Single aspect apartment plans
October 24th, 2011
From time to time I look at the stats and find out what people have been searching for. This often forms a useful guide as to the kind of information I ought to be researching and providing as a reference point. In this case the title came from a web search and I hope the querent found what they were looking for but for future reference the answer is quite simple since a fellow blogger, Hussein at https://www.designofhomes.co.uk/ has done a lot of work on this subject resulting in the (edited) graphic linked below which illustrates many depressingly similar single aspect apartment plans.
https://www.designofhomes.co.uk/028-dismal-state-of-housing-design.html
RIBA Housing Conference – Q & A
October 13th, 2011
This is the record of a live blog conducted by Su Butcher of https://www.justpractising.com/riba-housing-2011/ at the RIBA Housing Conference at Robinson College
Reconvening for a Question time Panel:
John Lefever Hastoe HA,
Peter Studdert of Peter Studdert Planning,
Harry Rich, Chair of panel and CEO of RIBA (https://twitter.com/harryprich)
Glen Richardson of Cambridge City Council
Alex Ely of Mae Architects (https://twitter.com/alexely)
Thursday October 13, 2011 4:23 Su Butcher
RIBA Housing Conference – Housing development workshop
October 13th, 2011
This is the record of a live blog conducted by Su Butcher of https://www.justpractising.com/riba-housing-2011/ at the RIBA Housing Conference at Robinson College
Creative housing development solutions – Richard Owers, NRAP Architects and Simon Payne, Cambridge City Council
Workshop speakers : Richard Owers of NRAP Architects and Glen Richardson
Thursday October 13, 2011 2:56 Su Butcher
The Workshop on how architects and planners can influence volume house builders to meet the needs and desires of the next generation.
Audience is about 1/3 non-architects.
Thursday October 13, 2011 2:57 Su Butcher
RIBA Housing Conference – Alex Ely
October 13th, 2011
This is the record of a live blog conducted by Su Butcher of https://www.justpractising.com/riba-housing-2011/ at the RIBA Housing Conference at Robinson College.
The next presentation is by Alex Ely https://twitter.com/alexely
Thursday October 13, 2011 11:48 Su Butcher
RIBA Housing Conference – Anna Minton
October 13th, 2011
This is the record of a live blog conducted by Su Butcher of https://www.justpractising.com/riba-housing-2011/ at the RIBA Housing Conference at Robinson College.
Anna Minton is going to talk about her work with the RIBA on a report on the future delivery of housing – ‘Homes Fit for a New Century’.
She’s going to talk a bit about the historic legacy, but also solutions for the future. This is a work in progress so please get in touch with her if issues raised here prompt you to want to be involved.
Thursday October 13, 2011 11:10 Su Butcher
Deck access
October 12th, 2011
https://vintage-everyday.blogspot.com/2011/10/b-london-photographs-in-1883.html
Hulme on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1qpf9hogI0
Bison Wall System
World in Action 1977 – Bison Wall System
https://hailesmatters.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/the-road-to-wester-hailes/
Conflict between the literal description of what they are and the perjorative and negative associations that have come to be aligned with that form of construction. Again owing to management and not design.
Blakelaw Newcastle
https://www2.newcastle.gov.uk/cab2006.nsf/allbykey/72377EB9B21F8DDB8025729D0055B7B7/$FILE/5c%20-%20blakelaw%20deck%20access.pdf
https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/3014/1/DX076681.pdf
Or locally here Blakelaw
https://www.yhn.org.uk/pdf/MainBoard27Feb07BlakelawDeckAccessItem8.pdf
Castlefields, Runcorn
Cameron on housing
October 6th, 2011
Here are a few links I gathered together last year on Cameron’s attitude to housing. I’m loath to delete them so here they are (again) as a reference point of 2010 in politics and the Tory approach to those in need of a roof over their heads. It seems quite apt to post them again given that the Tory conference 2011 has just finished and the only thing we’ve heard is the utter stupidity of widen right to buy.
Johann Hari: Welcome to Cameron land [5th May 2010] (yes I know, but it’s still a good article)
David Cameron announces plan to end lifetime council tenancies [3rd August 2010]
https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/aug/03/lifetime-council-tenancies-contracts-cameron
London housing crisis: the roots of David Cameron’s council tenancy debate [5th August 2010]
Any Questions discussion about the Cameron comments [6th August 2010]
BBC Any Questions clip on council housing – YouTube
Any Answers discussion about the Cameron comments [7th August 2010]
BBC Any Answers clip on council housing – YouTube
David Cameron’s council housing plans opposed by majority of Lib Dem MPs [8th August 2010]
https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/08/david-cameron-council-housing-plans-opposed
Separate kitchens
October 5th, 2011
Clearly I’m not the only one who bemoans the loss of the separate kitchen, here’s an example of thinking along the same lines taken from the comments section of Building Design magazine.
Valerie Paynter | 15 September 2011 1:22 am
It was Boris Johnson who mainstreamed the call to “bring back the Parker Morris standard for room sizes” but getting the architecture profession to shout the same thing has perhaps needed a recession when there would be no work to lose by speaking out. Even so, it isn’t architects speaking; its the professional body.
I emailed MP Mike Weatherley with a call for him to speak out against the loss of separate kitchens in newbuild flats along with Amy Kennedy of the new Green Administration in Brighton & Hove. Amy Kennedy agreed with my room sizes and actual, functionally sized separate kitchens plea. My MP did not reply but his assistant asked where there were flats without kitchens he could look at (!).
I’ll send them a link to this article as well as our local press, the saveHOVE supporters and anyone else I can think of.
When planning applications are out for consultation, people look at the computer-generated lie and listen to the PR spin and only really judge a development on how high it will be, how much traffic it will generate and – most of all – how it will affect parking locally. If a famous (Frank Gehry) architect has his name stamped on a development people go “OOOH ERRR” i’nt we lucky to get this “landmark architecture” that will “put the city on the map”.
This country has no future worth having if this kind of deeply mean and Scrooge-inspired designer warehousing of people continues. The proposed changes to Planning in favour of developers are about stamping out
resistance todemands for properly sized homes and instead lining the pockets of developers. Perhaps they make the best donors to political parties.https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/riba-launches-housing-space-standards-campaign/5024450.article (subscribers only)
Right to buy III
October 5th, 2011
I’ve written articles on the subject of right to buy in the past. They are Right to buy II, Right to buy and Why sink estates exist. They have been part of a journey towards understanding what’s gone wrong with council housing since Mrs Thatcher was elected in 1979.
Adam Gray has written a short article that encapsulates the reasons for the demise of public housing provision in the last thirty years which covers all the reasons I’ve found and more and is well worth reading.
Right to buy 2 damaging policy
UPDATE: 6/10/11 This today from Inside Housing
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/home/home/right-to-buy-sales-hit-rock-bottom-28995
Old link
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/ihstory.aspx?storycode=6518252
UPDATE: 18/10/11 This very relevant article today from the Guardian
A Golden age
October 2nd, 2011
That brief period between 1917 and 1979, when British wealth, trembling in fear of revolution, ceded some power, opportunity and money to the working classes is over. There is now no politics to express or admit the enormity of what has happened since the 1980s – how wealth and human respect drained from the bottom to enrich and glorify the top.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/31/chav-vile-word-fractured-britain