Who’s driving what gets built and how can we do it better?

As part of the London Festival of Architecture an event took place in the Gallery at 77 Cowcross Street on Tuesday evening 29th June.  Those speaking were the following:-

David Birkbeck, Chief Executive of Design for Homes, chaired the event and speakers included: Alex Ely, partner at MAE Architects, Sadie Morgan, partner at DRMM, Dick Mortimer, Development Director at Family Mosaic, Chris “Good Evening Glastonbury!” Brown, Chief Executive at Igloo, and finally, David Lunts, London Regional Director at the HCA.

The evening started at 1800 with an introduction from David Birkbeck followed by a short talk from each of those present beginning with:-

Sadie Morgan who talked about the difference between ideals and practice in designing flats, and showed a succession of slides outlining the path from proposal to completion and the changes therein caused by the constraints of different building regulations.

Alex Ely showed slides of projects in Germany and the Netherlands where good design had been achieved with a minimal design brief and one I think in England where the brief had been 143 pages and turned out to be blue and ugly.

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