Single Aspect Blog

Last night I attended an event at the Broadway Theatre Barking [Delivering more quality affordable housing – have your say] which was a meet the people event to discuss affordable housing in Greater London.  It was well attended.

The panel from left to right (from the audience) were as follows:-

• David Montague – Group Chief Executive L & Q Group
• Rachael Orr – Shelter London Campaigns Manager
• Boris Johnson – Mayor of London
• Baroness Neuberger DBE – Chair
• Richard Blakeway – Mayor’s Advisor for Housing
• Cllr Phil Waker – Cabinet Member for Housing, London Borough of Barking & Dagenham

The evening began with a short speech from each of the panellists, excluding the chair, each explaining their role in the process of planning housing in London although as he himself admitted, Richard Blakeway’s contribution was fairly brief being much the same as that of Boris Johnson’s who preceded him.

When Phil Waker spoke I was taken straight back to the London Festival of Architecture meeting because just like Dick Mortimer of Family Mosaic then, I felt Phil Waker was speaking from the heart and from direct experience rather than a wish list and by the end of the evening, he had, for me, come over as by far the most powerful voice on the panel.

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Mayor of London Boris Johnson will be at the Broadway Theatre in Barking on Tuesday, September 21 at 7pm, with a panel of experts, to take your questions. The public debate will be chaired by Baroness Neuberger DBE, chairman of the One Housing Group. Panel members are Richard Blakeway, the mayor’s Housing adviser; Rachael Orr, Shelter London campaigns manager; Cllr Phil Waker, cabinet member for housing on Barking and Dagenham Council and David Montague, group chief executive of L and Q Group.

Call 0208 507 5607 for a free ticket.

From London Open House 2010

The Progress Estate, now a conservation area, was built during the time of the popularity of garden cities in England. Specifically built to house munition workers at Woolwich Arsenal, Frank Baines was lead architect. Almost every type of cottage architecture is represented with the houses mainly in terraces of four or six houses with gardens.

Photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/singleaspect/sets/72157627528201719/

In the week before this year’s Open House weekend I toured London at some pace with the 2010 brochure in my bag,  and this was one of the visits I made – Stonebridge Estate and Fawood Childrens’ Centre.

Stonebridge Hillside Hub

Photos from September 2010

https://www.flickr.com/photos/singleaspect/sets/72157627521049825/

Story of estate leading up to the regeneration

https://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/15/gang-wars-police-supergrass-help

https://www.building.co.uk/sectors/housing/hackney-sur-mer-levitt-bernstein%E2%80%99s-queensbridge-quarter/3147407.article

Holly Street and others, discussed.

https://www.singleaspect.org.uk/pdf/holly/hmr01.pdf

Two films about the estates linked here:-

A tower block is a terrace stood on end – I’ve paraphrased that from a commentator in The Occupation who says that “just lay a tower block on its side” but you’ve still got the same problems same poor health services and lack of work.

Holly Street before and after is featured in both films linked here:-

The Occupation
https://vimeo.com/61824362

The London Particular
https://vimeo.com/61727960

Holly Street is one of the largest housing regeneration projects of its kind in the world.  It  took  shape  in  1991,  in  a  proposal  to  demolish  one  of  Hackney’s  most notorious 1960’s system-built housing estates. The area has now become a mixed-tenure  residential  neighbourhood  of  streets  and  squares,  containing  a  mixture  of mainstream  housing  for  sale,  in  shared-equity  ownership,  self-build  housing  and housing association rented homes.

The tenants of the old estate were involved in the design of  the new neighbourhood  from  its  inception. Having appreciated all  too well that  architecture  can  discriminate  or  stigmatise  by  its  appearance  and  imagery  as well as  in  its  layout and detailed design, most wanted  to  live  in ordinary houses on an  ordinary  street,  in  a  neighbourhood  that would  not  be  perceived  by  others  as either municipal or obviously experimental.

Many of the tenants had moved onto the estate with young  families  in  the 1960’s and then  ‘aged  in place’, and  the area had an unusually high concentration of older  residents who had survived  the decline of the area into a ‘sink estate’. The intention was that these could form the nucleus of a more stable and buoyant local community, if only they could be persuaded to stay.

Great stuff here

https://lovelondoncouncilhousing.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html

The Blairs take on it here:-

The dirty, troubled towerblocks of the Holly Street estate, barely a hundred metres away, served as a constant reminder of the shortcomings of postwar social democracy. “I remember how Holly Street represented everything to me we needed to change in inner-city life,” Blair said on a visit to the estate in 1998, as most of its buildings were being demolished. “I remember going canvassing … and the tremendous fear people had of living on the estate … You had to speak to them through their letter boxes.”

https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/dec/09/property.britishidentity

No matter what my personal opinion on the success of rehousing people from the slums, I cannot argue with the facts and Blair’s experience outlined above in that Guardian article must have been representative of the kind of problems that triggered the Comprehensive Estates Initiative.

It is a matter of fact that I changed front doors on the Trowbridge Estate in 1977 – while working as a carpenter for the then GLC – owing to break-ins, so clearly life in those tower blocks wasn’t all rosy either.  On reflection it would appear that the 1970s were the last trouble free decade of life on concrete estates and even then it was brewing.  Both myself and some friends of the time obtained the keys to council flats in London in the second half of that decade under the GLC Hard to let scheme.

You have to ask yourself why they were hard to let don’t you?

Follow up . . .

Of course government policy would see this as a move in the right direction towards a social and tenure mix and a more balanced community. It probably does not feel like this if you are on the waiting list – mixed communities don’t seem to work in the opposite direction, as the recent nasty little episode about ‘million pound Council houses’ illustrated.

https://www.jonestheplanner.co.uk/2012/11/hackney-hipsters.html

“It is easier for outsiders to gain access to and linger in the interior areas of a building shared by 24 to 100 families than it is in a building shared by 6 to 12 families.” – Oscar Newman

Section 3 kicks off with a welcome objection to blocks with single aspect “hotel” flats.

“. . . apartment buildings with long, double-loaded corridors.  These are more suited to a short-stay hotel and do little to foster a permanent sense of home.”

3.1 Entrance and Approach

Their comments here are apparently drawn from two sources being the writings of Alice Coleman; and the Lifetime Homes criteria.  They relate both to common sense surrounding accessible and overlooked entrances and space for people in wheelchairs.

“The design of the threshold between the public realm of the street and the private realm of the home affects people’s sense of security in, and ownership of, their homes.”

Donnybrook has none – I think that’s worth considering when a new development dumps the owners directly on to the street.

3.2 Shared Circulation Within Buildings

Alice Coleman and Oscar Newman can be “heard” in the background here, their shared research and wisdom cascading down the years but with less direct influence than I would have liked.  The following bodes well:-

“Housing based on double-loaded corridors has particular limitations both in the single-aspect dwellings they demand and in the circulation spaces, which are often poorly lit and ventilated.”

and continues in much the same vein . . .

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2.1 Appropriate Density

This looks like common sense but I’m sad to say it went over my head when it got on to public transport accessibility levels, although all they’re really saying is don’t build housing where there aren’t good transport links or put in good transport links to where there is isolated housing.

Does Thamesmead come to mind?  It did to me.  Look at it on Google Earth, stuck out there by the river accessible only by bus.  One of the hopes of Crossrail was that the full version would reach Thamesmead but with the budget cuts I don’t know whether or not this will happen, but I can’t help thinking that Boris and his advisers had Thamesmead in mind when they wrote the following:-

“We must avoid the problems that occur when large populations are concentrated in inaccessible places without the necessary facilities.”

Page 29 carries a table whose comprehension I have failed miserably but I’m happy to read that some consideration has been given to the viability of new communities.  Sorry, this isn’t really my area, I prefer talking about the floor plans of good houses and bad flats.

2.2 Residential Mix

Mix of Dwelling Sizes

They start out here talking about the over supply of 1 and 2 bed flats, then move on to what is undoubtedly an important topic in my view which is how to incorporate children into flats by including private outdoor space.  Single aspect flats with so called Juliet balconies are certainly not suitable for families with children in my view because there is no amenity space for the children, and as they grow the problems will worsen.

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1.1 Defining Places

A good start. A lot of common sense which made me think of Islington and Belgravia when they talk about “a strong and consistent architectural character” and made me feel a bit sad having recently walked the Holly Street estate in Hackney and wondered why it wasn’t built in the same style as the surrounding streets.

I like the Alice Coleman references such as “There should also always be clear distinctions between spaces that are for public and private use.” She made a big play of that in “Utopia on trial” and walking around Holly Street recently made me conscious that the architects there had made a determined effort to clearly demarcate front gardens and the area in front of ground floor flats, with iron railings to provide defensible space.

Again, with “placing entrances and windows on street frontages and around public spaces brings activity which in turn increases neighbourliness and security by passive surveillance.”  All good stuff straight from the Oscar Newman and Alice Coleman school of thought.

1.2 Outdoor Spaces

“Spaces that receive some direct sunlight are used more frequently and enjoyed for longer periods throughout the year”.  I like that and I think that a communal outdoor space would have to be very small, or greatly overshadowed not to receive direct sunlight, but I can see the principle of not placing tall buildings next to a communal outdoor space and think that’s a good thing.

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UPDATE: Film of the estate at 8:00 Architecture_at_the_Crossroads

Made famous by The Bill on location, designed by Neave Brown under Sydney Cook as part of Cook’s Camden, and well known as one of a series of Modernist housing estates across London, Alexandra Road stands as a landmark both literally and metaphorically in the history of post war housing.

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UPDATE 2/3/17 The London Housing Design Guide has been superseded by the London SPG on housing This includes the design standards which makes it mandatory for all housing projects in London.

Mae Architects and the London Development Agency (LDA) have published the new London Housing Design Guide (interim edition), setting out guidelines for all new public homes in the capital.

Download a copy from the London Development Agency -> here <-

Click image above for full page

The London Evening Standard has a good review of the guide here:-

https://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23868332-boris-the-builder-the-mayors-vision-for-london-housing.do

Mapping existing housing standards from CABE

https://www.cabe.org.uk/files/mapping-existing-housing-standards.pdf