or community to visit communitybuild.org.uk.
But the major construction companies are less enthusiastic. A spokesman for the Home Builders Federation said "everyone likes the idea of self-build", but it probably won't make a big contribution to supply in the next few years.
Grand Designs, which regularly draws four million viewers, may be part of the problem. "It can sometimes present a rather skewed impression of the industry," says Nasba. "In reality, most self-build homes are very modest and look just like every other house."
Above all, self-builders save money: the average self-build house in the UK costs only 59% of its final value, as self-builders cut out the developer's profit.
Park Hill estate, Sheffield’s notorious landmark, gets £100m revamp
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on September 27, 2011
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.
When Europe’s single currency worked – the 1480s
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on September 22, 2011
A new exhibition in Florence explores money, sin and the birth of capitalism in a city where status and religion battled to prevail
Money – there just isn't any left. But in medieval Europe an abundance of cash appeared as if from nowhere, in new currencies cast in gold. One of these new currencies, the Florin, became the most desired and respected medium of exchange in the Europe that made the Renaissance – the dollar of its day. In Money and Beauty, an exhibition that has just opened at the Strozzi Palace in Florence, yellow Florins twinkle in glass cases, exhibited both as historical evidence and works of monetary art.
The Florin was the currency of one city, Florence, yet it succeeded where the Euro seems to be failing: it gave Europe a "single" currency accepted on all markets. Inventing a pure gold currency of universally accepted value was just one of the ingenuities of the Florentine economic Renaissance. Through contracts and letters, leather money bags and model merchant ships, Money and Beauty tells the dramatic story of the bankers and merchants of Florence and their invention of many basic features of modern capitalism. As the system shudders, it is wondrous to contemplate its fairytale origins in the Medici bank, which devised ways to provide international credit and play the foreign exchanges without falling foul of medieval usury laws. Well, not too far foul.
The sin of usury is richly shown in the exhibition: fragments of a medieval fresco show usurers – those who loan at interest and so make, according to Christian ethics 600 years ago, an immoral profit – in hell. Yet the heroes here are the money men who defied tradition and created modern commerce – heroes such as Francesco di Marco Datini, the Merchant of Prato, who gets a room of his own illuminating his wealth and his attempts to reconcile it with faith. We see him on pilgrimage, as well as in his counting house.
This exhibition – co-curated by British writer Tim Parks and heavily spiced with ebullient interpretative texts in Italian and English – has an ambitious argument to unfold. The plutocrats of Renaissance Florence, claims this exhibition, were tortured by guilt and emotional ambivalence. They craved luxury – even their money chests are works of rare art – but tried at the same time to buy off hell, by lavishing their wealth on religious art.
Cosimo de' Medici, the richest Florentine of all, was the most dedicated in his holy works. The funds he put into building the monastery of San Marco and its library helped to sustain the humanist revival of learning, not to mention the art of Fra Angelico. As it turned out, this Medici monastery also harboured the seeds of nemesis. By the late 15th century, the voice of San Marco was a visionary friar named Savonarola who denounced wealth and luxury. In 1494, he became the charismatic guru of a revolution that cast out the Medici.
That tale is told here through portraits and other relics of Savonarola, and above all by the works of Sandro Botticelli. This one artist embodies both extremes of Renaissance Florence – the rich culture of the Medici plutocrats, and the violent reaction against it. In the 1480s, Botticelli painted his celebrated classical works in the Uffizi Gallery, for the circle of the Medici. But in the 1490s and 1500s, he was a Savonarolan zealot, who saw the opulence and even the style of Renaissance art as a sin.
The exhibition includes one of his most compelling works, the Calumny. This eerie image, based on classical descriptions of a lost work, suggests a nightmare version of Florence itself. Statues in niches, like the ones that decorate the heart of this city, seem to come to life and listen as an innocent man is dragged by the hair before rich, stupid plutocratic King Midas.
Here is a problem with the exhibition. Midas in Greek myth was, it is true, an image of greed – he is the man who asked the god Dionysius to turn everything he touched to gold. So the curators link him to the wealth of the Medici. But this is a different story of Midas. It is a bit strained, and in fact, the curators struggle to find killer visual links between art and commerce. Everything here is fascinating, but where are the Florentine paintings that manifestly explore the imagery and anxieties of wealth?
Still, it is a provocative, stimulating introduction to Florence that will add a bit of historical muscle to any visitor's encounter with the city this autumn. Money and Beauty is a welcome attempt to shake up staid views of the Renaissance. Everyone knows that Florence is a city of staggering artistic beauty. This exhibition reminds us it is also the birthplace of the modern world.
RIBA condemns ‘shameful shoe box homes’ now built in Britain
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on September 14, 2011
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.
Workplace of the future
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on May 24, 2011
The year is 2018. What might your office environment look like? Here is the award-winning vision of London-based architects tp bennett
Grand Designs: The home truths of Kevin McCloud
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on April 8, 2011
Kevin McCloud won't talk price. For him a dream property is all about enriching your life, not your wallet
It wasn't the best morning to interview Kevin McCloud, presenter of Grand Designs and the nation's architectural critic-in-chief. "The not so Grand Design," screamed that day's Daily Mail, featuring a Thames barge given an £80,000 makeover lying washed up and unfinished on a drab Essex beach. "A Grand Design for Failure," said the Guardian.
McCloud is not familiar with failure. Grand Designs is in its tenth series, and its presenter is regarded as one of Channel 4's most bankable assets. The TV programme has spawned a number of spin-offs, including a popular magazine and a home improvement show, Grand Designs Live.
He had a bad feeling about the Thames barge programme. "The project was compromised from the beginning. They were not prepared properly from the beginning and were relying on happenstance. I didn't want to do that one from the start." In that programme's summing-up, he dubbed it a "floating scrapheap challenge" rather than a true Grand Design.
But disapproval is rare in McCloud's bountiful vocabulary. The homilies delivered at the end of each programme aim to inspire rather than moralise, and in person, McCloud is no different. "There are plenty of others who delight in schadenfreude," he says. "I'm not keen on shows that do that. What we do is set out to celebrate architecture and find projects that move the architectural canon on a bit."
The idea for the interview is that McCloud will talk about what the average homeowner can do to their property to maximise its value. But despite fronting a home improvement show that counts Velux, Dulux and Miele among its chief sponsors, McCloud is almost evasive when it comes to talking about kitchen makeovers or loft extensions. The thinking man's answer to Linda Barker, his passion for architectural innovation and style keeps him from telling you how to improve a mundane three-bed semi with a slap of paint and a bit of decluttering.
McCloud won't talk price, but he will talk value, a rare enough commodity in the TV property shows. "I don't look at what people do with their homes in terms of money, but the social and personal value of what they're trying to do and achieve," he says. "I never use the 'P' word. I'm not interested in just doing something up and selling on."
His personal favourite Grand Design cost just £28,000. It was built by Sussex woodsman Ben Law from the trees in the woods in which it stands. Recycled newspaper insulates the floor and thick straw bales line the walls, covered in lime plaster. All the electricity comes from solar panels and wind turbines, while water is taken from a nearby spring. "He built the most delightful home and he built it all on budget. It's the extraordinary personal values of people like Ben Law that matter. It's not about half a million or three-quarters of a million pounds. It's the brutality of those sorts of figures that stops people in their projects."
Beautiful crafting, innovative design and highly personal touches are what makes a home improvement work, not piles of money, says McCloud. He points to Monty Ravenscroft's home built on a sliver of land in Peckham on a small budget as one of the enduring stars of Grand Designs.
The plot was 80ft-long but in places just 13ft-wide, yet Ravenscroft squeezed a four-bed family home on to the site, at a cost of £170,000, plus £40,000 for the land. That compares with typical prices of £350,000-plus for family homes in the area. There are no external windows, but light floods in through a retractable glass roof. A double bed slides back to reveal a double bath underneath, while a toilet doubles up as a wet room. "He was on a very restricted budget but what his project showed was an extraordinary example of personal craft. It's very easy, isn't it, to slit open a fish and sell the eggs as caviar. What Monty did was miraculous."
Forget what all the other property programmes tell you about improving your property to maximise its sale value. Do it for yourself, not for the market. "Ask yourself how long you are going to live there. My father died at the age of 73. Hell, that doesn't give me an awful lot longer [he's 52]. How am I going to spend the next two decades? How am I going to be happy?
"Your home should be about enriching the daily experience. I don't want to be too philosophical, but next week you might be under a bus. Figure out what you have, do you like it, do you really want it? Don't try building a fantasy of how you should be."
Behind the scenes, McCloud admits guiding some self-builders rather more than the programme always shows. "Look, I'm not the architect, but off camera I say, ring this person up for help and advice, or I really counsel someone not to put in, say, a swimming pool, at the expense of insulating the home. If I really like the people, I do tend to get involved."
Twelve years after he started work on Grand Designs, McCloud says he remains as excited as the day he began. "Every series is different, every project is different. But the series is evolving – not least the issues around where people get the money from to do projects."
He also has his own £18m grand project: a development of 109 new-build homes in Oxford. It will perhaps be a bigger challenge than most Grand Designs. McCloud's company, Hab, is aiming to create low-cost, affordable and sustainable homes that embrace an eco-vision that includes car clubs, cycleways and food collectives.
McCloud calls it an "intelligent approach to regeneration". But at the end of the project it will be – for once – the public who decide, not him.
McCloud's do's and don'ts of home renovation
• Grand Designs don't happen without what McCloud believes to be the essential component of any home improvement project: an architect. "Expert help needn't be impossibly expensive. Everyone deserves and needs to work with talented individuals. If you go to a good architect, your fees will pay for themselves."
• Don't design things as you go along. "We did a programme on a house in Spain, but sadly they didn't invest in the design process. And then there was a conversion of a church in Tipton [in the West Midlands]. There was no architect, no design input, and it was pedestrian and clunky."
• Don't just add rooms but use the process to re-evaluate the layout of your home. "Rejig your rooms to how we live today rather than a hundred years ago."
• Hire a project manager. "A big project will drain you night and day, but the ride need only be as hard or as easy as you make it … People have got to get over the fear of not being able to trust others. I come across people who are very successful in their own sphere, and really believe they can do it all themselves, but they can't."
• You can find cheap solutions. "Vision and ideas are free. But there are reasons why not everyone opts for glass balustrades. I'm a big fan of intelligent cheap solutions. There's no reason for your imagination to be fettered by money."
• Expect cost overruns. "If you are disciplined, add 20% to your budget. If you are not disciplined, then add 59%."
• Don't expect the bank to keep bailing you out. "We used to see people go back to the bank for bigger loans. Now that has stopped and projects have been mothballed."
Be a winner with Guardian Money
Fifty free pairs of tickets are up for grabs for Grand Designs Live, at ExCeL in London's Docklands from 30 April-8 May. There will be more than 500 exhibitors, seven distinct sections and a "Grand Village" hosting full-scale properties.
All you have to do is email money@guardian.co.uk, put Grand Designs Live in the subject line, and add your full address. The closing date is 1pm on 14 April. The Money team will select emails at random and let you know if you're a winner!
If you're not lucky enough to win a free ticket, you can buy tickets for £9 by booking by 14 April. That is a 50% saving off the weekend door price. Book at granddesignslive.com or call 0844 209 7349 and quote GUAR9
Scientists to rebuild ‘Coronation Street’ house in lab to study energy use
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on May 28, 2010
Salford University staff to simulate life in terraced two-up, two-down in effort to make UK's housing stock greener
Energy-efficiency scientists are to study how people live by rebuilding an entire, redbrick Manchester terraced house inside a university laboratory's sealed testing chamber.
The two-up, two-down dwelling is identical to those portrayed in Coronation Street, television's oldest surviving soap, and to more than two million real-life homes.
It will be used for power-saving experiments in simulated climates featuring high winds, snow and Manchester's notorious rain.
The pre-first world war house is to be salvaged from a nearby demolition scheme. It will be dismantled within the next fortnight and rebuilt in the Energy Hub at Salford University.
Gas, water and electricity will be piped in and furniture installed, with staff from 13 academic departments taking turns to play the part of residents.
Life in this "Energy House" will be as busy as in any of the terraces which sprang up across the North of England to house those working in mines and mills, but focused on entirely modern concepts such as carbon-reduction equipment and smart-meter tests.
Psychologists will join engineers in a series of experiments to see if particular wall or carpet colours make people feel warmer and reduce the demand for heat. Home energy use accounts for 30% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions.
"It's a house from the past, working for the future," said Dr Nigel Mellors, associate dean of science, engineering and technology at Salford and one of the team running a project aimed to last 20 years or more.
"But this one is only the beginning'" he said. "We reckon we'll know everything we need to about how to improve a terrace like this after about three years. Then we'll knock it down and build something different. Perhaps a typical 1960s house, to see how that can be improved."
The project is designed to parallel work on new-build energy-saving homes, recognising that many housebuyers prefer older properties for other reasons.
Dave Ritter, sustainability director at BDP architects, who are also involved with the scheme, said the sheer number of surviving terraces was proof of their appeal.
"They are in many ways an extremely successful design, with a particularly good sense of community and neighbourly links," he said.
"They are on a nice scale and sensibly laid-out inside. But energy-saving was not an issue at the time they were built, and this project is an imaginative and very practical way of putting that right."
Remodelled terraces have already proved a success in the Lancashire Pennine towns of Nelson and Colne and also in Salford, notably at Chimney Pot Park where the developers Urban Splash have "upended" the old model, giving 19th century terraces sleeping quarters downstairs and living rooms on the first floor.
Leeds has found a huge market as starter homes for its 40,000-plus back-to-back terraces, once condemned as slums for having inadequate ventilation but now, with three of their four walls comfortably sandwiched by other homes, praised for saving heat and economical use of space.
Green variations also include some Northern towns' policy of "alternate demolition", where the clearing of every other row of barrack-like terraces has doubled the gardens and open space of those left.
Larger scale demolition of traditional terraces by government housing renewal projects has caused anger in Liverpool, Manchester and Lancashire's former milltowns.
Professor Steve Donnelly from Salford's faculty of science said terraced houses had won their case for reprieve but now needed "ways of being more efficient, as they are going to house people for generations to come. That requires detailed and robust research, which the Energy House will provide".
Tony Juniper, former director of Friends of the Earth, said: "Domestic energy use accounts for a huge proportion of emissions which we have to reduce. The millions of real-life terrace houses like this one are going to play an important part."
John Alker, policy director at the UK Green Building Council, said: "This looks like a great piece of research and it will be particularly interesting to see the results on behaviour, where less has been done to date.
"But let's not forget that there is a hell of lot that we know already – the biggest barrier to low carbon home refurbishment going mainstream has tended to be the upfront cost to consumers, and that is set to be tackled by the Energy Bill in the form of 'Pay As You Save schemes'."
What to do with a degree in architecture
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on May 7, 2010
It takes seven years to become fully qualified, so no surprise most graduates go on to careers in architecture
Whether we live in them, work in them or simply stroll around them for pleasure, buildings are arguably the most public of art forms, a fusion of design and functionality that can be influenced by politics, economics, fashions and social trends, not to mention the villages, towns and cities in which they are built.
Seven long years of combined study and internships are required to achieve qualified status, so, as our data shows, it's hardly surprising that most graduates go on to work as architects or in architectural services. For some though, such as former Elastica singer turned abstract painter Justine Frischmann (pictured), an artistic streak coupled with unique controlling instincts can open doors to some unusual lifestyles and careers.
What skills have I gained?
Over the course of the five years of study (and two years of work placements) it takes to qualify, you'll have covered a wide range of subjects, including history, law, IT, technology and management, as well as a substantial design element. Combine that with numeracy, drawing, computer-aided design and project management skills, which you will pick up on all architecture degree courses.What jobs can I do?
"Beyond the obvious careers of architect and architectural technologist, architecture graduates can also aim for roles where their visual awareness and technical abilities, as well as their understanding of buildings and how they work, will be valuable and relevant," says Margaret Holbrough, careers advisor at Graduate Prospects.
"Some jobs will require further qualifications but interior and spatial design or landscape architecture, as well as website design, would each utilise the creative and visual skills of the architecture graduate. On the construction side, building surveying or development and planning surveying might appeal, or perhaps other roles within the community and local environment, like town planning."
There are some specialised areas that could also be of interest to those with a passion for the environment and history – such as historic building inspectors and conservation officers.
"Within the broadcasting industry, production designers in the film and TV industry need people who can visualise and produce sets and realistic locations," adds Holbrough. "Architecture graduates could fulfil that brief too."
Postgraduate study?
Apart from further qualifications in architecture, enabling you to become registered with bodies such as the Royal Institute of British Architects or the Architects Registration Board, some graduates choose postgraduate study in other technical subjects such as engineering, design or computer science.Data supplied by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit and Graduate Prospects
In search of the world’s best offices
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on March 16, 2010
A new book outlines some of the most creative working spaces in the world. But what makes a great office?
What's your place of work like? I'm not asking how friendly or productive it is. No. What I want to know is what your office is like in terms of design and decor, and whether or not this affects your creativity.
I ask because I've just been leafing through I Wish I Worked There! A Look Inside the Most Creative Spaces in Business, by design consultant Kursty Groves and Will Knight, co-founder of Brew, "a London and New York-based creative collaborative". This with-it duo guide us through 20 of "the world's most inspiring workplaces". None of these is a factory, workshop, laboratory or classroom. They are the offices of such ostentatiously "creative" companies as Bloomberg, Google, Innocent Drinks, Urban Outfitters, Virgin and Sony. You might expect them to be funky, and they are.
For the authors, this is clearly a good thing. Hip, hop and happening interior design is held up as the way to go if your brand wants to ignite the creativity of its staff. The essential ingredients, it appears, are walls painted the colours of a packet of Refreshers, beanbags, table-tennis tables, table-football machines, video screens, retro-chic 50s plastic chairs, green "grass" carpets, outsized toys and more beanbags.
I would guess that the majority of offices in Britain are more like the Slough branch of Wernham-Hogg paper merchants than Innocent Drinks' Fruit Tower HQ in Shepherd's Bush, west London, where bare-footed, tousle-haired "creatives" hang out in a trestle-tabled cafe, or Google's Zurich office, where hipsters in ponytails and mountain boots chillax in a bath filled with red foam blocks while staring, creatively, at a wall lined with aquaria.
The office, or workspace, as most of us know it, is a modern creation. True, imperial Roman officials and 18th-century bureaucrats worked in offices of a kind – Somerset House in central London looks like a palace but was, in fact, one of the city's first purpose-built office blocks – and yet when most of us picture an office, it's soulless and fluorescent-lit. Or, if you're lucky, a swish set of wood-veneered executive suites with deep-pile carpets and potted plants.
There have been any number of theories as to what makes the ideal workspace. By the 1950s, the open-plan office, although dating from half a century earlier, was becoming all the rage. By the 70s, the most advanced companies – Philips or IBMs, say – had moved to a form of office landscaping with execs tucked behind neck-high screens. They sat at "office systems" (a kind of bureaucratic G-Plan) instead of old-fashioned desks. There has been some improvement since, but this proto-call centre-style arrangement remains the glum norm for office design in the digital 21st century.
But then, in my experience of artists' studios, engineering workshops, publishers' offices and science laboratories, the mind is perfectly able to function without all those bright colours, fishtanks and video screens.
• I Wish I Worked There! - A Look Inside the Most Creative Spaces in Business by Kursty Groves, is published by John Wiley & Sons. To order a copy for £36.99 including free UK mainland p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 68467
• This article was amended on 16 March 2010 to correct misspellings in the names of Kursty Groves and Philips.
Career by numbers: Architect
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on November 12, 2009
£40,000 Average earnings for a sole principal architect with a small firm
£55,000 Average earnings for a principal architect in a partnership
£60,500 Average earnings for a private, in-house architect
7 Number of years of combined study and training required to become a registered architect
950 Average number of graduates who register each year
13,500 Students currently on UK architecture courses (most still go on to work in architecture-related fields even if they don't register)
44% work in private practice
29% are principals in partnership
12% are sole principals
9% work in the public sector
6% work as private, in-house architects
Percentage split 80% of architects are male, and just 20% are female
Sources: The Fees Bureau; RIBA