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
Is the Maiden Lane Estate Listed?
September 25th, 2011
Somebody typed the heading into Google today and I thought I’d answer the question. Last year some estates in Camden were listed following a recommendation by the C20th Society. Branch Hill and Dunboyne Road but Maiden Lane was left out. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s because it’s the least attractive for want of maintenance, perhaps it’s because it’s the most isolated, perhaps it was considered the least architecturally significant.
The cynic in me thinks that because it’s less than a mile from the Eurostar terminal it would make a good location for a hotel but why on earth would a Tory coalition be supporting property developers? That’s unheard of isn’t it?
There was an article at the time https://www.culture.gov.uk/news/news_stories/7359.aspx
If you want to know more the best place for news is their own estate website maidenlaneestate[dot]org or my own visit to Maiden Lane.
The Case for Space – RIBA fights its corner
September 21st, 2011
Last week the RIBA published their report on small homes entitled The Case for Space making a perfectly rational and objective argument that British new homes are the smallest in Europe and ought to be larger.
The above is for illustration only and not intended as an example of a small flat
Judging by the hysterical reaction of the house builders and two leading people in the industry you would think the RIBA had somehow shot themselves in the foot.
Hackney Archive – check for CEI
September 21st, 2011
Dear Mr *******
Thank you for your enquiry. We do have some printed material on the
Comprehensive Estates Initiative, such as a 1999 pamphlet entitled
‘Holly street estate: blueprint for success’ and ‘Comprehensive estates
initiative: progress report 1995’; we also possess a video on the CEI.
However, this material will be inaccessible until we complete our move.
We anticipate opening at our new premises in Dalston later in the year.
A date for reopening has not yet been set, but when one is it will be
advertised on our website, which would be the best place to gain
information.
Best wishes
Ed Lyon
Archive Assistant
Hackney Archives Department
43 De Beauvoir Road
London N1 5SQ
https://www.hackney.gov.uk/ca-archives.htm
200th article – World’s End Chelsea
September 20th, 2011
Tonight I’ve reached something of a milestone for the blog. They may not all be great writing, they may not all have good photographs or indeed any photographs. But in just over two years I have managed to churn out two hundred articles with thanks in order to the London Evening Standard for Plot to rid council estates of poor which started all this off on 9th July 2009.
World’s End Chelsea
September 19th, 2011
Great estate, love the burnt umber bricks, so much better to look at than raw concrete. Lovely use of communal garden space within the courtyard level above the car park at 1st floor level. Have some doubts about the – bordering on – single aspect tower block flats,but they have at least been designed so that every flat has a SW facing window even if it’s only one, and they are popular.
