How to beautifully separate kitchen from living room
September 9th, 2012
In brief: Fit wooden sliding doors or build a chimney breast
I do love my readers. The title of this piece is taken from a Google search from Norway and I was very taken by the phraseology.
The reader was looking at Alexandra Road which demonstrates a great way to combine kitchen and dining room while allowing separation from the living room. In the photo above the kitchen is behind the left hand partition wall.
“We was all one” – London SE1/16 remembered
September 7th, 2012
It was the singing of Jerusalem that got me, accompanied by the camera tracking past block after block of newly completed modernist housing. Here I thought is an anthem to a brighter future, a better tomorrow, a brave new world. Then as the music drew to a close the camera zoomed slowly in on a notice board and I read the word Aylesbury.
Click the photo to watch the film
Because I care about housing
May 16th, 2012
Those of you who count yourselves among my regulars, and there are a few, will be aware of the subtitle that graced this page for nearly three years. It used to say “because I care about housing and hate single aspect flats”.
Last Saturday (12th May) I was invited to join a DoCoMoMo walk around South London during the course of which we visited Lambeth Towers and some maisonettes at Cotton Gardens just along from the Imperial War Museum, among many other buildings..
Housing Act 1988
May 9th, 2012
UPDATE: – Jules Birch has written a much better article on this subject.
Guacamoledave 9 November 2010 9:59PM
Just back from the Chartered Institute of Housing Eastern Region conference at Stanstead, where it rapidly became clear that the government is making it up as it goes along. John O’Mahoney from the Homes and Communities Agency was clearly out of his depth while trying to explain how the new regime of “Affordable” (i.e. 80% market rents i.e. not affordable really) would fund 150,000 new social homes over 4 years, and how that didn’t conflict with reducing the HB bill (answer: don’t know) and making people more dependent on benefits (answer: don’t know), and how that would be achieved at the same time as removing regional planning targets and putting control over new development in the hands of the nimbys, sorry, local people (answer……).
Blue London
May 5th, 2012
This is a sad day for London. The election of Boris Johnson as Mayor for the second time, made worse by it being only a narrow victory, when seen in the light of his support for the Conservative administration of H&F and his planning decisions in support of the social cleansing policies of that borough, is not to be welcomed by anyone who cares about the plight of council tenants across London.
This blog was created as a direct result of an article in the Evening Standard on Thursday 9th July 2009 highlighting the intention of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to rid the borough of council estates and their residents. In the nearly three years since they have gone some way towards this and certainly done little to reassure the worried that their intentions are otherwise.
How the other half live
May 3rd, 2012
Browsing the stats the other day I noticed a visit from Squire and Partners who converted the former Kensington Odeon into flats and a basement cinema. While looking at the drawings for the site, which normally contain outline images of kitchen units, sofas and a dining table, I was intrigued to notice that each of five apartments in a row, had a piano outlined. More in keeping with a music school than a residential street I would have thought or is this how the rich pass their time?
Kensington Odeon – Drawing
I regularly cycle along a street of three storey houses through whose bay windows may be seen a baby grand in a least half of them but all? Perhaps it was simply wishful thinking on the part of the architects in order to generate sales.
I have written to Squires to ask but have not so far received a reply. I’ll let you know when I do.
Is [new] back to back housing still banned?
April 25th, 2012
UPDATE: 12/3/17 What about Berkeley Homes “Urban Houses” in Kidbrooke? Aren’t they back to back? What about Barber’s McGrath Road?
One of my readers has asked the question in the title by way of Google. Here is the answer.
YES! I’m not sure
[I know about Castleford but either they’ve got forced air ventilation – yuk – or the local planning authority got it badly wrong.]
They were banned in 1909 by act of parliament for being unhealthy to live in, in fact they were first banned by several Northern cities in the 19th century . . .
Jon Snow speaking at the Guardian Open Weekend
March 30th, 2012
I have rarely heard so much truth about the present housing situation spoken in so few words, in one place. I wasn’t there but transcribed this from the Guardian video.
The housing crisis is personal to me because the first job I had after University was to work in a day centre for homeless and vulnerable young people sort of 16 to 21, and I’m still the chairman of the project now, 40 years on.
There’s far more sleeping in doorways in London and in Manchester and in Birmingham than I can remember, we’re back somewhere in the late 1960s.
Selling off the family silver
March 29th, 2012
How can you market a monopoly product like water, electricity, gas and the railways? A few short years before his death Harold MacMillan called Thatcher’s behaviour “selling off the family silver.” Had it achieved anything useful there might be something to celebrate. All we have now is a campaign to bring the “big six” to heel for overcharging and less reliable supplies than we had in the 1970s, three day week excepted.
Here’s an account of supply problems from somebody in the business who clearly has a good grasp of what’s gone wrong since the 1970s and how close we have come to power cuts.
First one (in recent years) was 10th December 2002. We were some 2-3 minutes from initiating load shedding (rolling blackouts). I don’t know the cause — most likely a cold spell causing a shortage of gas so that commercial consumers on cheap gas tarrifs have their gas cut off, some of whom were gas fired power stations, so we lose electricity generation capacity at peak heating demand.
Cameron and the Police
March 3rd, 2012
There seems no end to the lengths this bunch of millionaire muppets will go to sell the family silver, well what’s left, but this really must be a bridge too far. The Guardian article that appeared yesterday has so far attracted over 2000 comments, a rare event even for the frantic bloggers from both sides of the Atlantic who keep an eye on such things. I’ve read most of them, of which the vast majority are bitterly against, and angry. This [edited] one below pretty much sums up how I feel about it all and if you want to look up my two short contributions they’re under Piecesofeight
3 March 2012 7:15PM
I’m outraged and shocked by it all naturally. In fact, I’m starting to suspect that Cameron is on a mission to make sure the Conservatives are never a palatable voting option for an entire generation and he’s doing a brilliant job at it.