Post Modernism
June 4th, 2011
Post Modernism – the gratuitous use of stuck on detailing such as plastic pediments, columns, pilasters and coloured window frames leading to a cheap and tacky appearance that quickly dates.
Alfa Laval – new plans submitted
May 30th, 2011
UPDATE: This project started on site in March 2013
Carlton have submitted revised plans for a 200 new homes development on the Alfa Laval site in Brentford.
Former Alfa Laval Site Great West Road Brentford LONDON TW8 9BU
Date Recd 19-Apr-2011 Decision In Progress
North facing flats refused planning
May 13th, 2011
UPDATE: See also 100_Whitechapel_Road_final_decision.pdf heard through @euanmills in the pdfs folder
While trawling the web today for North facing single aspect flats I was delighted to find that at least one planning application has been refused in the recent past for containing North facing flats.
The image above taken from the planning document shows the paragraph in question and the rest of the document is here (source) or click the image above.
What is a single aspect flat?
May 9th, 2011
A single aspect flat is a dwelling that has windows only on one side, that faces one way, that forces its inhabitants to live with the consequences of its orientation for ever and a day without having the choice of moving to a room that benefits from more or less sunlight, depending on their wants and needs, or quite simply a different view.
A back to back house has the entrance door on the same side as the windows, whereas single aspect flats tend to have the entrance door on a corridor running the length of a rectangular block, with the only windows opposite the door, leading to internal kitchens and bathrooms and a lack of ventilation, with the consequent problems of temperature control, especially overheating.
What is a dual aspect flat?
May 9th, 2011
A dual aspect flat is an apartment that has windows on two or more sides. Most commonly these days they make an appearance as the corner flats in a block of single aspect flats, and have a view in two direction at 90° to each other. The flat may be ventilated by opening the furthest windows on each side but is in my view inferior to a flat having windows on opposite sides of the dwelling allowing full ventilation of the space when needed and a view in two opposite directions, allowing full use of the sunlight throughout the day.
For example in a block of flats orientated North or South with the windows facing East or West, containing only dual aspect flats one has the choice of morning sun in the bedrooms and setting in the living room or vice versa. With a corner dual aspect flat one is more limited and during a hot summer can less easily move to a cooler room.
From the Interim London Housing Design Guide:-
5.2 Dual aspect
Providing a home with two aspects can have many benefits: better daylight, cross ventilation, a choice of views, access to a quiet side of the building, and greater flexibility in the use of rooms and the potential for future adaptability to re-arrange rooms within the home. Dual aspect design should be the default.
A dual aspect dwelling is defined as one with openable windows on two external walls, which may be opposite or adjacent around a corner. One aspect may be towards an external access deck, courtyard, or ventilated atrium.
Single aspect flats are difficult to naturally ventilate and more likely to overheat, an increasing concern for homes in London due to anticipated temperature increases from climate change coupled with the urban heat island effect where London is inherently warmer than its surrounding areas. Single aspect flats will only be permitted where the design is shown to allow adequate daylight and ventilation to all habitable rooms.
Further reading:-
Zeilenbau orientation and Heliotropic housing
Kate Davies and H&F
May 4th, 2011
Fun with Nick and Kate
Both the Independent on Sunday and the Daily Mail featured the erstwhile director of housing for Hammersmith, Nick Johnson, and his partner, Kate Davies, this week. Good investigative journalism but slightly missing the point, which is why are they paid so much out of public funds to promote private housing?
The same day I saw these stories I got notice of a planning application from Notting Hill Housing (prop. Kate Davies). It is to build 41 properties on the former VW garage site in King Street. Four of these will be five-bedroomed town houses in St Peter’s Square, each retailing for about £3million on the open market – which is what all 41 will be doing. Apparently, there is insufficient equity in the site for this housing association – whose only purpose for existing and paying its chief executive is to house people on low incomes – to build a single affordable home.
https://www.andyslaughter.co.uk/?p=4736 or if that fails then locally here -> Fun with Nick and Kate
The Scissor Maisonette
March 21st, 2011
I’ve combined the contents of this former article with the page linked from the main menu entitled Scissor since there was a lot of unnecessary duplication of content and therefore if you click the title of this article it will now take you directly to the Scissor page, having lost nothing in the process but complexity and duplication.
Bernard Crofton on housing, from the Guardian
March 17th, 2011
bernardcrofton -> Bellerephon
Of course not, but you can often blame architect for problem estates. Here’s a little anecdote.
As the most junior lettings officer, I was given the task of filling the empty block in the Stevenage town centre. It had one benefit to the locals: instead of being let to people moving out of London I was allowed to let them to local couples who “fell pregnant” with no other prospect of their own home. I was told to promise them they would be high-priority transfers when the child was three. Then Heath won the 1970 election, budgets were cut, and many of them were still there a decade later, but with more kids. Older couples suited to the estate moved out because of the noise.
The Chief Architect planned a tower block in each neighbourhood:”like a church spire in a traditional village”. My response that people don’t have to live in a church spire fell on cloth ears.
And an anecdote on architects in general. I attended a course on residential densities at the Architectural Association. One of our test exercises was a disused dock backing onto a 1930s LCC estate. Apart from mine and a planner’s from Islington, every design submitted included a big wall between the older council estate and the new homes.
https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/28933440
Is the big society big enough for homeless people?
bernardcrofton’s comment 4 July 2011 12:03PM
It was deliberate policy of the Thatcher government to remove full security of tenure and allow rents to rise in the private sector,and to force council and housing association rents to rise in the public.
The result was that Housing Benefit “took the hit”. (I would say see my evidence to the commons social security committee 1996 but I can’t find the link for the moment). This was seen as an inevitable cost of forcing up rents. The neo-cons believed that eventually there would be a resurgence of the private landlord.
The same belief underpins the current coalition plans for “near-market rents”. The problem is that this time all the family sized dwellings are going to be above the benefits cap etc..
And the “flood of immigrants” around the millennium was a temporary phenomenon caused by the accession of the eastern block to the EU with full rights to live and work anywhere within the EU. I make no comment on the rights and wrongs, or losses and gains to the UK, involved in that treaty. I simply observe that the Accession Act 1996 put into UK law the Maastricht Treaty which gave those countries equal rights with other EU citizens to enter the UK. 1996 was the seventeenth year of a Conservative Government.
Recommended (13)
Where We Live Now – City of Towers
March 10th, 2011
For over thirty years I have lived with the memory of this excellent documentary City of Towers and just occasionally I have a glimmer of hope that it will be shown again. Today the page was visited by somebody at the BBC.
A visitor from webgw3.thls.bbc.co.uk (132.185.240.123)
arrived from www.google.co.uk“WHERE WE LIVE NOW:1:CITY OF TOWERS” 1-10,
and visited www.singleaspect.org.uk/doc/CityofTowers.htm
at 11:12:06 on Thursday, March 10, 2011.A visitor from webgw3.thls.bbc.co.uk (132.185.240.123)
arrived from www.google.co.uk“WHERE WE LIVE NOW:1:CITY OF TOWERS” 1-10,
and visited www.singleaspect.org.uk/doc/wwln.php
at 11:11:49 on Thursday, March 10, 2011.
If you have a copy of this film and are willing to show it, even as a private showing please get in touch. This film was a landmark of its time in revealing the inadequacies and destruction wrought by an over enthusiastic application of Modernism to housing and city centres and the history that was destroyed in the process. Christopher Booker was one of the first to recognise the damage being done.
UPDATE: I now have a copy of this film, read more about it at the following page:-
Red Brick on the homeless
February 3rd, 2011
If you read nothing else today read Red Brick on Cameron’s attitude to the homeless. Thatcher MkII.
https://redbrickblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/the-revolving-door-for-homeless-people/
I can still remember central London during the 1970s with few to no visible homeless people and then the way the subway between Charing Cross Station and the north side of the Strand filled up every night after midnight as the 1980s wore on, and doorways began to be occupied by the young (16 to 18) in Salvation Army sleeping bags (YTS, family breakdown and all that).
I think the Tory philosophy of today on housing might reasonably be summed up as “we’re ok, you can ffffffffffffffind a cardboard box”.
With one exception; at least Boris has had the balls to pursue housing standards and for that I admire him, for the rest of them, the sooner the coalition falls and we have a general election the better.
Fifty years ago politicians of all creeds were falling over themselves to build 300,000 homes a year and now, when they’re more needed than ever, and it would help pull the country out of recession, there they sit on their hands doing nothing and worse, pulling out the rug from under the few people who have a subsidised home and forcing them into private rented accommodation.
This is Cathy Come Home writ large.
If you disagree there’s a comment box below.