Posts Tagged Property
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.
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.
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."
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Liverpool developer lures Chinese investors with ‘Shanghai Tower’
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 4, 2010
Planning application submitted for £5.5bn project amid concern for Merseyside city's Unesco world heritage docklands
A plan to attract Chinese investors to Liverpool by building the tallest building outside London and calling it the "Shanghai Tower" was today submitted for planning approval.
Peel Holdings, a Manchester-based developer, wants to build a 55-storey skyscraper on the Mersey waterfront as part of what could become a £5.5bn redevelopment of the area including 9,000 homes.
It previously promised "an international waterside destination to rival Dubai, Vancouver, New York and Shanghai", on the north bank of the Mersey with views over the Irish sea and across Liverpool and the Wirral. Now, after several years courting business partners in Shanghai, Lindsey Ashworth, Peel's chief executive, said the group is hoping to persuade Chinese financiers and banks to provide loans or buy a share in what he claims is the biggest planning application in the UK.
But the scheme is opposed by heritage groups concerned that it will diminish the Unesco-protected world heritage site, which stretches from Albert Dock, with its grade I listed buildings, along the Pier Head to Stanley Dock. In July, English Heritage said the scheme "has the potential to harm the setting of internationally important historic buildings on the waterfront".
Ashworth said: "English Heritage would prefer it if we didn't build anything. But we have got as far as we can in negotiations without submitting an application."
Battersea power station fires up for London stock market listing
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on June 23, 2010
• Irish owners refinance and want to list the project on Aim
• See our gallery of previous redevelopment plans
The troubled owners of Battersea power station have unveiled plans to float the building on the stock exchange in the latest in a string of attempts to redevelop the derelict London landmark.
Despite numerous plans for the 40-acre site, it has stood empty for more than a quarter of a century while the rest of the Thames waterfront around it has undergone huge change.
Now Irish property group Real Estate Opportunities (REO), which bought the Battersea site in 2006 for £400m, wants to spin it off and possibly float it on London's Alternative Investment Market (Aim). It is also looking for a partner to take a 50% stake in the project and provide the financial firepower.
REO has been hit hard by the Irish property slump. It reported an underlying loss before tax of nearly £1bn for the 14 months to 28 February, reflecting an £811m drop in the valuation of its property portfolio.
The firm has drawn up a shortlist of possible investors after being approached by a number of international real estate groups, private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds from around the world, including the Middle East.
REO hopes to get permission to redevelop the site in September after submitting the largest ever planning application made in central London, in terms of financial value, last autumn. If it gets the go-ahead, the site's value is expected to soar from the current valuation of £388m.
"It's an opportunity to turn the power station into a cultural icon for London," said Robert Tincknell, who runs REO's parent firm, Treasury Holdings. "A year ago, people were saying 'it's not going to happen'. That's changed enormously over the last 12 months, with the planning permission having gone in and the support we have [from the London mayor, Boris Johnson, English Heritage and Wandsworth Council]." The Conservatives launched their election manifesto at the power station in April.
Treasury Holdings was forced to tear up its plans for the imposing building, one of London's most recognisable landmarks, and start again after Johnson decided that a proposed tower would ruin the view from Waterloo Bridge to the Palace of Westminster. The original plan, drawn up by the New York-based architect Rafael Viñoly, included a futuristic 300m glass funnel and atrium, rising from an enormous transparent dome.
Viñoly and Treasury Holdings came up with a new blueprint a year ago that is capped at a height of 60m, as stipulated by the mayor. It includes 3,700 homes, office space, shops, restaurants and leisure facilities, at a cost of £4.5bn. Treasury Holdings also hopes to co-fund an extension of London Underground's Northern Line to the site.
The high cost means the company needs a partner – "someone who can bring big financial strength to it to make sure it happens," said Tincknell. Building work could start at the end of 2011.
When the power station was decommissioned in 1983, its then owners, the Central Electricity Generating Board, wanted to tear down the building and replace it with housing, but it had been given a Grade II listing in 1980. For developers, the real prize is the land around it; most have little interest in its heritage status.
REO said today it had negotiated new lending terms for Battersea with Lloyds Banking Group and Nama – Ireland's "bad bank" – which means its existing bank facility will be extended and all outstanding breaches waived.
Would you build your own home?
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on March 21, 2010
Cheap land prices and the recession mean that more and more people are donning hard hats and opting to self-build their own houses
When Glyn and Jane Martin decided to convert a wooden shack on the Devon coast – complete with spiders, mice and rampaging ivy – into a more permanent home, it is safe to say they did not envisage exactly how it would impact on their lives. The first stage was to commission a design from their architect daughter Annie; this agreed, builders were called in to lay the foundations. Then the family took over – Annie and her partner Mark, a carpenter, moved on site to supervise the project; Glyn and Jane bought a caravan so they could join them, and Jane took a year out from her job as a teacher. New skills were learned (plasterboarding, tanking the blockwork), but work progressed more slowly than expected, particularly in winter when the weather could be, as Annie says euphemistically, "quite wild".
"It was a dream we wanted to realise, so we just went for it," says Jane of the two-year period. "Of course there are times when you are working in a blizzard and you know the next delivery is coming and you don't know where to put it. And you think: 'Whose idea was this?' But we could always stand back and say, 'Look what we've done. Look what we're achieving.'"
What they have achieved is certainly spectacular. The Seacombe residence is a spacious, luxurious two-storey house with impeccable eco credentials. It also has total wi-fi coverage, a state-of-the-art kitchen and a secret cinema hidden behind a bookcase. And the hard work has more than paid off: the land costs were £300,000, building was £350,000, but the property is now valued at £1.2m.
There's always been a small band of intrepid BYO (build your own) pioneers prepared to don hard hats and construct their own castles – saving thousands in the process – but their numbers are on the up. And the recession is helping. Plot prices are down 20% on last year (and 33% since January 2008), according to BuildStore, the largest one-stop shop for self-builders. Additionally, small builders who have traditionally snapped up such "windfall" sites have had their financial plug pulled by banks less inclined to dole out cash, leaving the door open to those who want to do it themselves.
"If you've had a long-term dream to build, now is probably the best opportunity for 10 or 15 years," says Michael Holmes, editor in chief of Homebuilding & Renovating magazine. Holmes, who has both renovated and built from scratch, has found building much easier, and if you're handy and you've got the time – most self-builders are self-employed, retired or able to take time off work – it's definitely worth it.
"It is a time commitment," says Holmes, "but you get a bespoke house and you end up with a property worth considerably more than it cost. You are building in equity. You are building in a profit margin. For people who are climbing the housing ladder, it's a fantastic way of actually making it happen. And it's tax free."
Monty Ravenscroft became a self-build sensation overnight, when he showed what could be done with an unprepossessing scrap of urban wasteland in south London. Armed with a tiny budget, a pile of books, a gang of mates and impressive derring-do he transformed a narrow, derelict plot into an open-plan, cutting-edge family home – his antics closely followed by Grand Designs. And the nation loved him for it: "It was a David and Goliath thing," says Ravenscroft, who works as an engineer, actor and film producer. "We were struggling against the system, as self-build mortgages all catered for the standard process, for a standard house with a standard value. Which ours had none of. We were going to use weird materials, in a weird site, with a weird design without any windows." The skinny strip of land was cheap at £40,000, because windows were not an option – his neighbours are too close – but, after 18 months of hard work and a spend of £170,000, the house was valued at between £600,000 and £700,000 in 2006.
But it's not all about saving cash. Boxy Victorian terraces, for one, are constricting, and knock down as many walls as you like, there's a limit to what can be done with them. Self-builders, on the other hand, have the luxury of living in a tailor-made space, and they know what they want. "Large entertaining spaces, a kitchen breakfast room, glass doors opening out on to the garden, under-floor heating… These are all the basics that go into self-builds now," says Holmes.
In 2009 there was a 145% jump in the number of plots sold between the first and third quarter, according to BuildStore, and of all new detached houses at least a third are estimated to be self-build projects. It's no wonder television shows such as Grand Designs pull in the crowds. As for those contemplating taking the plunge, top tips include: don't pay up front for work; don't get disillusioned in your hunt for a plot; do your research; set your budget; project manage yourself; claim back VAT on all your materials; and when you're up against it and feeling the strain, keep an eye on the bigger picture.
For Ravenscroft the pressure peaked on concrete days: "I hate concrete," he says. "Stress levels are very high because you are spending a lot of money. The trucks are arriving, the pumps are arriving, the people are arriving. You start pumping and things start going wrong, and you can't do it, and you can't finish, and meanwhile it's setting behind you… It's just really miserable." Even on good days, he says, the construction process is still all-consuming: "You are looking at it. You are thinking about it, you are dreaming about it and you are having nightmares about it, because it takes up every moment of your life. But then you end up living in what some people say is paradise."
Ian and Sarah Gluyas, Oxfordshire
Ian and Sarah wanted one extra bedroom for them and their three children, but couldn't afford the financial hike needed to move from their three-bed. Instead, after scouting around for almost three years, they found a plot for £120,000 in their Oxfordshire village, sold their house and moved into a caravan on their new piece of land (living in situ reduces your site insurance)."I paid for it to be a water-tight shell and for an electrician," says Ian. "But I did the plastering, painting, fitted the bathrooms, a bit of plumbing, tiling, hanging doors, the carpentry…" A Formula 1 engineer, but a boat builder by trade, Ian was working five days a week and 17 weekends that year, but somehow made the time needed to complete the house within 18 months. "I would start at 8pm after work and go through until 2am."
With Sarah as on-site manager and fellow painter, they put in a £30,000 kitchen for just £6,500, and after a total building spend of £125,000, they had the house valued at £450,000. The other good thing about being a self-builder, Ian points out, is that you can keep tweaking and adding little extras; he is now building a bespoke car port for £6,000 – saving nearly £30,000.
Donald and Catherine Bisset, Peeblesshire
Donald and his wife Catherine were looking for a bigger place for themselves and their first child, only to find they were priced out of the ready-build market. They casually started looking for plots and came across one on the River Lyne, 30 minutes from Edinburgh, which they felt they had to grab. It was in their budget and came with detailed planning permission for a five-bedroom house.In between abseiling off oil rigs in the North Sea where he works as an inspector, Donald set himself the task of building a large family home from scratch, learning all the trades as he went along. With a stack of books and the help of knowledgeable friends and family, the Bissets took nine months to complete their new home. Donald, who had previous experience with various roofing jobs, dug the foundations in apocalyptic conditions, built the timber frame and did the roofing and the plumbing. He pushed himself so hard he came down with pneumonia.
The Bissets believe they have found the perfect location for their family and, having paid £165,000 for the land and a further £150,000 for building costs, they have recently had the house valued at £400,000.
Brad Lochore, East London
In 2005 conceptual artist Brad Lochore decided to overhaul a Victorian warehouse he had bought in Shoreditch in east London in 1996 for £120,000, and turn it into a contemporary studio and living space. He employed Tony Fretton Architects to design the space and building, but quickly became disillusioned with the builders he called in to price up the job.
"The contractors either came back and said: 'We can't do it we're so busy', or they came back with such ludicrous prices, so the only option left to me was to roll up my sleeves and do it myself." Being self-employed left Lochore free to manage his time, and as an artist he had a basic understanding of materials. He spent £280,000 on the rebuild, plus £30,000 for extra land from his neighbour. He believes he saved a couple of hundred thousand by doing the work himself, and has since had an informal valuation of £3m.
Lochore has ended up with a building with two to five bedrooms (depending on what rooms are being used for), two bathrooms and three kitchens. "I've produced a unique, beautiful building," he says. "I know every single nut and bolt in it."
Shard to become EU’s tallest building – but will the market follow it up?
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on November 23, 2010
Architecture not the only challenge for London skyscraper's owners as it outgrows Canary Wharf Tower
In pictures: London's tallest buildings
Like size, height doesn't really matter. Yet there is no getting away from the fact that skyscrapers retain their pulling power 70 years on from the prodigious rise of the Empire State Building and a decade after the savage fall of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.
The concrete core of Britain's tallest building has just surpassed the last record holder, One Canada Square, better known as Canary Wharf Tower, which reaches 235 metres (770ft) into the London sky.
The new contender is Shard London Bridge, better known as just the Shard, a tripod-like concrete, steel and glass construction that will be 310m tall when completed in 2012. Designed by the celebrated Genoese architect Renzo Piano – who first made his name, alongside Richard Rogers, with the design of the Pompidou Centre in Paris– the Shard will revolutionise the London skyline, casting a needle-like shadow like the pointer of some Brobdingnagian sundial across and around the City, Southwark and a giant's stretch of the River Thames the city.
What this structural behemoth will not be, is the tallest building in Europe, as it was intended to be just a few years ago. In the EU, yes; but further east the 380m Mercury City Tower is sprouting up over Stalin's art deco skyscrapers in in Moscow. Even that potential entrant to the record books will be relegated soon enough to a lower league as future generations of property developers keen to prove their financial virility, or foolhardiness, attempt to take the title. Will London, or another British city, rejoin the race after 2012, and the current austere times? Much turns on the success of the Shard, a business opportunity created and nurtured by Irvine Sellar, a one-time king of Carnaby Street boutiques in the days of floral shirts and flared trousers. There was a time when the Shard seemed nothing more than a glassy gleam in Sellar's eye, but when John Prescott – now Lord Prescott, the former New Labour environment boss – gave it the go-ahead in 2003, nothing, recession or otherwise, was going to stand in its way.
At the moment though, this cocky, Cockney erection has a decidedly raw look. As a babel of construction workers drawn from around the world and speaking more languages than the Babylonians or the authors of the Bible could have dreamed of piles the concrete sky-high, the Shard has the look of some curiously elongated and rather blasphemous ancient ziggurat. A temple to Mammon, it trounces lowly St Paul's Cathedral across the Thames. It makes every one of those 60s office towers that rose in the wake of the Harold Macmillan's Conservative government's relaxation of height controls – whereby no building in central London was to be taller than Wren's domed cathedral – look positively lilliputian.
Dwarfed by this world of high-rise construction, we continue to watch the Shard's progress with mix of awe and moth-to-flame fascination. Can the way forwards still go very far upwards? Will we rush to the viewing platform on the Shard's 72nd floor, above its shops, offices, flats and hotel? Probably. What we do know is that, this week, the Shard's progress marks one small step for architecture, one giant leap for property development.
Architecture, Art and design, Comment, London, Property, The Guardian, UK news
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