Talks about architecture – Royal Academy
December 3rd, 2013
UPDATE: See this page for the programmes -> Programmes
The Architects Who Made London with Maxwell Hutchinson: Series 1
Inigo Jones, Sir Christopher Wren, Robert Adam, John Nash, Sir Charles Barry RA, Sir George Gilbert Scott RA
Architects who made London with Maxwell Hutchinson – Series One
Architects who made London – with Maxwell Hutchinson – Series One
World Service Radio Archive prototype
October 13th, 2013
UPDATE 14/3/17: It was an experiment. They put the archive up for three years then disconnected it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/worldservice-archive-proto therefore what follows below no longer applies.
Today while searching for details of a programme recorded on cassette over twenty years ago I came across the World Service Radio Archive prototype. It is necessary to sign in but having done so you will be treated to a small archive to search, which is available to hear, and some of which is possible to download with a little manipulation.
On reaching the page of interest you can listen to the programme by clicking the arrow provided, and in addition if you right click the page to View Source and then search for mp3 you can right click the link and Save As thus downloading the programme to your computer.
Owen Hatherley: A masterpiece on why we are where we are
October 3rd, 2013
“Labour local authorities’ increasing fixation with ‘decanting’ their council housing, in combination with their unwillingness to do anything about the rising rents and house prices that first gradually then sharply expelled their core vote has created the utterly bizarre situation of a party that, as Andrew Coley, a housing campaigner in Leeds, puts it, ‘gerrymanders against itself’.”
Alfa Laval Brentford started on site
September 29th, 2013
Having been alerted to something going on by the increasing number of hits to my blog entry Crap flats and back to backs I’ve just done a quick web search and lo and behold work started on site in March. I’m six months late with the news but I don’t live in London or skim all my entries for updates.
The end of council housing? – Guardian comments
September 26th, 2013
“Thatcher used a carrot to encourage the better off tenants to buy their council homes and Cameron is using a stick, his Bedroom Tax, to destroy the remaining tenancies.”
It’s difficult to read the observations of the Guardian commentator I quote below without concluding that nothing has changed. Now it’s worse because then they were planning it but now appear to be implementing it.
Is this the future of UK student accommodation?
September 21st, 2013
UPDATE: Oct 2016 Property Week award boycotted by angry student judges
“Unless all students have access to safe, affordable accommodation at every institution and the means to pay for it, there is no cause for celebration, nor the ability for us to award a for-profit sector failing so many of our peers.”
UPDATE: July 2016 I received another email recently, again from Aspen Woolf, only this time I decided to pursue it. Feigning interest in Kingfisher Court I booked a call which occurred the following morning. I was very honest with the bloke, told him I write a housing blog, told him I had heard there is “no exit” (see comment end of page) and what did he have to say?
In short order he told me the product is “more suitable for people over 60 as an investment”. “Not suitable for people with a mortgage”. “A long term investment”.
When asked directly if there is an exit he told me “Yes of course, but they are harder to sell and there’s a £3000 out fee”.
So essentially the guy who wrote the comment at the end of this post was right. There’s an exit in theory but you’re not encouraged to use it and if you try it’s going to be more difficult than selling a house because you have to wait for somebody in a smaller pool of investors in student accommodation to buy you out.
Avoid like the plague would be my advice.
UN Report on UK Housing – Raquel Rolnik
September 12th, 2013
UPDATE: The report has now been released or download it directly here
“The right to housing is not about a roof anywhere, at any cost, without any social ties. It is not about reshuffling people according to a snapshot of the number of bedrooms at a given night. It is about enabling environments for people to maintain their family and community bonds, their local schools, work places and health services allowing them to exercise all other rights, like education, work, food or health.”
This ought to be burned into the front door of the Government department responsible for housing, with a blowtorch, in order to remind them every day as they come to work of their responsibility to all the residents of the United Kingdom.
The student room
September 6th, 2013
In response to:- Do student housing standards need an overhaul? from Building Design online.
A well lit student room – Fitzwilliam Cambridge
In case you haven’t read or are not able to read the article it is an exchange between Michael Chessum President of University of London Union and Dav Bansal Director at Glenn Howells Architects in response to the question in the link above.
Carbuncle Cup: 465 Caledonian Road, London
August 30th, 2013
Building Online -> A triumph for the dark side (this is not paywalled, you have only to register to read the article)
The building in its original form
To inflict on students a presumed way of life is both patronising and ignorant to say the least. A basic rule of life is “do as you would be done by” or the more pithy version from E.M. Forster “only connect” i.e. try to stand in the other persons shoes.
UPDATE: Useful link here -> https://www.le.ac.uk/manufacturingpasts
Conference organised by the Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester
Deadline: 1 February 2013
9-10 July 2013
Plenary Speakers: John Gold (Oxford Brookes); Frank Mort (Manchester); Guy Ortolano (New York University); Selina Todd (St Hildas, Oxford)
During the second half of the twentieth century the towns and cities of Britain were transformed more extensively than at any period since the industrial revolution.