A survey of 21,000 social housing tenants in the UK has shown that just 12% want to exercise their legal right to buy, down from 32% a decade ago. In addition, 8 out of 10 tenants are satisfied with their social landlord and believe that their status is better than owning a home or renting privately.
Huw Morris, editor of the weekly journal 'Planning' concludes that "a sizeable proportion of the population, it is clear, has no wish to own a home". This suggests that the politically inspired drive to create a 'property owning democracy' has finally run out of steam amid a recognition that other tenure options have benefits.
The challenge is now for all those involved in housing supply - government, parastatals, designers and developers, to create homes and neighbourhoods that people want to live in and can afford - an exciting outcome from the housing crisis!
Monday, 28 September 2009
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Attention-seeking architecture
Off to Manchester to see some projects by the innovative developers Urban Splash. They have made their mark by redeveloping old areas or buildings and putting creative packages of funding together. Despite the recession, they are keeping busy.
Manchester Piccadilly station is all one expects of the city that is home to wealthy Premiership football teams - all glass, steel and marble, with cappucinos and brioches readily available. However, once outside the station and beyond the inner circle of magnificent Victorian offices and warehouses, the scene gives way to a collection of brash new structures which seem to have no sense of context, but which shout at each other as though to claim that they are bigger and better than their neighbours. The fact that these new buildings are not trying to be good neighbours to each other, but competing for attention across derelict sites, suggests a society in which individualism has run riot and any sense of community has been long forgotten.
It is not all bad news. There are areas where public space has woven a thread of continuity between buildings and the regeneration of sections of the canal, replete with brilliantly painted narrowboats, moored under vast steel viaducts or bridges, offers a pleasant route for people to walk to work and relax in canalside restaurants and bars.
One of Urban Splash's new schemes also combines the best of the old with the best of the new. Their Chimney Pots scheme takes an area of Victorian terraces identical to those in Coronation Street that the Council wanted demolished because it had sunk into a state of total social and physical decay and turned it into an enclave for which people camped out three nights in order to make sure they were able to buy one.
The ingenuity of the project is that it retained the overall street pattern and frontages of the old terraces, but inverted the interior so the bedrooms are are on the ground floor and the living rooms are upstairs (see http://www.urbansplash.co.uk/chimneypotpark/ for details). The master-stroke was to then put car parking between the backs of the houses and build over these to create individual and communal garden terraces at first floor level. The design combines personal and communal living within individual dwellings for the grand sum of £99,000 each, making it easy to see why people camped for three nights in order to by first in the queue to get one.
The other project visited left a far less favourable impression. Designed by the prestigious architectural practice of Will Alsop, the Chips project in New Islington is a nine storey slab surrounded on three sides by water. http://www.urbansplash.co.uk/documents/brochure/US_RESI_GUIDE_100019.pdf
The ground floor is intended for commercial use and the upper floors for housing, to be sold on the open market. At the time of our visit, the commercial areas were unlet and only a small proportion of the apartments had been sold. It is not difficult to see why.
The scheme is approached across a derelict wasteland where a hospital once stood. The roofless shells of the original Victorian buildings lie waiting for eventual restoration and conversion, against which the new building is alien in scale and brash in appearance. Approaching the entrance, one notices that the entire building appears to be clad in some form of fibre board fixed with screws covered with plastic caps and separated by a recessed layer of aluminium foil which looks identical to the bacofoil used in cooking. Not only does this look trashy, but it has already been pierced by curious fingers or incompetent workers, so has lost its insulating qualities before the building has even been fully occupied.
The interiors also leave a lot to be desired. Exposed concrete ceilings may make a fashionable design statement in architectural magazines, but they don't provide the most attractive thing to see when you wake up in the morning. Nails sticking out of these on the balconies of some units also suggest that this is more a means of saving cash than achieving cachet. Finally, the internal layouts leave a lot to be desired with main doors opening directly onto bedrooms and corridors weaving around kitchens rather than leading to them. As for the narrow, glass fronted balconies, I would certainly not want children anywhere near them. But of course, the housing is probably not designed for children, but to impress other architects. This no doubt explains why the Chips project (named because it resembled three fat chips laid one above the other) has been nominated for the World Architecture Festival Awards! A case of chips with sauce?
Manchester Piccadilly station is all one expects of the city that is home to wealthy Premiership football teams - all glass, steel and marble, with cappucinos and brioches readily available. However, once outside the station and beyond the inner circle of magnificent Victorian offices and warehouses, the scene gives way to a collection of brash new structures which seem to have no sense of context, but which shout at each other as though to claim that they are bigger and better than their neighbours. The fact that these new buildings are not trying to be good neighbours to each other, but competing for attention across derelict sites, suggests a society in which individualism has run riot and any sense of community has been long forgotten.
It is not all bad news. There are areas where public space has woven a thread of continuity between buildings and the regeneration of sections of the canal, replete with brilliantly painted narrowboats, moored under vast steel viaducts or bridges, offers a pleasant route for people to walk to work and relax in canalside restaurants and bars.
One of Urban Splash's new schemes also combines the best of the old with the best of the new. Their Chimney Pots scheme takes an area of Victorian terraces identical to those in Coronation Street that the Council wanted demolished because it had sunk into a state of total social and physical decay and turned it into an enclave for which people camped out three nights in order to make sure they were able to buy one.
The ingenuity of the project is that it retained the overall street pattern and frontages of the old terraces, but inverted the interior so the bedrooms are are on the ground floor and the living rooms are upstairs (see http://www.urbansplash.co.uk/chimneypotpark/ for details). The master-stroke was to then put car parking between the backs of the houses and build over these to create individual and communal garden terraces at first floor level. The design combines personal and communal living within individual dwellings for the grand sum of £99,000 each, making it easy to see why people camped for three nights in order to by first in the queue to get one.
The other project visited left a far less favourable impression. Designed by the prestigious architectural practice of Will Alsop, the Chips project in New Islington is a nine storey slab surrounded on three sides by water. http://www.urbansplash.co.uk/documents/brochure/US_RESI_GUIDE_100019.pdf
The ground floor is intended for commercial use and the upper floors for housing, to be sold on the open market. At the time of our visit, the commercial areas were unlet and only a small proportion of the apartments had been sold. It is not difficult to see why.
The scheme is approached across a derelict wasteland where a hospital once stood. The roofless shells of the original Victorian buildings lie waiting for eventual restoration and conversion, against which the new building is alien in scale and brash in appearance. Approaching the entrance, one notices that the entire building appears to be clad in some form of fibre board fixed with screws covered with plastic caps and separated by a recessed layer of aluminium foil which looks identical to the bacofoil used in cooking. Not only does this look trashy, but it has already been pierced by curious fingers or incompetent workers, so has lost its insulating qualities before the building has even been fully occupied.
The interiors also leave a lot to be desired. Exposed concrete ceilings may make a fashionable design statement in architectural magazines, but they don't provide the most attractive thing to see when you wake up in the morning. Nails sticking out of these on the balconies of some units also suggest that this is more a means of saving cash than achieving cachet. Finally, the internal layouts leave a lot to be desired with main doors opening directly onto bedrooms and corridors weaving around kitchens rather than leading to them. As for the narrow, glass fronted balconies, I would certainly not want children anywhere near them. But of course, the housing is probably not designed for children, but to impress other architects. This no doubt explains why the Chips project (named because it resembled three fat chips laid one above the other) has been nominated for the World Architecture Festival Awards! A case of chips with sauce?
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