Park Hill – Urban Splash
October 21st, 2010
UPDATE: 5/3/14 Park Hill today Utopian estate left to die
Color Me Goodd! Urban Splash brighten up Park Hill Phase One
For a larger version of this photograph click the image itself.
Social Housing cuts
October 20th, 2010
Government plans to slice 60% off the affordable housebuilding budget and fill the gap by asking new social housing tenants to pay much higher rents were attacked by housing groups for hitting the “poorest hardest”.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/20/spending-review-2010-key-points#Social%20Housing
Well sadly the writing has been on the wall since 9th July 2009 when Paul Waugh, then of the Evening Standard, exposed the policies of Hammersmith and Fulham council which became the flagship Tory borough from which the present government took their ideas and are now in the process of implementing them. It is not that we should be surprised it is that I am bitterly disappointed that in view of the opposition expressed they have not stopped to reconsider.
282 Goldhawk Road update
October 18th, 2010
UPDATE: 10/3/14 Work on site at Ashchurch Villas
UPDATE: 3/12/12
The two plots 282/292 were subsequently sold to First Base who short listed four practices of which two are known to be PTEa and MAE, the project was given to PTEa after each practice gave a presentation of their intended plans.
Last year the housing association Places for People put forward a scheme at 282 Goldhawk Road designed by Peter Barber architects for housing on the site of a former old peoples home, which proved to be unpopular with local residents not only for its height and potential to overlook adjoining property but for its poor design.
I wrote two articles about the intended development, one here
https://www.singleaspect.org.uk/?p=207
and a shorter one here
https://www.singleaspect.org.uk/?p=286
Tonight saw the AGM of the Ashchurch Residents Association at the Sulgrave Club, more or less opposite the site in question which was notable for being attended for its duration by Nick Johnson, Head of H&F Homes in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, Councillor Lucy Ivimy and more briefly by the leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council, Stephen Greenhalgh.
Design Research Unit: 1942 – 72
October 12th, 2010
UPDATE: 2/6/14 At last the photographs
Norwich University College of the Arts Gallery 30 Oct – 27 Nov 2010
Curated by Michelle Cotton
Cubitt announces a national touring exhibition about the history of the Design Research Unit.
Formed in London in 1942, the Unit was responsible for some of the most important design produced in post-war Britain. It pioneered a model for group practice, being the first consultancy in the country to bring together expertise in architecture, graphics and industrial design. By the 1970s it was one of the largest and most established design offices in Europe. This exhibition will be the first of its kind, mapping the history of the group and the currency of their designs. It will identify key examples of their work and document an approach that was shaped by inter-war developments in artistic discourse and post war trends in industry and communication; in particular the accelerated demand for corporate design.
UPDATE 1/11/12 I am sorry this article is so out of date. There was an travelling exhibition at the time of which I caught the last day in Norwich on a wintry afternoon in the snow. It was a fascinating glimpse into a past when design was considered more important than it is now, and a walk down memory lane to the days when Watneys owned pubs and produced plastic barrels with which to decorate their beer pumps and branded ashtrays, not to mention the 1970s plastic lettering on the pubs. Here are some photographs from the exhibition:-
My Flickr set from the exhibition:-
Design Research Unit Exhibition – Norwich
Here’s a link to the Guardian article about the exhibition:-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/oct/12/design-research-unit-branding-britain
The British Rail design guide is online here:-
https://www.doublearrow.co.uk/manual.htm
Heard through @jacobsamwillson
Dawson Heights panorama
October 6th, 2010
While at Dawson Heights back in the summer I took a series of photographs of the London skyline which were then stitched together with the free software that Canon provide with the Ixus 95. The two links are below:-
Download panorama small 2.72Mb
Download panorama large 10.16Mb
Sorry they’re not that sharp. I have since discovered that the DSLR is a vastly different beast to the compact digital camera and that exercise above needs repeating with a decent camera, on a tripod. If you beat me to it please get in touch with a link to your panorama and I’ll post it here.
If you doubt the difference between a compact digital camera and a DSLR then look at the photograph above. I took the lower one with my Canon Ixus 95 and a friend took the upper one with her DSLR in bright sunlight. Even allowing for the difference in illumination (hers was better lit), that does not account for the lack of clarity in mine.
Now imagine what a Dawson Heights panorama would look like taken with a DSLR, and how big the resulting file would be.
You may wish to read my article about the development here https://www.singleaspect.org.uk/?p=3141
Let’s hear it for the terrace
September 26th, 2010
Click photo for larger image
We need a type of housing that can be built en masse without scaring the locals, which will blend into town or village be it private or council housing and solve the housing shortage. I know, let’s call it the terrace. Each one will have a front and back garden, three bedrooms and a loft for storage space not an unnecessary fourth bedroom. A downstairs toilet, one bathroom not two and adequate storage space for a family.
Why We Need a Fair Society – Will Hutton
September 26th, 2010
“Ever more sophisticated CCTV policing the fortresses of the rich and the desolate housing estates of the disadvantaged has become the iconic social intervention of the age.”
This phrase jumped out at me today while reading the Observer and Will Hutton’s long and accurate portrayal of broken Britain and the reasons why https://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/26/them-and-us-will-hutton
Within this blog I have written about housing estates with obtrusive CCTV – Maiden Lane for a start – and mentioned gated communities but it wasn’t until I read Will Hutton’s article that I saw how these two were related and in the worst possible way, both symptoms of a widely separated and decaying society ill at ease with itself.
This is clearly part of the problem that regenerating the Modernist estates is only going to partly solve. So long as the disparities of wealth and shortage of subsidised housing persist then so will the cameras. They are not here to stay. Unlike others I do believe there will come a time when we as a society will be able to do away with the “surveillance state”. But that time is not yet, not even close.
Thames Tideway Tunnel
September 25th, 2010
UPDATE: 10/1/2013 I’m a big fan of the tunnel, I think it needs to be built but I won’t be following the details week by week, for that see the links below.
For anyone with a keen interest in London and its infrastructure, and in engineering and industrial archaeology as I have, the advent of the Thames Tideway Tunnel is a matter of great interest.
Mixed tenure estates
September 24th, 2010
My thinking on this has been coloured by the analysis of Nicky Gavron. For example if I skim my blog I can find the following quotation . . .
‘Mixed and balanced communities are rightly one of the shibboleths of the London Plan. But under Mr Johnson’s this means ‘a mix of tenure should be sought, particularly in neighbourhoods where social renting predominates’. Where, one might ask, are displaced residents to go? Crucially, there is no reciprocal policy for social rented housing to be introduced into areas where private housing predominates.
On the one hand the right wing London boroughs want to clear their council estates and build private flats for sale to overseas investors and on the other hand they don’t want new “social” tenants moving in anywhere, the polarisation of London will continue.
Now turning for a moment to the interview Dave Hill conducted with Karen Buck MP we can find the following transcript:-
DH: In terms of security of tenure isn’t there an ongoing debate in the world of housing assocations social housing in the broader sense about whether you need to change the rules I mean it’s because you have situations where people they get themselves into a nice social rented home of one type or another they stay there for ever sometimes they start to earn a lot more money than they earned when they moved into it. It’s that kind of conversation that’s going on. Is there no kind of argument for changing the rules as they stand at the moment?
Boris at Barking 21-9-2010 continued
September 22nd, 2010
In addition to the meeting itself there was a bonus in the foyer of the theatre in the form of a full sized ground floor plan of a 2 bed 4 person house complete with sufficient furniture to make it realistic. This means nothing without photographs and so with the kind assistance of the staff at CABE I am able to show you the following which measures 8m x 4m:-
Click image above for larger version
Space to live
This floor plan is a full-size 1:1 scale image of the ground floor of a typical new-build two bedroom family house. Imagine two adults, a child and a baby living here. Is there space to play, or store the toys? Is there room to share a meal with your in-laws? Where do you store an ironing board, a vacuum cleaner, a mop and bucket? Where do you hang your coats? What about the dog basket? Visit space-standards-floor-plan for the article.
In terms of the layout in the theatre, the main entrance would be above the photo and the auditorium, below. The remaining photos show the scene as laid out for an exhibition elsewhere.