Developing News

New company, new website, new blog

2008-01-29T10:21:00.000Z

It's been a while - but I'm hoping that for those of you who haven't trashed me from your RSS feeder, this will pop up as a little surprise. I've been busy - new house, new baby, and a new practice, HAT Projects, set up from our studio here in Essex and currently working on lots of fun stuff, including the feasibility study for a new art gallery in Hastings. All of which means a new blog, which can be found here, so I hope you'll all migrate over and have a look, and sign up to a new feed!

The other side of the Dongtan 'exemplar'

2007-07-02T12:08:00.000+01:00

I thought this was a good piece of true BBC reporting, exploring whether all is as rosy as it seems in the creation of the 'exemplar ecocity' at Dongtan. None of it surprises me - that it will probably become a "suburb for the rich", that it is being accompanied by potentially disastrous development of shipyards and power plants nearby. But I have been surprised that the building and development press have so far been so blinkered as to the reality of what modern China means for projects like this.

There is the kind of wishfulness (exemplified by much of what Norman Foster says) for the speed and decisiveness of a totalitarian government in making 'big things happen' - architects and developers appear to long for European systems to work so smoothly. But they seem willing to disregard the trophy nature of these projects; the lack of a strong environmental policy from China in any strategic way; the social consequences of mass relocation of people, moulding of land, creation of new 'utopias' with no context to serve political ends.

But while we criticise our government for token gestures in proclaiming tiny new 'ecotowns' on ex-MOD sites, or hailing a fifty-home development as a national showcase for sustainability, we should remember that the 500,000 homes of Dongtan is exactly the same tokenism relative to the scale of China's development over this decade. And at what cost?

Crap Calculator

2007-06-20T12:24:00.001+01:00

DEFRA have launched their new online carbon calculator, as David Miliband proudly announced on his blog. I'll give you the link in a second, but don't all rush - because this has got to be a prime example of how not to design a user-friendly online tool.

Think irritating flash popup that does that thing where it fills your entire screen. Then takes several minutes to load due to the volume of gratuitous animation. Then every time you fill in a question, takes ages to move onto the next one, and even more time when you finish a 'section'. And an html version that runs even more slowly, if that is possible.

When all you need is a series of simple questions in html, with almost no graphics, running on a nice fast server so that you don't get so irritated that you stop bothering half way through and never do find out quite how much you are damaging the environment. I applaud the idea behind a good online calculator (this one includes a postcode function), but guys - this is really not the way to do it, when there are plenty of other ones out there that are, well, just a whole lot easier to use.

The link is here, if you want to experience the full horror yourselves. Oh yes, and it has possibly the least memorable URL known to man, just to top it off...

UPDATE: Adrian suggests in the comments that the server is simply overwhelmed by too many hits. I can't really believe that so many excited Britons are logging onto this website as to 'overwhelm' it. FYI, I originally wrote this blog post in between waiting for it to load the next question. Several hours later, I still haven't been able to finish the questionnaire. Surely DEFRA could have managed to host this on a server that would cope with the attention...and that they haven't done so is just sheer incompetency on their part.

(And now I can't load the developers blog either, so they must really be having problems!)

On the way they are calculating carbon footprint, there seem (at the halfway point that I've managed to get to) to be some questions that are more aimed at encouraging behavioural change than contributing to the calculation. If you have already entered the amount of electricity you use each month, questions about how much you use your washing machine are pointless. And other calculators that are available are more effective, showing the amount of carbon each particular element is contributing to the whole rather than simply a sum total. But all these points pale into insignificance alongside the fact that in nearly eight hours I've not managed to actually work through the damn thing to the end.

Greening Suffolk

2007-06-15T11:06:00.000+01:00

A quick update from a project that I'm working on in my birth county of Suffolk - the new initiative Suffolk: Creating the Greenest County (skeleton website here that we launched a couple of weeks ago) which is starting to gather momentum. Not nearly as fluffy as it sounds, the project is bringing together lots of passionate and active people in the county to strategise some ambitious targets, and the actions needed to get there.

As part of this we're holding a conference in October that will spread the message wider to community leaders, business, and the local authorities, and start to get them all to consider what their organisations or communities can do to contribute to the bigger aims. It's very much going to be a hands-on event with a series of seminars on different themes that are all about stimulating discussion, creating learning opportunities and sharing experience from those who've already started to take action. But we're also talking high-level with keynote speeches that will address the 20-year scenario for Suffolk and the big debates over how the county needs to adapt.

I've started to nail down panel members for the seminars and have some really interesting people lined up but there are a few spaces left to fill: so I thought I might open it to you to see if you have any smart suggestions. I'm specifically looking for someone to contribute on post-occupancy of sustainably designed buildings and behavioural change of building users. In addition we're still developing the focus for seminars on transport (green travel plans and so forth) and waste minimisation. And any ideas for other interesting people would be gratefully received!

To reduce, or to adapt?

2007-06-01T16:51:00.000+01:00

The debate that Nigel Lawson has so effectively ignited by arguing that we should concentrate on adapting to climate change rather than stopping it, is an interesting one and exactly mirrors a (less polarised) conversation I had a few weeks ago with one of the leading City investors in low carbon technology. It is foolish to claim that Lawson doesn't have a point. Climate change is happening, and even if we do manage to turn the ocean liner around, the emissions that we have already produced will continue to have an effect for many years, and it will be decades, if not longer, before the effect of any cutbacks we make now will be felt. And that's without even getting into the possible effect of feedback loops. It is not enough to put our collective heads in the sand, hope that the government legislates for carbon cuts and that the problem will go away.

So like it or not, we have to concentrate on adapting to the effects of a warming climate. Strategies for our water resources (rainwater and aquifers), for sea level rises, for extreme weather events, for agriculture, for buildings - all of these need to respond to the reality of ongoing climatic change. How will we grow crops, what kind of seed stocks will we need, how can we keep our buildings cool in summer, where will our water come from if it doesn't rain for four months of the year? These are enormous, but also solvable, challenges. They are opportunities for those who are entrepreneurial enough, but also ask tough questions about the way we manage our land and lifestyles on both macro and micro scales.

But just because we need to adapt doesn't mean that we shouldn't also look to cut our energy consumption where at all possible. The two are sides of the same coin; we need to get smarter in both directions, if maintaining our quality of life, and our economy, is to be sustainable at all. We need to use less and make better use of what we have. Water provides a really clear example: we should be implementing low-water agriculture and buildings, at the same time as collecting rainwater more efficiently for distribution, and recycling the water that we do use. On the issue of carbon, we can't just adapt our way out of climate change that is reaching unheard of speed, with unknown consequences. We have to cut our emissions as well as finding ways to cope better with the implications of what we've already done to the environment.

The other aspect of this approach is that it reduces the pressure to 'prove' or 'disprove' climate science (although, to be frank, one might think that the debate should be over). Solar flares or whatever your chosen theory, the world is getting hotter and we have to adapt to this. Also, whether or not carbon emissions are the primary cause of the heating, they certainly aren't helping, so cutting back on them is undeniably a good idea. We can't do anything about solar flares, so let's tackle the bit we can. It's a bit like genetic causes for obesity: you're not sure if you have them, but even if you might do, that doesn't excuse your overeating.

Finding the way forward to both reduce and adapt sounds like a double whammy for policymakers that is hard to stomach. But it is the only answer to the predicament we find ourselves in; and actually, reducing our consumption is simply one part of adaptation, and vice versa. Your business is asked to cut emissions by 25%? You do this through adapting: your building to require less airconditioning or lighting; your processes to require less refrigeration or heating, despite changing temperatures outside. What is more, for the public to see both aspects being addressed may make measures that tackle each side of this equation easier to stomach. It answers the frequent comment that 'at least global warming means decent summers' by saying yes: enjoy them, but here's a low-energy air-con system that you can use when it gets too hot, and a way for you to avoid that hosepipe ban by being smarter about your water, or by not needing a hosepipe in the first place.

The message should be not that the world is ending, but that it's changing; and here are the ways that we can, and must, adapt to both the good and the bad side of that.

Gateway disarray

2007-05-25T09:35:00.000+01:00

Not only is the design bad (at the ‘Middlesbrough level of the Premiership – with some more akin to Watford, without, of course, the same fear of relegation’) despite the threat of Housing Corporation funding being withheld for badly designed schemes. But we should be building at twice the rate we are.

The National Audit Office has published a rather damning report which says that the government is no longer accurately counting the number of units being built, and criticises the DCLG for "having no cost strategy". Hang on a minute - how can it have no cost strategy at all? Apparently they lack "a single costed plan for the programme to join up local initiatives". Forgive me, but that seems to be a basic omission.

So it is business as usual in the marshlands of Essex and Kent - the government playing catch-up to the developers who are racing ahead on their own isolated patches, with a total lack of effective, strategic leadership, no matter what Judith Armitt may be trying to do (and I'm sure her intentions are the best.) There are signs of progress in the London areas where the LTGDC and other agencies seem to now be taking a firmer grip - Design for London flexing its muscles by pressuring Barratt to upgrade its design team quality, as a recent example. But beyond the M25 it is, sadly, another story at present.

RIP Sandy Wilson

2007-05-20T22:34:00.000+01:00

Colin St John Wilson, seminal professor at Cambridge architecture department (where I studies though not, of course, under him) and best known or infamous as the architect of the British Library, died last week. It is funny how the press fell over themselves to eulogise him although most of them were very dismissive of the BL when it opened. But the reminiscences of him were largely just - his wide scope of interests (including an extraordinary mid-century art collection), his belief in a humane, nuanced and warm architecture, his admiration of Alvar Aalto (which prompted many borrowed architectural motifs) and his work at Cambridge. Like myself, and indeed like a former assistant to Wilson and subsequent Cambridge professor Peter Carolin, he actually applied to Cambridge to read History and switched to architecture.

I most recently went to the new wing at Pallant House which houses his art collection in a building he designed in collaboration with MJ Long, his 'life' partner, and her firm Long & Kentish. It was a serene and noble building, responding to its setting in historic Chichester with grace but not condescension, and appropriately of its time, despite its Aalto references. He is an architect who will be sorely missed, even if much of the architectural world has learnt to appreciate his merits only on his passing.

Brown's eco-towns

2007-05-16T19:11:00.000+01:00

Talk about the five 'eco-towns' that Gordon Brown would like to propose has filled the trade press and had significant mainstream press coverage too. Common mis-perceptions have been that these are actually new towns (they aren't - they are existing development sites or areas that he would apply new 'green' rules to), and he has also attracted criticism (epitomised by Jonathan Glancey) that this is merely greenwash over the same old 'unsustainable' growth areas. Because Brown commissioned the Barker reviews of both housing supply and planning, and those reviews raised the hackles of people who, fundamentally, want to contain development and seem to believe it is impossible to build new housing developments that actually do have a sustainability of their own, sections of the commentators have already cast Brown as the bad guy who doesn't care - who wants to erase our green fields at any cost and carpet the land with Wimpey homes.

But it may be that actually he does mean it when he talks about sustainability. I'm loathe to judge either way before the detail comes out. It is true that many developments that completed recently have not epitomise sustainability - lacking shops, schools, local jobs. But that does not mean it isn't possible to do better - and indeed, that there may be projects in the current pipeline that will do better. It is notoriously difficult to phase the development of major employment opportunities and housing in tandem. Inevitably, for some time, there will be commuting one way or the other. And I do sometimes wonder how many of the critics have actually visited a representative spread of new housing developments. Sure, they aren't all pretty, but some are actually sensibly sited near town centres and services, and meet real needs for local housing.

And let's at least praise Brown for committing to some action, unlike the Tories who have yet to detail any concrete plans for implementing their new-found greenness and passion for new housing (for fear of upsetting their voters who are anti-development, I might suspect). Given that these 'new' towns will be built anyway, one way or another, isn't it better that he makes them conform to at least some green standards (renewable energy, sustainable drainage, higher building performance)?

We can't afford to be anti-development for the sake of it; and it is a fallacy to claim, like Glancey, that urban infill can provide the quality of life and housing, or the quantity, that will solve our housing problems. Reviving local economies needs housing nearby, and building the housing may actually precipitate people who live in it deciding to set up businesses locally, in the medium term. London can't and shouldn't provide all the jobs, if you are serious about sustainability; the rest of the country isn't just for leisure and holiday homes. So let's just give these new developments a chance - and the greener they are, the better.

School with no playground

2007-05-11T16:03:00.000+01:00

No, this is not about a failing inner-city school that has been found to have no outside space, but the most expensive new flagship school that is being designed not to have a playground. I thought this was quite an extraordinary story. The Foster-designed school in Cambridge will treat its pupils like employees so, it is believed, they will not require free time outside. What this says about our approach to workplaces is also somewhat weird. Most workers leave their office for lunch, even if only to stroll to the local sandwich shop - a degree of freedom the school's pupils will not be allowed.

There are sports pitches, but no playgrounds - and an argument is being made that this will reduce bullying. But bullies do not need playgrounds to operate - and children do need spaces to learn to socialise and negotiate public behaviour. And in a word of warning the article ends:

'A school without a playground has been tried before - at Unity city academy in Middlesbrough, said to be modelled on a Tuscan mountain village. Two years ago, Ofsted said it was a "failing" school, with the lack of playground contributing to "the negative attitudes of the pupils". The school hurriedly got itself a playground.'

Seattle and other green news

2007-05-11T15:30:00.000+01:00

A few items caught my eye recently among the burgeoning quantity of green-themed news...

Seattle has approved an interesting new green building code that requires developers to provide elements from a menu that includes green roofs and walls, permeable paving, biodiverse habitats and garden space. Clearly modelled on the Malmo BO01 code, developers are awarded points per element, weighted according to their 'greenness'.

BioRegional Quintain are the poster boys (and girls) of the zero-carbon development sector but CABE has criticised a current project for not carrying through its sustainable ideals in a more holistic way, in the masterplan. The 40 acre, 750 home scheme near Middlesbrough was masterplanned by Studio Egret West.

The Think conference came up with a so-called 'action plan' in relation to environmental issues. Not sure what, if any, impact this will have. I'm intrigued by the idea of buildings having a master 'off' switch - something I've been thinking about in terms of domestic energy use - though obviously things like freezers and computer servers will have to be wired into a separate system with backup.

Shooting from the HIP

2007-05-09T17:46:00.000+01:00

The 'controversy' over HIPs and, in particular, the energy performance certificate part of them continues to rumble on in the media and in Parliament, though my hunch is that they are unlikely to be halted. I find it all a storm in a teacup (or should that be a hipflask?) and this Telegraph article to me sums up the fallacy of the arguments being made against them.

So older buildings come out badly on energy performance? Well, that's not a flaw in the rating system, that's the point of the system. We know that old buildings are not efficient, and we also know that it's often hard to retrofit them so that they will ever be so. But that's the idea - to encourage people to buy houses that are more energy-efficient, and provide the incentives to upgrade the kind of stock that can be retrofitted easily. The idea isn't particularly to make life hard for the owners of £900,000 thatched farmhouses featured in the Telegraph - but they may as well come to terms with the fact that yes, their property leaks heat and costs a fortune in CO2 every year. Perhaps they might then consider switching to an A-rated boiler, installing double glazing or installing loft insulation - all of which are practical and simple steps.

So their assessor was misguided to suggest that these particular home-sellers add wall insulation. But to be fuming because your energy-efficient lightbulbs don't count (what on earth stops a new owner putting in incandescents?) is going a little far. As the report says, a badly-insulated Victorian home uses five times as much energy as a new one. It's about time our national obsession with the charms of a 'period' property got a reality check.

I own a Victorian pub conversion flat in London, and my partner has just bought a 19th century stable block conversion in Essex fields, so we are in precisely this predicament - loving the quality of the buildings and now racked with guilt about their energy inefficiency. But in London I have double-glazing and a decent boiler. My bills are manageable and being in a flat reduces heat loss. And in the country, we are seriously considering alternative energy sources and other steps, for precisely this reason. I think this is a reasonable price to pay for our selfish benefit in deciding to live in a beautiful but impractical building.

You buy an expensive, wonderful designer dress rather than a practical, simple one from M&S because it makes you feel good. You know that you will get cold and have to buy a new coat to go over the top. That's the deal. Why not the same for houses? Stop moaning, middle classes...

Abu Dhabi 'zero-carbon city' unveiled

2007-05-08T13:52:00.000+01:00

Billed as the 'world's first zero-carbon, zero-waste city' - I think Dongtan (covered recently by WIRED) might have words to say about that - this is a Foster-planned project, to house 50,000, in the desert state. The hubris of the Gulf states knows no ends - and has ended up with a perfectly square walled mini-city (50,000 surely isn't really city-sized?) in the middle of nowhere, with a science and technology institute developed in conjunction with MIT, "research facilities; world-class laboratories; commercial space for related-sector companies; light manufacturing facilities and a carefully selected pool of international tenants who will invest, develop, and commercialize advanced energy technologies."

Oh, and lots of monorails, which will provide the "personalised rapid transport system" for this car-free development. And "surrounding land will contain wind, photovoltaic farms, research fields and plantations, enabling the city to be entirely self-sustaining."

Sounds completely bizarre and thus, believable for this part of the word. Photovoltaic farms - alas, sadly, not actually growing giant crystals in ponds of ionised solution in the desert - are of course hardly 'zero-carbon' to make. And the energy needs of an airconditioned research centre in the middle of the desert are going to be pretty phenomenal. Let's not start questioning the sustainability of the whole thing on the macro scale, however, as that will be never-ending...

Pictures, here if you're and AJ subscriber.

Post lapse

2007-04-25T21:55:00.000+01:00

I am a naughty blogger. But life has been busy in both personal and professional spheres with lots of exciting stuff. And to be honest I don't know when/if this is going to change massively but I will try to keep up. And in the thought that most people read this blog via RSS I'm resurrecting an old del.icio.us tag and splicing it into the feed so that at least I can track some of the interesting stuff that I come across but don't have time to post about properly. Very 'lazyblog' of me, I know...but needs must. Sorry.

Meanwhile, one thing that caught my eye recently was this article by Madeleine Bunting touched on many issues that I'm interested in, though I don't agree with all of her analysis. I guess it depends on how you start thinking about the middle class, partly, as well as how you start to define 'rural' - and the countryside, in a broad-ish definition, is certainly not as homogenous or NIMBY-ish as she presumes.

Quick bits from the murky world of development

2007-04-12T18:19:00.000+01:00

The £1bn Liverpool Baltic project has collaped into administration. Unbelievable, really, that such a massive project can be so badly planned and run.

Everyone already knows this but in case you don't, British Land beat out Stuart Lipton's Chelsfield Partners to bag Euston Station's redevelopment.

Apparently commercial development is at its highest level for three years.

And Prince Charles will appear, bizarrely, by videolink at this year's Think regeneration conference, on May Day.

Cultural Planning Toolkit

2007-04-12T18:02:00.000+01:00

Oh, the Canadians. I had the task of submitting a tender for a Cultural Planning Toolkit to be funded by DCMS last year. We didn't get it, though we got close...

But now I see that the Canadians have got there first and, from at least my very brief glance, done it better than anything resulting from a trial-by-committee British approach to such things. Here is their version of a CPT.

Wonderfully, it doesn't even mention the word 'art' in the introduction, except in a sentence about European approaches. It talks about cultural planning as a "way of looking at all aspects of a community's cultural life as community assets...Understanding culture and cultural activity as resources for human and community development, rather than merely as cultural 'products' to be subsidised because they are good for us...and when our understanding of culture is inclusive and broader than the traditionally Eurocentric vision of 'high culture' then we have increase the assets with which we can address civic goals."

When was the last time you saw a piece of British policy talk about 'civic goals'? It is all similarly good stuff - clear writing about pride of place and local identity, and the idea of 'democratic cultural policy'. It has a very clear step-by-step process to cultural planning, based on a community mapping and participatory approach, and including a great list of the downsides to planning - "planning isn't magic...planning can become a subsittue for action" and others.

And it has the best policy definition of 'culture' that I've come across: "Culture is what counts as culture to the people involved - the shared beliefs, customs, rituals and values of a people in a given place and at a given time."

Simple and bold. Couldn't see DCMS coming up with that one.

Quick links

2007-04-04T17:54:00.000+01:00

Oh, sorry...I've been way too busy to post recently. And am about to escape for Easter to a place with no internet. So here's a rather dry round-up of some recent things that caught my eye.

Vinoly has beat Fosters on their own territory, winning the contract to develop plans for Battersa Power Station under its new owners. It will remain to be seen whether his plans will get built, however - given the lengthy history of discarded schemes that the site carries.

Another in the list of white elephants, the always ridiculous scheme for a huge indoor ski slope in Sheffield is going down the pan, as the developer Menta is on the point of entering adminstration, with huge financial problems.

The competition for designers for Barking Riverside has been launched. And in the Kent gateway, Land Secs is going to venture into housebuilding in order to keep closer control of the quality of its huge Ebbsfleet sites. With the growth of mixed-use as a sine qua non in contemporary development, this doesn't surprise me and is an interesting move.

You can look forward to a complete restructure of Building Regulations, just about the time you manage to figure out the new Part L. Abolishing planning permission for micro-generation equipment moved a step closer this week. Last week Building had quite a useful round-up that weighs up the effectiveness of micro-generation options. And public buildings will have to publicly display their energy consumption from next year.

Last week Design for London announced the membership of its advisory group which includes many usual suspects (Farshid Moussavi, Hanif Kara, Kees Christianse) alongside Spencer de Grey and David Levitt.

And in the comedy news of the week, Ashford Future's CEO has resigned after porn was found on his computer...Everything you think about men in the development industry is clearly true.

Some quick green links

2007-03-29T10:33:00.000+01:00

The Low Carbon Buildings Programme is in even more disarray. Pathetic, on behalf of government, not to fund and manage this properly when there is so much demand out there.

Faithful and Gould have put out some rather arguable stuff about how zero-carbon developments will cost 30% more than normal ones built to current Part L. But this is because they claim that the only way for high-electricity use projects (such as dense mixed-use or office) to be carbon-neutral will be to use photovoltaics. I know that wind turbines won't do enough but what about CHP as well? Surely the future for this kind of thing will be mixed-modal energy sources.

The Observer on eco-homes (as reported here) seems to have highlighted an issue that all of us actually working in this stuff know - that stuff heat loads, the real problem with new-build homes is cooling. And yet, the government is so keen for us to never use a/c that it won't fund low-carbon cooling solutions like reverse-cycle ground source heat pumps.

British Land becoming 'carbon-neutral'

2007-03-29T10:18:00.000+01:00

That is, if you count offsetting. The carbon-neutral rhetoric is here certainly being used as weak greenwash. British Land announce they will go carbon neutral by 2009. One really telling aspect of how they are approaching this came out when I read some of the details:

Their head of planning and environment Adrian Penfold on BREEAM. "If there's a criticism it doesn't focus enough on issues like climate change. It's watered down by other factors," he says and advocates adopting a "modular" approach to eco-measurement.. "There could be a module directly focused on global warming and other modules dealing with other issues, which would form part of an overall rating."

Herein, to me, lies the rub: BREAAM admirably tries to create a holistic understanding of sustainability. Hence it is not all about those carbon targets. It does matter where your building is sited, whether there is adequate public transport, and all those other aspects that I suspect is what Penfold means by being 'watered down by other factors'. A super-insulated rainwater-recycling biomass-burning business park is still not sustainable, if it is sited miles from anywhere and encouraging car use, or if it is displacing natural habitats of value. But these days, all anyone wants to talk about is direct carbon emissions, because it is (supposedly) easy to measure, and you can reduce them by doing things that are relatively easy, requiring only a bit more money, and that don't affect your core business model (as, for example, deciding never to build another out-of-town business park would).

There's a real danger here, and I'm not the first to point it out, that we are entering a world where only carbon (and, to a certain extent, water) matters. But sustainability is about systems, about how a system works from top to bottom and across scales; about networks of decision-making, about lifestyles and complexity. Developers like BL need to buy into this approach, if they are to have any integrity; looking beyond their direct 'footprint' to the implications of the things they do. They may argue that the systems thinking is for planners and policy-makers to do, not them; but that is clearly dodging the bullet.

What I've been up to

2007-03-27T19:08:00.000+01:00

I generally don't blog about myself - but a couple of big projects that I'm involved with are kicking off at the moment and might be of interest. I'm working with 5th Studio on this very exciting new park along the Lea River from above the Olympics down to the Thames. A Lower Lea Valley Park has been an idea on paper for a long time; now we will try to set a framework for it to become real over the next decades. It's a big and ambitious project and will certainly be an interesting process.

And I'm working in my home county of Suffolk on another ambitious initiative: Suffolk: Creating the Greenest County. A cross-cutting programme that is aiming high, we are just starting to figure out what making a 'greenest' county might mean. But with a group of very radical and committed local people who are already engaged in ground-breaking work from local food hubs to eco-schools, waste and serious amounts of renewables in the form of the Greater Gabbard wind farm among other projects, this is no hot air pledge. I'm helping them put together a conference in the autumn that will start the process of engaging local businesses and communities with how they can put this into practice, as well as with the development of a strong brand and web resource that will allow wide local engagement and debate.

All exciting stuff and not the only projects on the boil right now...keeping me busy!

Rouse to head Croydon

2007-03-22T10:52:00.000Z

I was fascinated yesterday to read that Jon Rouse, ex-CABE supremo and current Housing Corporation boss, is moving on again to become chief exec of Croydon Council, at the age of just 38. Croydon is a political hotbed at the moment; having swung from Labour to Tory at the last local election, it has a multitude of large regeneration schemes on the table, not least the controversial and long-running Croydon Gateway saga.

It will be interesting to see how he drives forward the council - which, of course, has plenty of other things to worry about other than regeneration - and certainly will be tracked here, when he takes up post in the summer.

A green Brown Budget?

2007-03-22T10:12:00.000Z

While the rest of the mainstream press is more interested in how he managed to wrong-foot Cameron in a way that bodes well for the coming battles between the two, here in the world of building stuff, we are interested in other matters.

The Budget was being touted heavily as a 'green' budget, and was alternately hailed as green by the government and not green enough by the RIBA - anxious to be seen to make comment, methinks. Meanwhile other important bits were that Brown's pushing ahead with the planning gain supplement, adding a sweetener to the local authorities that they will get to keep most of the revenues raised.

The green stuff included, as expected, stamp duty exemption for 'zero-carbon' homes up to £500,000, VAT at 5% for energy-reducing products, and increased funds (but still not enough) to the massively oversubscribed Low Carbon Buildings Programme. There was also an increase in road tax for the highest polluting cars, the return of the fuel escalator, and increases in both landfill tax (up £8 a year) and the aggregates levy. Householders gain tax exemption from income they gain through selling micro-generated power back to the grid, which will really make no difference at all seeing as this is generally around £50 a year. And, most meaninglessly of all, Brown announced a competition to develop the UK's first full-scale demonstration of carbon capture and storage, a review to examine the technologies for 'decarbonising' road transport, and an "intention" that, by the end of the next decade, all householders will have been offered help to introduce energy efficient measures.

All in all I'm not the only one to think that it's a timid Budget as regards the green agenda. But looking more broadly, I'm pleased that Brown has stolen some of the thunder from the Tories over tax and demonstrated the capacity to engage in the theatre of politics. I enjoyed the surprise factor of the income tax reduction; and look forward to seeing more of this confident, showman style in coming months.

Last week's linkage

2007-03-19T10:23:00.000Z

Apologies for lack of posts. I don't think anything really exciting happened last week - or maybe I'm just being cynical, because it was MIPIM and everyone was too busy grandstanding each other.

But it's hard not to be cynical when you read this sort ot stuff - Peel Holdings 'announcing' a new multi-billion masterplan of large perspex blocks on a Liverpool dockside, just so they can inflate their land values that little bit more. Let alone Bellway announcing that they have reduced their carbon footprint by a third - through offsetting in Ecuador. Right. (Surely a worthy contender for one of Mark's eco bollocks awards?)

Then there is more traditional MIPIM crap such as overinflated towers being sold as "the defined height of luxury" with foyers "crystallized by Swarovski" and waterfront living that is - oh, 500m from the waterfront? Enough of a distance to get yourself driven in of of the fleet of Rolls-Royces that comes for free. Ugh.

Foster waxed lyrical about Russia - more stuff along the lines of "I can't think of anywhere in the world that will do what we're going to do." What, spend that much money per sq ft? More prosaically, Farrells is 'creating one of the most vibrant and walkable cities in Europe' in - erm, Coventry (didn't MJP try to do that?) with a coloured perspex commercial mixed-use scheme, although the project director admitted that 'major issues still need to be resolved', including possible funding difficulties. Another effort to raise land values?

The only non-MIPIM stuff was that attempt to create a stir over the green belt, featuring the unlikely alliance of the Guardian and CPRE. Well, let's hope for a more exciting week this time round - though with everyone's belated hangovers kicking in, I doubt it. But at least you'll have a Budget round-up to look forward to...

Green linkage

2007-03-11T22:35:00.000Z

Phew. Its been a busy week and so my sunday blogging is really just a way of clearing my virtual desktop of links for the week ahead. And yes, some of these links are more than a week old...

DCLG's new big idea is 'eco-towns' and David Lock is doing a study. These are effectively 21st-century garden cities but smaller - satellite towns of 5-10,000 homes, with good transport links to larger centres, as part of the New Growth Points plan. Precisely what the 'eco' bit means here isn't made explicit but I'm sure Lock will come up with some interesting ideas.

David Miliband gave a speech that sounded interesting but didn't have much concrete in it, about changing land use and farming patterns.

A city law firm (RPC) has come up with the idea that architects face lawsuits if they don't take account of climate change in their designs, through injury claims. Sounds like they are looking for an excuse to rake in millions more in fees, but we'll see.

The Church of England is planning a carbon audit of all its bishops residences as part of its ongoing reviews of its estate, and after initiating a wider carbon audit of its buildings last year.

In the rather dull world of Whitehall, the sustainable procurement action plan has been launched, while it was well-reported that the government has failed to meet its own targets for cutting emissions and waste, wuite spectacularly given that the targets were pretty low already. And Phil Clark has a useful policy round-up that saves me from doing some other linking.

In brief: architects in politics, takeovers, salaries etc...

2007-03-09T10:35:00.000Z

Architect Kisho Kurokawa is going to stand for governor of Tokyo. I'm all in favour of this. Apparently he wants to abandon Tokyo's bid for the 2016 Olympics.

Castle Bidco has had a bid accepted for Crest Nicholson, at the enormous sum of £715m.

Apparently architects are experiencing a salary boom. Unfortunately, it seems from my personal experience that this is strictly limited to the large or commercial firms, not the small-to-medium design-led firms who also have lots more work on, but are still often offering shockingly low salaries. I think that people shouldn't stand for that, personally - I know how hard it is to find good staff and so the ones you have should be compensated accordingly. If you've got lots of work in the office and still can't afford to pay people decently, there's something wrong with your business plan.

IKEA's BoKlok flatpack homes have got planning permission for their inaugural UK site near Gateshead.

The infamous Vinoly Walkie-Talkie skyscraper has started its trial by public inquiry.

This was a non-story about the £60,000 house, which was never going to be sold for £60k. At the formula of equal portions site purchase, construction cost and profit, a sale price of £180,000 is around the expected mark, I would have thought.

Straw Bale House

2007-03-09T10:26:00.000Z

It's Friday...so for your amusement, here's how a man built himself a whole new house, without planning permission, inside a dutch barn full of straw bales. Yes, really. Strangeharvest has a great series of images showing the process of carrying off such a feat. He lived there for four years while battling the council after neighbours tipped off the planners, and now has eight weeks to demolish the house.

In brief: China, Alsop, Prescott Lock and other stuff.

2007-03-05T22:46:00.000Z

Apparently China no longer wants European architects indulging ego-trips on big budgets: ‘Some foreign architects are divorced from China’s national conditions and single-mindedly pursue novelty, oddity and uniqueness.’ The Chinese Construction Ministry has announced new guidelines to stop government officials commissioning public buildings that waste money and electricity.

Will Alsop and his long-term collaborator, artist Bruce McLean, are designing a £90m office block artwork. Hmm. The 43 floor building on Old St roundabout contains a business centre, apartments, a hotel and fitness centre, but also has 15 floors for a self-storage facility and so would not require conventional fenestration, thereby providing a large “blank canvas” for McLean.

Prescott Lock (not named after Two-Jags) is being re-engineered as a linchpin of the Lea Valley 'water city' concept, as well as helping the ODA meet a target of transporting 50% of its materials sustainably [however that's defined] by allowing deeper-draft barges further up the Bow Back Rivers.

Paul King, formerly of the WWF, and who oversaw its One Million Sustainable Homes initiative and the One Planet Living campaign, is to become the new chief exec of the UK Green Building Council.

The new Communities England agency is to drop the land purchasing aspects of EP, which it replaces. It will apparently focus on helping landowners bring “difficult” sites to market.

Gehry-dom

2007-03-05T22:40:00.000Z

You've got to love a) the bling photo of Frank Gehry that accompanies this article and b) his totally nonchalant Californian attitude at the age of "I'm feeling fine, by the way" 78. "I've just turned 78 and am about to design the biggest Guggenheim yet. Can I pull it off?" Also love him dissing the new MOMA - "that's like a big, shiny department store." I agree. Dude, way to go (as they say...)

London's Climate Change Action Plan

2007-03-05T09:26:00.000Z

Last week, Ken launched his Climate Change Action Plan for London. Let's be clear right now, the 60% CO2 reduction by 2025 that has been widely quoted as the "target" is not, in this plan, put forward as an achievable figure without significant nationally implemented change. It is simply the milestone for what London would need to do, in order to reach a Contraction and Convergence-based quota of emissions. He's aiming for a still ambitious figure of 30% through London-only measures.

I still think it is a good plan and have written about it here on WC but, because of this issue about what is realistic to achieve, has also been causing some strong feelings elsewhere in blog-world. I appreciate these sentiments but fundamentally, I think Ken is doing the right thing. Plans like this need to be ambitious - what would the point be of a target that was only what was unambiguously, conservatively achievable? A challenge and a high bar needs to be set up in order to spur both individuals and businesses on and to make the policital case for tougher measures, more funding and tighter controls. It shows us all how small change isn't going to make big things happen. I know Ken is also self-serving in placing environmentalism at the heart of his political platform while not guaranteeing much, but I think it is also smart to challenge others to join him in making it happen, rather than guaranteeing something that either can't be met, or will come across as unambitious and tokenist.

Put more briefly, I can't think of a better way to tackle the issue given the limited powers Ken has. And I think that it behoves all of us who do take this issue seriously to band together around initiatives like this that do have integrity, rather than to shoot them down.

Chicago, Bruce Mau and David Adjaye

2007-03-05T09:00:00.000Z

I've been listening to the podcast of Bruce Mau talking to David Adjaye as part of Artangel's talks series around Longplayer. An interesting bit was about Chicago and Mayor Daley's fantastically interesting initiatives. Apparently Daley takes an artist to meetings with him where he has to make big decisions because "artists see things differently and see things that I don't." He's also insisting that from next year, all new buildings in the city have to be LEED (American equivalent of BREEAM) certified.

It has to be said that most of the talking is done by Mau, which pretty much figures, as Adjaye is a very good designer but doesn't have many verbally expressed opinions. I've met Mau (he even offered me a job although I didn't end up taking it) and one thing he is good at is talking. He is an excellent designer-thinker of, in a sense, the first generation of "designer" being a much broader term, and retains much more clear-sightedness than much of the design-based thinking that has come after him. He immediately picked up on the fact that the Idea Stores don't have bookshops: why? He isn't quite as blunt to Adjaye, but it is rather ridiculous. You could use the Idea Store computers to order online from Amazon but can't pick up a book or a magazine right there.

This isn't something that Adjaye had any potential to influence through the way that he interprets his position as a designer - he concentrates on physical typology and image. But Mau immediately leaps in on issues like that and puts them centre stage as part of what he sees as doing his job. Mau also says that he finds the idea of an 'architect' ridiculous. He calls design "an entrepreneurial model for thinking", when talking about the projects he does that aren't about objects, and cautions "if you are going to do that kind of work, your methodology has to be more robust than less". This is where a lot of the second-generation "broad designers" fall down, to me. Their methodologies become fantastically complex, which to me is the opposite of robustness. You can understand how Mau works in a sentence or two, but it is tested to a degree where it doesn't fall down.

Some quick links

2007-02-28T21:53:00.000Z

I'm not going to be able to blog for the rest of the week so here's a quick round-up of a few interesting leftovers:

London Remade, the capital's recycling agency, plans to deliver 20 new recycling facilities over the next 3-5 years, with the aim of London processing 85% of its own waste by 2020.

Useful article in Building on the legal frameworks for zero-carbon housing. According to Mel, Building has downed some of its firewalls so maybe this article is accessible sans password - can someone let me know? if this is really true, I applaud them.

I totally agree with ippr's Dermot Finch on Borough Market and the silly hysteria being whipped up by the campaign at sabmac. To make it all clear: the market is not going to close of be destroyed by the much-needed Thameslink upgrade. IT WILL STILL BE THERE if you want to buy overpriced artichokes. A few buildings will be demolished but hardly any - I know, I worked right there until a few months ago. And we need Thameslink.

And a fairly good article on New Islington after a year of occupancy. A little depressing in predictable ways.

Ecobuild round-up

2007-02-28T21:30:00.000Z

I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow account of Ecobuild as Phil Clark is doing just that and I'm tired. For the discouraging view of the whole shebang, worth reading Mark Brinkley too.

But I just sorted through the vast pile of trade literature that I picked up and have one thing to say: heat pumps. How many heat pump models does the world really need? Ground source and, new this year, air source (the latter don't seem to give particularly worthwhile efficiency, for my money), coming out of one's ears. Meanwhile the one product I really want to see come off, a compact domestic-scale gas-fired micro-CHP unit, is still in development from Baxi. Looks good in the pictures but won't be out till 2008 - yawn.

Other stuff: the UK Green Building Council launch; my personal jury's still out on this one and I will wait to see what results it brings before covering it in more detail. I do wonder, however, how many more 'knowledge sharing' forums and so forth we really need. There are far too many already; what's really required is somewhere that collates them all and does so effectively and with some half-decent web design. Maybe this is what they will do - but I doubt it, as knowledge sharing is only a part of their mission and probably won't be resourced well enough to enable it to be really good.

And across the hall in Cityscape - why does the enormously fatuous, not to mention deeply politically-dodgy James Woudhuysen and his Audacity colleagues still get so much airtime? How amazingly they all have reinvented themselves after the LM scandal. Peter Bishop did well, and announced he has commissioned Alan Baxter to do a Public Realm Strategy for London - which sounds like a mission impossible. I've had a nightmare week diary-wise so only managed to make it to one day of the whole affair, but that is always plenty of time for the initial excitement of a big exhibition to wear thin on a diet of crap sandwiches and crowds.

News: it's all green.

2007-02-26T22:24:00.000Z

While I was away...the following happened. In a sign of the times, its all about the environment.

Zero-carbon mania reached new heights, with Wales deciding to make all new buildings zero-carbon within five years. When will people realise that carbon isn't the only thing we need to worry about? but that's for another post.

Feilden Clegg, with Crest and Bioregional, won planning permisison for the "UK's greenest tower", the 'most environmentally advanced development in the UK'. The scheme has 172 apartments, including 54 affordable units, and aims to be a truly zero-carbon development. It will include an on-site woodchip biomass boiler, which will be operated by a community-owned energy company, eight roof-top turbines, and an array of photovoltaic panels.

Residents will be able to grow their own food on site, through rooftop mini allotment areas, which will be automatically irrigated. The latter sounds like a bit of a joke, I know, but apparently all true.

The Greater Gabbard wind farm, 23km offshore of my childhood haunts of east Suffolk, got planning permission for 140 turbines generating 500MW per year - enough for nearly half a million homes.

And Ken looks like missing his target of one zero-carbon development in every London borough by 2010, as so far only nine authorities have identified sites. Personally I think he's done well to get to nine, given how much he is disliked by many boroughs.

Back from holiday; lessons from Switzerland

2007-02-26T21:15:00.000Z

I'm back from a gloriously internet-free week in the Alps. OK, we succumbed to the internet cafe once, but the Blackberry stayed resolutely off and our media intake was limited to reading weather reports in the local papers (not enough snow, spring arriving a month early) and watching a Champions League match in a local bar.

This bar is actually part of a complex, in the small town where my partner's family have a flat, which readily illustrates some lessons that rural English towns could learn from the Swiss. It is a small town of around 3,000 permanent inhabitants and a low-key but faithful set of skiing and walking visitors - many with a small flat. Around 2 hours train ride from Geneva, it is properly rural, with cows in barns on the slopes and not an apres-ski bar in sight. But what it does have, in spades, is fantastic social infrastructure.

The centrepiece is a bowling alley with bar, cafe and arcade machines, on two floors underneath and overlooking an ice-rink which is tennis courts in summer. It has a small cinema and a very well-equipped playground in the centre of the village. It has a gym and five-a-side pitch. All of these mean that the 'youth' of all ages are busy and active, hanging out with their friends among the kids of the holidaymakers who also appreciate being able to do something fun in the evening. The bowling alley demonstrates perfectly the difference between the Swiss and British attitude towards 'youth'. It is not specifically or visibly aimed at young users, but the vast majority of its many users are teenagers chatting or playing shoot-em-up games, table football, bowling. But it has a proper, alcohol-serving bar; you can smoke; and those arcade games are there, all of which in the UK would be seen as encouraging under-age bingeing, violent tendencies, the abuse of cigarettes and other substances.

But inevitably the place is spotless; the kids act like teenagers; in groups, occasionaly yelling, mostly sulky; but not like louts. The bar manager employs young, relaxed bar staff; there is a little under-age drinking and plenty of smoking but in a safe and adult environment. The kids are, fundamentally, trusted. They walk home alone, or cycle. The money comes from the taxes that holiday homeowners pay for the privilege of 1000m2 (not more; large second homes are not permitted) in the Alps. What pretty British town in Devon or Suffolk thinks to exploit its cash cow in such a sensible way to meet the needs of the (often struggling) local population?

We know, of course, that the Swiss are exemplary in many ways - trains like clockwork - if, occasionally, a bit dull. But this small town demonstrates why they come 6th in that infamous UNICEF survey of children's welfare, when the UK came last. They scored top - at over 80% - on the question of whether their peers were kind and helpful. We still seem to think that kids should be out of sight and out of mind; or at least, corralled together with their own kind in a large padded cell, over-protected and patronised, left to fight it out amongst themselves with tragic consequences.

Holiday

2007-02-15T20:39:00.000Z

I'm going to be off on a proper holiday - no mobile phone, no email, no internet access - from tomorrow for a week. Back on the 26th!

Design for London competition launched

2007-02-15T20:10:00.000Z

Six 'young' architecture practices have been invited to participate in a competition for a site in South London, in one of Design for London's first projects. If this is an example of 'start as you mean to go on', it is both encouraging and a little disappointing. The invited practices are all good, characterful designers who aren't on every developer's speed-dial at present, so that's got to be a good thing. But they are not particularly risky or even small - of S333, de Rijke Marsh Morgan, FAT, Brisac Gonzalez and 6a, perhaps only the last two are at a stage where they need this kind of push up. And there is also no guarantee that the winning architect will actually get to build the project - "A preferred design will be chosen in April and that architect will work up its plans to detailed planning application stage. Subject to a successful planning application, the winning architect might work with an LDA development partner to see the project through to completion," according to the AJ.

And somehow, there's something a little unoriginal about a design competition, as if more of those will solve everything. The format is tired and doesn't really allow for the close client collaboration that is at the heart of a really good building project. I admire those who, as my old colleagues at Haworth Tompkins did recently to win a competition for the RCA, dare to not design a building and instead, design a process, a series of questions, and give the client a sense of actually what it might be like to work with these people. And equally I admire a client who has the good sense to choose that kind of approach over and above a sexy design, because it will stand them in much better stead.

Blogging building

2007-02-15T09:52:00.000Z

I started this blog, as a side project, nearly a year ago because I felt there was no accessible online resource for news and discussion around the built environment; policy, planning, regeneration, economics, environmentalism, all the stuff that isn't about the aesthetics and design. What there was, was hidden behind subscriber-only firewalls, and still largely is. The trade press hasn't embraced open-source, it is fair to say. I felt that architects and others who don't want to pay for, or trawl through, a stack of journals each week should have somewhere online that brought that stuff to them.

It's nice to see recently that a few more toes have been dipped into the world of blogging. By far the most interesting effort has come from Phil Clark, former deputy editor of Building Magazine (which now has a good set of RSS feeds and a blog section) and now digital community editor at the Builder Group, which owns Building among others. He's writing exclusively about sustainability in the building industry, and it's good stuff from a pro journalist.

New Start magazine has also started a new blog (which I hope will develop to become more bloglike and less weekly article-like) and I am flattered that I've been featured already as one of their 'pick of the week' external blogs. I've already mentioned the London 2012 official blog, and I'm sure most of you know about David Miliband's blog.

If there is one piece of criticism I might offer to the likes of Building and the other journals starting to explore the wild world of blogging, it is that weekly comment-like articles do not make a blog. As Phil Clark demonstrates so well, a blog should be regular, opinionated, with short as well as long pieces, personal and informal. The format works well as a sounding board for ideas, not an alternative to the editorial column. Some others of my regular reading, like David Wilcox's blog, demonstrate this well and new bloggers would do well to read his excellent A-Z of social media.

I have to admit that I don't always stick to this, either, as I simply report news a lot of the time, but this experiment is evolving all the time. I'm genuinely glad to see an increasing number of people start sites that I can add to my blogroll and who I can gladly link to as they aren't subscriber-only (a policy of this blog is not to link to anything that isn't open-access.) The development and building industry is still way behind the times on how to use social media and the web, however, which is a shame; as something that directly affects, annoys and often inflames the opinions of the general public, I would have thought that developing a more open, outward-facing attitude would really help.

The demand and design of zero-carbon development

2007-02-12T18:11:00.000Z

I attended the launch last week of an interesting MORI report, commissioned by Sponge, which demonstrated the overwhelming shift in public opinion towards the environment. 64% of homeowners want sustainable features to be compulsory for all new homes, and, more significantly, a majority are willing to actually pay more on the price of a new home and more in service charges for what the report labelled "sustainability services" - green power, car clubs, better communal recycling facilities, apparently. Most people aren't willing to pay that much more on the price of a house - the most popular band being between £2-£5,000 - but nearly 40% would be willing to pay up to an extra £25 per month.

Interestingly, it seems that the economic impact of rising energy prices is having an impact on the public's desire for what the report labelled a 'sustainable' home (a slight misnomer, I think, as the methodology got rather dubious when it came to issues such as public transport accessibility, access to shops and services, and so on). Although 44% still don't know how much they spend on utilities each month, 3/4 claim to have installed energy- or water-saving features to their homes, and 73% said that energy efficiency would be an important factor in choosing their next home. And in the latest Trends for Living survey, nearly half of us think we will have installed solar panels or wind turbines on our houses within ten years. Though there are definitely some fibbers in there as over half of those surveyed claimed that most of their lightbulbs were already energy-saving. Not to mention the head-in-the--sand stuff; a (famously inefficient) American-style fridge/freezer is the most desired object for a UK kitchen...

At the Sponge launch, some Crest Nicholson executives turned up to give the 'housebuilders response' and, as usual said that they were already doing all the right things. It is certainly true that there are market leaders out there who are forging a market advantage, but it is depressing to see how they aren't taking the opportunity to innovate on design at the same time. This is despite the survey demonstrating that homeowners had positive associations with sustainable design, seeing it as attractive, hi-tech and fashionable. One of the most revealing, and depressing, parts of the Crest response was to hear how they had consciously decided to start talking about "communities, not estates...family homes, not executive homes...apartments, not flats." I couldn't quite believe that they could stand up and say that without cringing at the blatant shallowness. The rhetoric doesn't suddenly change what the product is, which is still developments without identity, style, longevity or any sense of integration with the wider communtiy.

Meanwhile a rift has appeared over the zero-carbon timetable, between the volume housebuilders like Crest, who see the potential to grab market share, and small housebuilders. Julia Evans, CE of the National Federation of Builders, as commented She writes: “As they stand, the proposals will seriously damage housebuilding viability and output and will only hasten the exodus of small and medium-sized housebuilders from the industry, and further concentrate the land they dispose of in the hands of the volume housebuilders.”

Well, perhaps the challenge should be to the small housebuilders to innovate not only on energy but also design, and provide a real alternative for the consumer where they can; taking advantage of the fact that well-designed, super-sustainable homes will demonstrably be able to command a premium price. Sadly, I don't think most small housebuilders have enough nous to do this, but some already are doing so, in their own way - Living Villages, Andrew Marston at Jubilee Wharf, among others. There is always a way for small companies to beat the big boys - and plenty of case studies as to how, in other sectors, bravery and commitment will take you a long way.

CABE's starry ideas

2007-02-09T09:35:00.000Z

CABE has published the third of its regional housing design audits this week, and the usual critique of design quality that comes whenever the watchdog mentions housing. It claims that nearly a third of all housing should never have been given planning permission, and a staggering 82% of all housing is failing to reach a 'good' standard. “The task is not one of doubling the number of exemplar schemes, but eradicating the unacceptable.”

We have heard this so often from CABE that, unfortunately, the message is now irritating those at the head of the big housebuilders. While Barratt performed third worst out of the big players, its recently-retired chief executive David Pretty came out citing the many awards they have won. For the record, the worst was Bellway and second-worst Wimpey, while the best was Berkeley Homes. Strangely, none of Crest Nicholson's schemes were examined, providing no evidence to assess its continual claims to 'design excellence'.

Recognising that the continual carping isn't helping, CABE also announced a new idea to star-grade homes according to design quality. They are hoping that this will provide a carrot to developers, while also enabling the great unwashed to see if they are buying a well-designed home or not.

A strange idea, isn't it. We buy goods that are star-graded for energy efficiency, or that received ratings from retailers for overall value and performance. We go to restaurants that receive star ratings, and Building Design is already comparing the CABE system to Michelin stars. But we don't buy clothes that are star-rated according to design, for instance. Generally the public is trusted to be able to look at something and decide whether they like it. In the case of a restaurant, because you can't taste the food before you buy it, stars make sense.

But for buildings, it is more complex. Buyers are not good at reading design quality from glossy brochures and site layouts, when buying off-plan. But a substantial number of new homes are not bought like this, and buyers visit the site, see a real physical show home, and should be able to make their minds up. So an argument for star-rating starts to appear patronising. But the issues skew again. Unlike in clothing, for instance, consumers buying new homes don't have an enormous amount of choice in what they buy. Research shows that location is the key factor alongside price. If a buyer doesn't really like the design, they generally aren't able to just go elsewhere for a better product. So on this grounds, star-rating is perhaps not patronising, but simply useless. The pessimists will say that it won't make the slightest difference as the market is stacked in favour of the housebuilders, who have the consumer locked to them.

But after all, the real aim behind this idea is a version of naming and shaming; more stick than carrot again. And maybe it will produce some effects; a lower design-rated home losing a little value, as consumers may not be willing to pay so much for an inferior product. A strange way of making housing more affordable, perhaps? The poor will buy the crap stuff, while the wealthy will luxuriate in another status symbol, the five-star-design house which commands a premium price, a bit like 'Taste the Difference' ham in Sainsburys.

Suddenly it sounds like this idea isn't that well thought through after all. It is either patronising to the public, or anti-egalitarian; two points that play right into the hands of the housebuilding PR machine. Homes for the people, that the people like buying, no matter what the design police say. The sad truth is that the public is caught in a trap; unable to make a genuine choice on the basis of their taste. Short of a mandatory approval on design from CABE before planning permission is granted, I've got only one idea that could solve this. Housebuilders submit their plot layouts or masterplans to CABE for rubber-stamping, but don't actually design the houses. Then, with a cue from the new fad for pre-fab, buyers, get to choose which of a variety of modular designs they get to plonk on their chosen plot. You will end up with a fabulously un-coordinated new housing 'estate', with the mock-Tudor lining up next to the modernist next to the neo-vernacular number by a sensitive architect, in a wonderful demonstration of popular choice. And at the end of the year, the totals will be totted up and we can see what kind of design the public really likes best, a bit like the Times bestseller list.

Shame that, really, people like to live in relatively homogenous environments, where everything 'goes' together. Because ultimately, judging the design quality of a whole estate and awarding it a star will be a futile exercise. It will only work on the level of the jostling for one-upmanship and gongs handed out at Hilton dinners that the male pride of chief execs enjoys. Oh, wait, who's in charge of all these housebuilders? Perhaps it will be a success, after all.

In brief: Olympic stadium news, housebuilding, Design for London, etc.

2007-02-08T10:27:00.001Z

West Ham's Olympic dreams die as they won't be allowed to take over the stadium after the games, when it will become primarily an athletics venue. Its design is also being scaled back, according to Building magazine, with only one covered stand. Good job that by 2012 global warming will mean that rather than worrying about rain, we will all be getting sunburn skin cancers while watching athletes sweat their way around the track.

Galliford Try have completed the takeover of Linden Homes, which will propel it into the top ten housebuilders with around 3000 annual completions.

And apparently housebuilding has risen to the highest levels since the late 1980s, yet despite this, somehow homes are still completely unaffordable for the many. Hence yet another first time buyers initiative from DCLG.

Design for London was officially launched and you can read some Ken quotes here.

It's not just central government - the GLA and Liverpool City Council are also going to bring in additional World Heritage Site protection after UNESCO's criticisms late last year.

Cities come to the Tate

2007-02-08T10:27:00.000Z

I actually knew about this a while back but - discreet as I am - didn't tell you all about it. But a version of Ricky Burdett's Venice Biennale exhibition is coming to the Tate Modern in the summer, and apparently to be augmented by some special commissions from big-name architects.

Itself in a sense a public version of the research Ricky did over the last two years for the Deustche Bank-sponsored Urban Age project, the Biennale exhibition was criticised by some parochial corners of the archi-press for not having any architecture in it (untrue, for the record) but was actually a fascinating and important expose of the state of cities around the globe. Although perhaps too much like a book-on-the-walls to be a truly successful 'exhibition', the content was dense, interesting and original; if only the catalogue had treated us to the same amount of sheer information. It clearly articulated the context that architects must respond to in order to remain relevant, as well as the challenges to politicians and citizens too. To make the point in Venice, in the home of what is often architecture for its own sake, that architecture is actually (to paraphrase Wallpaper) the stuff that surrounds us, and the social and cultural challenge of this is what architects must address, was brave and praiseworthy.

So I will be very glad to revisit it all again, this time taking more notes of the bits where my head started to spin last time around. (I would, of course, add that isn't this rich context what makes architecture so fulfilling and creative? but that's for another post.)

Europan 9 launched

2007-02-07T15:31:00.000Z

The competition that launches a thousand dreams of your face in El Croquis, Europan has launched and given aspiring urban designers everywhere three sites in the UK to choose from: an enticing green field next to Milton Keynes, a canal-side bit of Stoke now sadly without the potteries shown in one fantastic image, or a Sheffield site with the lovely name of Skye Edge. The jury includes Peter St John, Christine Hawley, and the wonderful Neave Brown, alongside one of the Urbed directors, the head of architecture at MK council and an Amsterdam planner, among others.

There are three 'free evening seminars at CABE on 8, 15 and 22 March 2007 on sustainability, urban realm and dealing with cars, with tips on how to win' to kick everything off [does anyone actually go to these? does anyone think that CABE's tips are going to win it for them?] and then it is registration by the end of May and submissions by end June. Ooh, I can hardly wait...are you all entering?

In brief: McCloud shortlists, Olympics submits, ugly stuff gets planning permission

2007-02-07T10:02:00.000Z

In case you avoided the barrage of media yesterday, the Olympics has submitted its 15-volume, 10,000 planning application. So much for being green; that's a fair chunk of tree, even not counting the draft copies they chucked away. Hope they specified recycled, but I doubt it.

Kevin McCloud is continuing where Alain de Botton has taken a dive; his HAB (Happiness, Architecture, Beauty - goodness AdB must fume) has shortlisted the unlikely trio of David Chipperfield, DSDHA and Wright & Wright for his inaugural development. More unexpectedly still, he's got Isabel Allen, AJ editor, to come on board as design director from April.

A stunningly ugly-looking £70m masterplan has got the go-ahead in Bury. And the Royal Borough of K&C has approved another stunningly ugly 27-storey, 400 unit tower by Woods Bagot, despite it being understandably slammed by CABE. Apparently the scheme is worth £200m, which gives some idea of the disparity between Bury and K&C.

And it looks like DCMS is going to tighten up protection for World Heritage sites, so anyone planning to build a skyscraper near the Tower of London had better sneak their planning permission in quick.

Green round-up

2007-02-07T09:49:00.000Z

The eco rush is so fast that each day seems to bring a welter of press releases and comment. Here's a brief round-up of some relevant ones:

Ruth Kelly has announced 'Carbon Challenge', an international challenge for housebuilders to design and build flagship zero-carbon and low carbon communities. The competition will be run by EP who are asking developers to bid for certain sites and to set "high standards of design, construction, energy and water use and waste disposal so that these techniques can be used in the future as a benchmark for mainstream development." It also seeks to address rising expectations from the public for more sustainable houses which offer them reduced bills and better design (of which more soon, I went to an interesting event the other day on this.)

The first two sites are Hanham Hall near Bristol and Glebe Road in Peterborough. Three further public and private sector sites are expected to be added to the Challenge within a year. The Challenge will be open to developers and construction firms from across Europe with a target of delivering several thousand zero or low carbon homes.

An alliance of property industry types have tried to get their foot in first, and submitted plans to the government to toughen up environmental standards for commercial buildings in a manner similar to the Code for Sustainable Homes. It includes a timetable of updates to Part L, an idea called a "landlord energy statement" which would list the type of energy used to power the building and how efficient this is, and plans for renewables. The group apparnetly consider on-site renewables impractical for large office bulidings (they would, wouldn't they?) and are looking at on-site ones. I hope the government gets tough on the latter. This has all been done by the RICS, BPF, British Council for Offices and the Investment Property Forum.

The prime minister has said that annual targets for CO2 reductions are impractical, with which I would agree. 'Nuff said.

Future Planners

2007-02-06T14:27:00.000Z

I was at the launch of the Demos and friends Future Planners report this morning. All interesting stuff, somewhat preaching to the converted when it comes to my opinions, but with some good meta-points about global value, local value, public and private, and the role of the planner essentially as mediator between these competing perspectives. The most interesting and practical idea I saw in the report was the idea for citizens' juries in the planning process. Lessons could be learnt from some of the stuff my ex-Demos friend Peter MacLeod is talking about currently re citizen assemblies in Canada and other good stuff.

I wished the report did have slightly more concrete recommendations that could get taken up by the RTPI or the government, although I understand why the authors were trying to steer away from simply more policy recommendations. I think their 'changing the story' point could have been made more forcefully: we need planners to have an image change, and that is something the RTPI could really address, through marketing, recruitment and training, and also through (I think) pushing the professional structures in different directions. I also thought that there was a strong argument for thinking more radically about hiving off some of the dull bits of development control that don't really require the same skills as the 'planner as mediator' to junior staff or a different system of control, or, dare I say, a different 'profession' altogether?

It was also nice to see CPRE, who sometimes I am a little mean about here, in more reflective mood and joining forces with the RICS, EP, and RTPI to collaborate on thinking about the future of planning as a positive force and an enabler of dialogue.

Croydon charrette

2007-02-05T22:22:00.000Z

There's something rather sad about this little blog set up as part of Will Alsop's commission to 'vision' Croydon. The local press have been somewhat lionising his commitment to 'personally attend' workshops with local people and his no-prisoners approach to design. But look at the sketches here and it is rather depressing to see nothing that really strikes me as visionary. As always, ask people what they want and they will respond with cliches; some cafes, a whole street of restaurants, an office building with reflecting glass wall, water features. As always, the ones that betray an architect's or urban designer's hand are far worse than the amateur ones - my favourite being the mysterious sketch of coloured onion domes, and the massive multicoloured meteor explosion that dwarfs a purple splodge labelled 'London', at the edge of the page.

The blog is an interesting attempt to get the process out there but - maybe its the fact that they haven't bothered to jazz up the boring template, or that someone can't actually really use html that well. It's just a little bit mournful. A shame, because I like Alsop's energy even if I don't think he is the people's champion as much as he sometimes claims. Big ideas and big design win out. But to get the slightest bit of debate going is good. I just wish it was more evident on the website; and sadly, that may be a reflection on the true value of the process, behind all the pazazz.

Takeover Monday

2007-02-05T22:18:00.000Z

In the Monopoly world of volume housebuilding, the top dog is buying out the motorcar. Or something. Barratt is buying Wilson Bowden in a £2.2bn deal which will safely put it ahead of great rival Persimmon. Together last year, Barratt and WB built nearly 20,000 houses.

Meanwhile, Galliford Try is having exclusive talks with Linden Homes about buying them for £200m. Linden is 1/3 owned by HBOS, which backed a management buyout in 2000.

CASPAR demolished

2007-02-05T09:23:00.000Z

In a blow to those promoting so-called Modern Methods of Construction, the experimental CASPAR housing in Leeds is being demolished despite being only seven years old. The Joseph Rowntree Trust's award-winning and experimental housing was evacuateda year ago and will be demolished soon as it became potentially unstable in high winds.

Its timber-framed superstructure was completed in only three weeks out of a combination of flatpack and modular parts, and the development was hailed as an exemplar of modern, sustainable housing. The projects failure is a blow to the government's support for cheap prefab building, such as the £60,000 house competition, and plays into the hands of developers who may argue that meeting the government's demands for fast, good quality, affordable housing is uncommercial and courting catastrophe.

However, a second development with the same name was put up in Birmingham, but using different techniques which have proved lasting. The Leeds site has now been sold to a development firm, LifeHomes, which is holding talks with planners to see how much of the "Caspar spirit" can be retained in a rebuilt scheme.

Battersea dump Arup

2007-02-03T17:58:00.000Z

The saga of Battersea power station continues; after being sold to Treasury Holdings, and after the council had allowed work to start on the site, after changing the planning conditions they had stipulated, it now seems that rumours of Treasury bringing on new designers are correct.

Poor Arup, who have been working on the site for over a decade, alongside West 8, Benson & Forsyth and others more recently, seem set to be dumped as Treasury have drawn up a secret shortlist of new masterplanners including Fosters, SOM and Vinoly. This is despite the original masterplan having gained planning consent. It seems that Treasury aren't even talking to the original team and have also frozen out English Heritage, who are still chasing a meeting date, according to the AJ.

The rumours are of course that Treasury want to increase the residential element of the scheme to make the financils more appealing. Treasury are, of course, issuing non-commital comments. But whatever, this will only delay what is already a scandalously handled project in an iconic London site.

In brief: the architecture of disappointment, Alsop Eden, EU energy certificates and Liverpool.

2007-02-03T17:40:00.000Z

Channel 4 has ditched Alain de Botton's attempts to build the architecture of happiness with Feilden Clegg Bradley.

Alsop is building a £250m biomass power station for the centre of Norwich, inclulding a visitor centre, which is already being dubbed a new Eden project.

New EU Energy Performance certificate criteria will mean that many new air-conditioned office blocks will get a D rating, affecting their value in property portfolios.

And I wrote before about how Liverpool wasignoring the advice of their own design review group, Ludcap; well, it has happened again, with the council approving the £150m plans for Project Jennifer, a new district centre and supermarket, without Ludcap or CABE seeing the proposals. Both groups had previously been extremely critical of the early designs.

Breaking: supercasino for Manchester

2007-01-30T12:38:00.000Z

That was a curveball - with everyone putting bets on Blackpool or London (at the Dome), Manchester took everyone by surprise. Apparently Howard Bernstein was just too convincing. Greenwich’s bid partner was Anschutz Entertainment Group, owned by US billionaire and Prescott-schmoozing Philip Anchutz, who said in advance that it would take legal action against the government if it lost the bid. Blackpool will also fight on, reports said.

The winning bid group said it would regenerate a poor area of east Manchester, promising a £265m investment and 2,700 direct and indirect jobs. The casino would be based at Sportcity in the Beswick area of Manchester, close to the City of Manchester Stadium.

The Casino Advisory Panel recommended that large casinos should be licensed at Great Yarmouth, Kingston-upon-Hull, Leeds, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, Newham, Solihull and Southampton. Small casinos are to be located in the following areas: Bath and North East Somerset; Dumfries and Galloway; East Lindsey; Luton, Scarborough; Swansea, Torbay and Wolverhampton.

WorldChanging posts

2007-01-30T10:35:00.001Z

I have a couple of new things on WC - belated, I know.

Here is the write-up of when I met Mark Shorrock, CEO of the Low Carbon Accelerator investment fund. I have to say I found his energy totally inspiring and had a bit of a reality distortion field moment. Luckily it's worn off and I can be a bit more measured!

And here's a quick piece on Zedfactory's Jubilee Wharf in Cornwall - an example of what every town probably needs.

In brief: greenwash doesn't work, tall buildings, EP investment, expo, DfL

2007-01-29T23:49:00.000Z

Hmm. the much-vaunted wind turbines on top of Palestra (now home to the LDA and TfL) have gone missing, actually removed at the manufacturer's request after a fault was found with a turbine elsewhere.

CABE and English Heritage have launched their draft tall buildings strategy.

EP reckons it could raise £10bn from institutional City investors once it merges with the Housing Corp. Nick Ebbs, director of the regeneration investment fund Blueprint, said there was a large appetite in the City for housing and regeneration investment. “The Treasury has come to the conclusion that there’s a huge weight of money that wants to find ways of investing in property. It’s the way forward."

Newcastle wants to host one of those very C20 events, a housing expo. Get ready for a retro-fest.

And Peter Bishop, new head of Design for London, gave an interview where he unsurprisingly said that he was going to take a fresh look at all the programmes that the AUU has been running. Because BD doesn't have anything better to do, it decided to headline the article with "100 public spaces halved" when of course, he only suggested that a few might get scrapped...

...while his boss Ken is living it up in Davos and even getting into this blogging malarkey. At least, if you call Comment is Free a blog, which I have my doubts about.

Zero-carbon and the end of freehold?

2007-01-29T23:37:00.000Z

This is an interesting one: it is suggested that the need to develop local renewable energy networks and to ensure that householders use them may spell the end of freeholds, as only a clause in a lease may be enough to prevent owners from switching to non-renewable energy. Brian Mark, director of Fulcrum Consulting, said the onus on housebuilders was to ensure that electricity came from renewable sources to meet the zero carbon homes target by 2016. “Developers will have to set up their own distribution networks to bring electricity from renewable sources into the project, but EU energy rules dictate that once a system is set up, the owner is obliged to offer its use to other suppliers. This means that any electricity supplier could use the network to supply residents on the zero carbon development with non-renewable electricity.”

However, this would only apply to electric energy, not heat if that was supplied via district heating which is a closed-loop system. I think there may be other ways round this but it will be interesting to see how this works at, for instance, Elephant and Castle where they are setting up a local utilities company.

Green Belt, planning and how crazy the Policy Exchange can really get

2007-01-29T20:39:00.000Z

The Policy Exchange's recent paper [pdf], show their pronouncements have gone from a bit over-zealous to just plain mad. If it was the Onion, or Private Eye, I might accept their latest 'findings' as good satire: "the planning system" is apparently to blame for everything from being muscled off your restaurant table for a second sitting to the loss of manufacturing jobs to interest rate rises to lack of consumer choice. No, seriously. And in conclusion, get rid of the green belt, decide big things by acts of Parliament and small things by incentivising local communities to say yes through glorified bribery, and introduce zones where only outline permission would be required.

I don't want to go into all the detail of why this paper has got it so wrong - I'll leave that to the RTPI instead. The trouble is, I don't believe in the green belt much either, and I'm all in favour of ecological low-density rural development. But I do care about quality - quality of the built and natural environment, and I'm not at all convinced that the 'optimism' that the authors purport to hold will really deliver more integrated communities, with more cycle paths, or public spaces, or shops that might serve local needs. Our planning system is still a lugubrious behemoth, with many badly-trained and often petty-minded people, but actually, slowly it might be getting better. Environmental impact assessments, compulsory design statements, green travel plans, affordable housing policy, public realm guidance; these things are actually about improving quality of life and the environment, not just hurdles for developers to waste money on.

The authors write "The system is seen as overly concerned with matters of detail, to the extent that the discussion of detail of the operation of the planning system, as well as of matters of principle, results in delay." Well, detail is what makes a Barratt home uglier than the Georgian one that it apes. And after all, this is our built environment - something that no-one can avoid, that affects every citizen of this country. Design - of buildings and public spaces - is important, and while there certainly is no accounting for taste, creativity, genuine public engagement and a real effort to understand local identity can go a long way to ensuring that our places continue to be inclusive, and to have a sense of place and community.

I also loathe the delays that mean a simple, well-designed application sits in planning for weeks while officers come up with lame excuses, but there are cases of exemplary partnership, when developers decide to work with, rather than against, the public authority, and get things through quicker. And that's the main problem with this donkey of an argument: it reverts to the old stereotype of developer and LA in eternal conflict, circling each other and trying to get away with as much as possible in an absurd game of bluff. The simple fact is that nothing ever gets done well through this kind of antagonism; a few good developers (and good LAs) are starting to understand the virtues of dialogue and quality, and if the bad continue to landbank and moan about the planning system; well, they could easily save themselves time and money by chucking out some of their dinosaur long-lunchers and entering the 21st century.

Planning should be strategic, locally responsive and democratic; all things that this report claims to have the answers to. But this wolf in sheeps clothing dismisses the possibility of bad design, the potential that a community might rather have a green field than half a million quid, the need for long-term vision, the requirement to maintain a balance of work, homes and play in every community in order to achieve any measure of sustainability. It makes me sad that they even get airtime, though it seems this time they've gone too far even for the Tories, who hurriedly came out defending the green belt and claiming that it was under threat from Gordon Brown and big business. Politics, as usual.

A bit late, but better than never...

2007-01-27T10:19:00.000Z

I'm just discovered that my previously failsafe blogging software has in fact not been posting stuff up for the last week. Hence a spate of posts. This is just a round-up of various small ut

In a situation that would never have happened a decade ago before density became an excuse for developers to up their profits, CABE has warned BDP that it risks repeating the mistakes of the past unless it revises its plans for a huge residential-led project in the Lee Valley, north-east London. The scheme for developer Lee Valley Estates, which CABE has now seen twice, would create around 1,250 new homes, student housing, offices, a hotel, shops, a health centre, a crèche, and a new primary school. The developer wants to cash in on the nearby tube, bus and rail links by building a high-density development. CABE is not convinced that the plot is suitable for such a large scheme.

The Twentieth Century Society has launched a survey of 1970s buildings to reveal those from the era that should be listed. Buildings cannot be listed unless they are older than 30 years – a rule that has opened up 1970s architecture for consideration. The first of the iconic buildings likely to find itself on the statutory protected list is Richard Rogers’ Lloyd’s Building in London.

The zero carbon taskforce steering group has apparently been agreed, and it is to include Yvette Cooper, Stuart Baseley, executive chairman of the Home Builders Federation, Paul King, director of campaigns at the WWF, John Callcutt, who is heading the government’s housing sustainability taskforce, Michael Ankers, chief executive of the Construction Projects Association, and a local government official.

Barking Riverside announced it will hold a competition for housing design team which will result in the appointment of a design team not in the selection of specific designs — will be advertised in the next few weeks.

In brief: 2012 blogging, and other headlines

2007-01-27T10:15:00.000Z

The Grand Olympic Project now has a "behind-the-scenes" blog, which last week even featured the on-site chaplain writing about his role.

It seems that 'locals' just love Gehry's controversial new scheme for Hove, after a poll by "independent research group ICM" but commissioned by the developers Karis found that for every opponent in their 1000-strong sample, there were three supporters.

After the government announced a competition for a new embassy in Tblisi, Georgia, here comes another one - well, a high commission anyway, and for Abuja, capital of Nigeria. It's on OJEU at www.ted.europa.eu, reference: OJEU 2007/S 14-016171.

And lastly, rare mushrooms have stopped development near Cardiff. No, not those ones, whoever's sniggering at the back...

Greening the Olympics?

2007-01-27T10:14:00.000Z

The Olympic Delivery Authority last week unveiled its plans to stage the ‘greenest’ Olympics to date, with conveniently 2,012 days to go until the London 2012 Games. It is launching the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, which will ‘monitor and verify’ London’s pledge to host the ‘most sustainable games ever’, was also unveiled. It will be chaired by sustainable business expert Shaun McCarthy.

But it has not been without the inevitable accusations of greenwash. In a late surge of enthusiasm, Jack Pringle (RIBA president) has castigated them for not going far enough, with a few dodgy sporting metaphors.

Pringle said: ‘The ODA should be going for gold with its green targets for the Olympic Village. This is a perfect opportunity to provide the most environmentally friendly homes possible, and show what Britain is capable of.

‘Instead, the government and the ODA have been lapped by their own targets. They’re not even in the race.’ The ODA sustainability strategy states that the Olympic Village will be 25 per cent more energy efficient than buildings built today. However, Pringle points out that the government is aiming to meet that target by 2010, while at any rate, the government is proposing that all new homes be 44 per cent more energy efficient by 2013, and carbon neutral by 2016.

The ODA claims that 20 per cent of the energy needed will be generated by on-site renewable sources; already the minimum that will probably come in to the London Plan amendments this year.

Meanwhile the parliamentary Culture, Media and Sport select committee today said that the Treasury “could and should” have publicised its concerns about potential cost overruns before the original London bid was submitted.

Olympics Village fails carbon target

2007-01-20T10:23:00.000Z

None of the flats and houses in Stratford City will meet the government’s proposed upper standards for sustainable homes.
Westfield’s planning application last week makes it clear that the project will fall short of the government’s carbon reduction targets within six months of its completion. The present designs for Stratford City will meet the 25% reduction standard in 2012, when the Games are held, but within months will fall nearly 20% behind targets that have been put in place to meet total carbon-neutrality by 2016.

Westfield had previously pledged to unveil stringent environmental targets in the strategy in order to counter criticism of its low renewable energy target on the development. A spokesperson for Westfield said: “We are building to current Part L standards and to what the planning application requires.”

Private schemes are not obliged to meet the carbon reduction targets. However, Tessa Jowell has said that greater public funding for the Olympic village needs to be secured. If this is the case, and if the Code for Sustainable Homes is introduced, Stratford City may have to meet its requirements.

The green credentials of the Games were placed in further doubt this week after London assembly members wrote to the ODA to criticise its sustainability performance. It said: “The contract on the athletes’ village requires 2% of energy to be locally sourced renewable energy, as opposed to the energy self-sufficiency that was set out in the bid document."

Croydon: the next battle

2007-01-19T00:33:00.000Z

Well: it was always going to happen: after issuing high court proceedings and many other political machinations, Croydon Council have gone nuclear and issued a CPO for the Stanhope/Schroders land at Croydon Gateway so they can keep their strange 20 year dream alive, of building an arena with their development partner Arrowcroft.

This saga has been one of the strangest and longest running in the capital. Croydon own none of the land: but have signed up with Arrowcroft and committed to the arena scheme a long time ago. They've awarded themselves planning permission, rejected Stanhope's scheme, seen the latter pushed through by an inquiry and central government, etc, etc. The strangest move was that recently, Croydon pulled the plug on their funding for the leading fringe Warehouse Theatre on the site: allegedly politically motivated, because it is written into Stanhope's redevelopment plans but incompatible with the arena scheme.

William Hill, Head of Property at Schroders said “I do not know whether to laugh or cry. This must be a first. A CPO brought by a Council to stop the immediate regeneration of derelict land by a willing, able and fully funded developer with construction scheduled to start in a matter of weeks.” David Camp, chief executive of Stanhope, said that the CPO would at least put the Arrowcroft arena proposals under the spotlight. “As baffling as this all may seem, the benefit of the CPO starting is at long last the Arrowcroft arena proposals will be subject to some impartial and proper scrutiny.”

“Over five years on from the submission of the arena scheme for planning we still do not know who the arena operator is, where the funding for the scheme is coming from and the basis of the viability assessment carried out."

In brief: Athletics, takeovers, oak and Cornish ZED

2007-01-17T14:56:00.000Z

On the site of the ill-fated Picketts' Lock scheme, the £16m Lee Valley Athletics Centre has finally opened.

Crest Nicholson is recommending to its shareholders the takeover bid from Castle Bidco of £713m.

Apparently Grand Designs is to blame for an oak shortage in Britain, as now everyone wants timber-framed houses and wooden floors. We're having to import it from the dreaded Continent.

Comment on Bill Dunster's latest development in Cornwall.

Finally: Communities England takes a step

2007-01-17T14:52:00.000Z

DCLG made an announcement.

"The proposed agency - Communities England - will bring together the functions of English Partnerships, the Housing Corporation, and a range of work carried out by the Department, including delivery in the areas of decent homes, housing market renewal, housing PFI, housing growth and urban regeneration."

It will have around £4bn to spend per annum.

Tesco builds homes for staff

2007-01-15T15:01:00.000Z

This really brings a new meaning to 'living above the shop'.

Tesco has long been building housing above its big-box stores in London, and had been building affordable housing too, as required by the Mayor. But now it's going a step further and allocating some of the flats above its new store in Streatham to its staff.

Tesco has historically been under-represented in London and the move to create for homes for its staff is part of the strategy to counter this. Tesco hope the scheme will be "beneficial for staff retention" in London, where they suffer from a fast turnover of workers. It is certainly interesting that they feel the need to trial this approach. Are their staff really leaving them because they can't find an affordable house to live in? I presume it will be only management-level staff who get to live in these flats, as those are they only ones Tesco will be keen to retain.

The flats will be sold to a housing association and staff will not be treated differently to other tenants, retaining the right to stay in the property even if they stop working for the supermarket. However, if flats become vacant, staff will be offered them first.

In brief: Communities England, London bits, CABE row.

2007-01-15T11:13:00.000Z

This week we finally expect the launch of the EP/Housing Corp merged body, likely to be named Communities England. Decent Guardian comment here.

Last week Arup finally submitted their planning application for Stratford City.

Inner Court, Joseph Rykwert's last remaining building in the UK, is being threatened with demolition - to make way for a development designed by Norman Foster. The luxury development of 22 flats would replace the modernist housing.

The mega-practice Gensler has accused CABE of not being able to understand its designs - in a row over its proposals for the Blackpool supercasino.

Kensington and Chelsea is set to rethink its controversial 'locals only' policy towards new houses in the borough, after the 'local homes only option' only garnered 24% support in a recent consultation. They recently proposed that all new dewllings could only be inhabited by people who already live in the borough, or who have a connection to it.

Housebuilders' zero-carbon challenge

2007-01-15T11:00:00.000Z

Last week a well-publicised 'summit' took place between the Home Builders Federation and Yvette Cooper to discuss how housebuilders will meet her demands for all housebuilding becoming zero-carbon within ten years. The housebuilders big demand was for action to develop local energy markets. These would involve local renewable sources, the management of local plants and their regulation.

I think they are actually entirely right. As anyone who has tried to meet even the current 10% on-site renewables demand in London will know, dealing with renewable energy on a site-by-site basis is virtually impossible for small urban sites. On the other hand, the kind of radical thinking that Southwark is demonstrating with its creation of a Multi-Utility Service Company for Elephant and Castle, seems to be the way to get the cost down and provide the infrastructure needed for mass-market zero-carbon homes that even the small local developers can plug into.

And just to up the ante, the National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations, has said the government needs to set tougher targets for green homes, bringing forward the deadline for carbon-neutral housing to 2012. Let's just say that sounds ambitious, to say the least, but it's always good to see someone pushing in that direction.

In brief: Canning Town, BSF, Ken, competitions

2007-01-08T23:37:00.000Z

Erick van Egeraat has won the masterplanning job for Canning Town Centre. I worked on stuff there for the UDC a while back, and I have to say I am a bit disappointed by the choice. Not that I would have rather EDAW et al got the job, but the perma-tanned E is - well - a bit too flash.

Surprise, surprise, BSF is behind schedule.

Ken is using his powers to stop Tory-controlled Hammersmith & Fulham approving a scheme without sufficient affordable housing. In a typically good bit of rhetoric, he said "This Christmas H&F has had more than 2,000 homeless families living in temporary accommodation, yet it has decided to cut back on...homes for these families. Hammersmith's actions have the stench of Shirley Porter's regime at Westminster Council in the 1980s." Lovely local journalism about this here.

And in a spate of competitions for the new year, there's one for a new British Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, and the one I want to do - new homes for Letchworth Garden City.

Floodplain ideas

2007-01-08T23:24:00.000Z

The government has announced funding for Barker and Coutts Architects' [who?] schemes for floodplain housing after having seen what they've been up to as part of their LiFE project. This project has apparently been done with BRE, English Partnerships, LDA Design, Fulcrum Consulting, HR Wallingford and Cyrill Sweett to "devise and disseminate a set of principles for an integrated approach to planning and design that can be replicated in a range of conditions around the UK and are potentially transferable to other parts of the world." I have to admit that this is the first I've heard about this project (although it was featured in one of the RIBA's exhibitions last year). The designs aren't particularly my style, but the ideas are certainly interesting.

This scheme will be one of six pilots as part of the Making Space for Water Innovation Fund - others include farming on floodplains and how woodlands can help soak up floodwaters.

Yvette Cooper: 'We need to build differently' and other green things

2007-01-08T23:15:00.000Z

Well no sweat. (Sorry for the needless sarcasm.) Cooper came out talking the other day about her mission to get us to zero-carbon housing in ten years and how that means we need to do things differently.

"Whether it be turf on the roof, wind turbines in the garden, heat pumps below the basement or micro boilers, the homes of the future will need to be powered in a completely different way." Well, I'm not sure how green roofs help generate electricity, but anyway, we'll let that one slip for now.

Meanwhile Ken has commissioned Arup to produce a report on how planning in the capital should respond to the accelerating threat of global warming. The study will range from domestic generation all the way up to city-wide planning strategy and look at the feasibility of introducing various new policies into the London Plan revisions due out later this year. Should be interesting, as Ken tried to put his 'exemplar climate-change city' pledge into action.

Happy New Year

2007-01-08T23:06:00.000Z

OK. It's been a long time since I posted. Apologies. But I just went back to working freelance in December and have been trying to figure out whether and/or how I might want to adapt my blogging life. I decided I wanted a bit more flexibility, to collaborate with new people and to be able to branch out a bit more (not to mention, a little time for my personal projects, writing, etc).

I'm already surprisingly busy with new projects, but if anyone has any interesting work out there, let me know! I'm also slowly revamping my personal website so take a look and see what you think.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go back to logging stuff I read and that interests me here, as much to continue compiling my own resource as for y'all. But keep reading, I like having the company!

Arup: Bad Science

2006-12-08T17:20:00.000Z

OK. I generally love Arup and admire their history and philosophy. I have friends there, I have indeed collaborated with them in the past. But this is just quackery...I really hope it isn't as dumb as it sounds.

Today's BD:

Arup’s Peter Head, project director of Dongtan — the proposed low-carbon city near Shanghai three-quarters of the size of Manhattan — told BD the firm had devised a more scientific system to create a “sense of place”, incorporating historical and cultural elements into designs.

Head predicted that Arup’s new approach, which has led to the development of 24 cultural places or “scenes” within Dongtan, would be a valuable tool in helping create an identity for the troubled Thames Gateway.

Head said the system will help create identity and context for new public space through disciplines including psychology, anthropology, music and art.

In Dongtan, this focuses on the historical relationship between people and the natural world at the mouth of the Yangtse and has resulted in scenes named “Cloud Sea and Dreamy Pool” and “Narcissus Fairy Island”.

“This is a genuine attempt to change the paradigm of urban development,” he added.

“We want people to go [to these 24 locations] and feel ownership of the place — that it is for them. We are very concerned that this cultural aspect needs to be deeply rooted and sophisticated.

He's right - places do need identity and to engender a sense of ownership. But some kind of cod historiography combined with a 'scientific system' ain't the answer. Identity depends precisely on being anti-formulaic: open-ended, surprising, open to multiple readings and levels of engagement. I'm surprised to think that someone within such an intelligent and sophisticated organisation like Arup can find himself drawn into this kind of utter twaddle.

Pre-Budget: Green homes for all?

2006-12-06T19:03:00.000Z

The headline that grabbed the press today about Gordon's pre-budget speech was his pledge that all homes should be carbon-neutral in ten years time.

While you all sit back and think about how to deliver that one (he didn't help by giving no details), he also said that in the short term he would give a limited-term stamp duty relief to zero-carbon homes. Building Schools for the Future projects would have to meet BREEAM Very Good or Excellent ratings. These 'green' measures were by far the most extreme out of a speech that I thought was surprisingly tame on the subject of green taxes. A mere £5 extra tax on flights, a few pence on petrol...

And for those of you who care about these things, the introduction of any Planning Gain Supplement will be delayed till 2009 to have time for a fresh consultation.

Well, I think it is a pretty weak attempt to gain green points off the Tories but it is noticeable that Cameron has not come out saying that he would have been any more stringent, for fear of losing his voters. the green stuff grabbed the headlines, but it amounts to precious little.

Barker review round-up

2006-12-06T18:51:00.000Z

Wow, it's been so over-previewed that I had a strange sense of deja-vue when it actually came out. But if you have avoided, so far, the welter of breathless journalism, this is basically what it said: Less Planning.

Extend permitted development rights for minor house extensions/alterations, microgeneration and other small things.

A more 'risk-based' approach and less paperwork required to support applications.

Relaxation of use classes to enable more mixed-use designation and easier change of use

Less time taken preparing LDFs - aiming for 18-24 months, not the current 36-42.

Faster processing of planning appeals, a new mediation service and a major reduction in the number of schemes called-in by ministers.

And most ambiguously, encouragement for authorities to 'review' green belt designations to ensure a sufficient supply of land, although the report also strongly supports the principle of town centre-first development.

A national planning commission to examine 'strategic' proposals such as major infrastructure, transport and power generation projects.

Some comment: Guardian leader, BBC, Simon Jenkins rant (surprise), Centre for Cities, inevitable CPRE response...oh, just do a
But then, the report came before today's pre-Budget speech which also tried to out-Cameron Cameron on the green front...which will be the subject of the next post here.

Post lapse

2006-12-04T18:33:00.000Z

Oh dear - sorry. A week of unexpected amounts of things to do, followed by a week in Bucharest running a workshop on culturally led regeneration for the British Council, means it is a shockingly long time since I last posted. And indeed there may be more changes afoot in my blogging life as a few changes take place to what I'm up to, but more of that soon.

The big stories while I've been AWOL have involved Battersea Power Station being bought for £400m by an Irish consortium - possibly the least unexpected deal of the year as we've known about the negotations for some time.

Also more Olympics news, with Ricky Burdett being offically unveiled as a design adviser to the ODA, and the ex-Archigram and creator of a blob in Graz, Peter Cook, being brought on board to HOK's team for the stadium to spice it up some. Zaha's aquatic centre came out with nil points on the environmental front, and got massively scaled down in size. That's beside yet more boring speculation on costs etc.

And finally, I managed to avoid the Thames Gateway Forum, the consultants worst nightmare, where the government unveiled some interim reports and strategies and stuff, CABE launched its hasty 'vision for the Gateway' stuff (entitled 'New Things Happen', would you believe) and press releases came flying out of the wires like so much confetti.

And meanwhile I'm back on track for the release of the Barker Review of Planning tomorrow, and boy I bet you all can't wait, after all that excitement over that

Olympic shenanigans

2006-11-16T18:17:00.000Z

Money, money, money...that's what it's all about in the news.

After all the front page splashes over the rising costs of the Games, it is all about where to find the extra cash - and indeed, how much to find. The Treasury wants a huge 60% contingency to be factored in, whereas the Ken and the ODA call this "breathtakingly ridiculous" and call for a still massive 30%.

And where to get it? Well, according to Ken, he wants to effectively introduce a planning gain supplement levy on the uplift in land prices. “Land prices in the Olympics area have doubled. I will be looking at using the profits from developers on additional profits to service any cost overruns [on the Olympics].” Neale Coleman, policy director to the mayor and a member of the ODA board, said “If we had reliable receipts of what the land values would be after the Games, we could borrow against that now and the money could be used to fund extra Games costs. The two are connected because the LDA owns the land.”

However, some developers are clearly not sure that they are actually going to make much money on the sites. The ODA is renegotiating the contract to develop Stratford City after the two teams competing for the deal claimed the proposals were “unrealistic”. Apparently both consortiums bidding for the residential portion of the scheme, led by Lend Lease and Bouygues, have demanded a subsidy to ensure they can make a profit on the 4,500 homes in the scheme.

The negotiations are likely to delay the appointment of a developer, which was expected this month. It is understood that the stakeholders in Stratford City (the ODA, developer Westfield and London Continental Railways) have agreed to a subsidy but are unclear whether they, or central government, will pay. A 'source' said: “The whole deal was never going to stack up financially and it’s clearly going to have to be renegotiated. They are now having those discussions.”

It was "never going to stack up financially"? That's pretty damning. Or are the developers just protecting themselves from the cost repurcussions of the terrible partnering they are likely to suffer from a government who 'forgets' about VAT?

Going zero-carbon

2006-11-16T10:39:00.000Z

I wish I had more time to do a proper post on the Stern report and reaction. Luckily a colleague at WorldChanging has done a fantastic article here. But suffice to say it has only fuelled the fire of those who are trying to push zero-carbon development. In particular, publicly funded development is going to have a lot more demanded of it in the next few years.

Ruth Kelly has already committed to developing a timescale, but the WWF is proposing that within five years residential development that is financed by the Housing Corporation, or that uses land supplied by English Partnerships, should be zero carbon.

The WWF argues further that all residential development that receives public finance should be zero carbon within 10 years. This would include the former ODPM’s growth programmes, including the Thames Gateway.

They want these goals to be achieved using the Code for Sustainable Homes. This document, which is due to be finalised by the DCLG next month, will set mandatory standards for public sector residential developments.

John Callcutt, the chief executive of English Partnerships, said he was committed to aiming for zero carbon as soon as possible. He said: “Once it comes out we will immediately start demonstration projects to show we can play a significant role.”

Some interesting stuff also came out last week about how to incentivise owners of existing buildings to upgrade their environmental performance. Building magazine is canvassing the industry to find out what their preferred incentives would be, from stamp duty rebates to tax relief or reduced business rates.

In brief: Takeovers and other news.

2006-11-15T12:43:00.000Z

Derwent Valley is buying London Merchant Securities for £1bn to create a combined £2.25bn portfolio of mainly commercial West End property.

In other takeover news, Crest Nicholson is in talks with consortium HBOS despite rejecting a £660m takeover offer from them last Friday, and Henderson has increased its bid for John Laing in the bidding war with Allianz.

GMW Architects with developer Hammerson is on the verge of being appointed to the massive redevelopment of Victoria Station in central London.

Land Secs posted a healthy rise in net asset value ahead of its confirmed conversion to a REIT in January.

The last details of Argent's s106 agreement will go to Camden committee on Thursday. The remaining objectors are expected to protest but it should, hopefully, be a formality.

A new unit has been set up by the government to provide independent advice on improving the provision of affordable homes. The National Housing and Planning Advice Unit will help provide evidence and analysis to regional planning bodies.

Queen's Speech

2006-11-15T12:40:00.000Z

I feel a little sorry for the Queen, having to mouth the politicised words of 'my government'. Today's speech was dominated by security, immigration and the environment, and the Queen confirmed that the government would introduce a climate change bill “consistent with the need to secure the country’s long-term energy supply”. The Climate Change Bill commits to a 60% reduction by 2050 but there was no mention of annual targets.

Other measures:
A new Local Government Bill will overhaul the regulation and inspection of councils while devolving more powers.

Greater London Authority Bill will strengthen the mayor's powers on homes, strategic planning and climate change issues.

Planning reform proposals to be published in spring 2007.

EP/Housing Corp merger

2006-11-15T09:55:00.000Z

Looks like its all systems go, despite some murmurs of discontent from the Treasury about the costs of setting up the new body. Apparently we may hear something officially on the 20th.

Likely to be called Communities England, it also appears that it will be headed up by civil servant Richard McCarthy, currently a senior director of the DCLG, and presently chairing the joint EP/corporation board that is managing the merger. It held its first meeting last week. McCarthy is also close to Baroness Ford, EP’s chairman, and is a former chief executive of the Peabody Trust and chairman of the National Housing Federation.

Communities England would take over the DCLG’s responsibilities for programmes such as stock transfer, arm’s length management organisations, housing market renewal, the Thames Gateway and neighbourhood renewal.

It will take between nine and 18 months to set up because of the need to secure parliamentary approval for winding up the corporation and EP, as they are both statutory bodies.

Olympics news

2006-11-14T14:23:00.000Z

Richard Rogers kicked up a storm last week by claiming that he and Ken Livingstone are 'deeply concerned' about the procurement strategy being undertaken by the Olympic Delivery Agency. Rogers attacked the planned use of design-and-build contracts, and threatened a boycott, saying that he wouldn't compete for buildings that were going be be delivered by D&B.

Meanwhile his practice RRP is going to compete for the only remaining non DB contract - for the velodrome, which sees every ambitious and big-name architect in town joining the competition.

His brother Peter, who chaired the Strategic Forum 2012 task group, has told everyone to 'stop bashing' the Olympics. Effectively criticising Jack Lemley's comments that there was too much talking and not enough action going on, he said “I think what they are trying to do, which is think before they act, is absolutely right. We’re far too prone to coming up with good ideas and getting on with the building, before we have an understanding of what we want to do.”

The Treasury is playing it safe by refusing to guarantee it will offer full compensation to the Olympic Delivery Authority for the £500 million VAT bill that the body faces. However, there are rumours that Gordon Brown is to announce he has found a way round VAT on construction costs on Olympic projects in his pre-budget statement later this month. There are also whispers that Brown is planning to replace the Jowell-Caborn partnership on the Olympics, with Southampton MP John Denham apparently high on the list.

Meanwhile, the chief exec of Leaside Regeneration, Paul Brickell, has claimed the LDA is overstretched due to the 2012 Olympics effectively stopping redevelopment elsewhere in the capital. He pointed out that litle work has been done on the regeneration of the Poplar Riverside site in east London for nearly five years.

‘The LDA does seem to be overstretched because of its Olympics commitments, and so I would prefer to see the Unitary Development Corporation (UDC) take over.

He also criticised the LDA's approach to integrating industrial and residential uses. ‘Tower Hamlets Council wants to retain residents and create a mixed environment for families and younger people, and the UDC is more likely to deal in creating that mix. But the LDA’s plan is quite different – creating a grittier mix of industrial and residential uses, which the GLA is championing.

‘If family units are to live there then they are the least suitable set to sit alongside any industrial use for the site – a lot of people are questioning the LDA’s direction,’ he added.

The proposed mosque near the Olympic Park is attracting yet more controversy, as temporary planning permission to use portable cabins on the land as a mosque expired recently, and a petition opposing it was handed in to Newham.

And finally, the Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Greater London, Sir Christopher Benson, has been appointed the chairman of the urban regeneration company Stratford Renaissance Partnership. He was previously chair of the LDDC, CrossRail and Costain.

Battersea takes a step forward

2006-11-13T19:02:00.000Z

The developer of Battersea Power Station has been given the go-ahead to develop on the adjacent site, before actually completing the renovation of the power station itself.

Wandsworth Council agreed to Parkview's plans, as well as the amendment to the Section 106 agreement, which defined how ‘complete’ renovations needed to be on the power station before work could continue elsewhere on the site. They now just have to secure the site and do a few repairs.

Leslie McDonnell, of Wandsworth Council, said: ‘Parkview now have the consents they need to get on with the job of restoring this famous building. They have told us they will be ready to start the work in earnest in the New Year – we expect them to keep to this.’

Heseltine and privatising planning

2006-11-13T18:54:00.000Z

A call by Conservative Party cities taskforce chief Michael Heseltine to privatise the planning system has been slammed by planning officer representatives.

Heseltine said that he would favour the privatisation of some planning functions to speed up the system, saying that currently, public sector planning applications were often dealt with by inexperienced and overcautious staff. He said that planning consultants and surveyors could be licensed to take planning decisions, rather than planning officials.

But Planning Officers Society president Hilary Herbert said: "We do not think he should be preempting the work of Kate Barker's review. The government has also just implemented a fundamental reform of the planning framework, and this should be given time to bed down."

She added that privatising the system would remove the democratic mandate currently held by planning departments.

After the row, Heseltine appeared to backtrack, saying that he specifically meant only issues to do with listed buildings and conservation areas, not planning in general.

Pathfinder blues, Ikea news

2006-11-13T18:34:00.000Z

One pathfinder is innovating: Ikea is about to enter the first planning application for its BokLok homes in Gateshead. The flatpack homes will have their UK launch at the Building Centre later this month.

But another is in the news for all the wrong reasons: because it is apparently 'ignoring' a design review panel in the area, seeing it as a thorn in the flesh.

Liverpool’s design review body has not been shown any detailed planning applications for new housing in the controversial housing market renewal area. The Liverpool Urban Design & Conservation Advisory Panel (Ludcap) has grave concerns about the quality of schemes now being built and passing through planning, which it has been denied the opportunity to comment on because it is seen as “a thorn in the flesh”. The panel’s frustration follows a row between the pathfinder and Cabe in the summer, when the design watchdog opposed compulsory purchase orders in the area. It later dropped its opposition.

A source close to the panel expressed frustration at the authorities’ reluctance to use its design expertise, and suggested it was seen as “a thorn in the flesh, an unnecessary bother.” The source criticised the quality of housing now on site in the pathfinder, which has caused massive national controversy because it involves large-scale demolition of terraced housing.

“If the planning authority, which has the power to say yes or no, can’t influence the developers, how can a body like Ludcap?” said David Birkbeck, chief executive of Design for Homes.

He added that developers were more concerned with the Building for Life criteria, used by English Partnerships and taking architectural quality as only one element, than with design review.

WorldChanging book

2006-11-08T16:32:00.000Z

Yesterday I received my contributor's copy of the eponymous book from worldchanging.com (where I write, recently on Google Sketch-up and before that on Kinsale's Energy Descent Action Plan, Ecoliteracy and more) and it is humungously exciting. Beautifully designed, packed with authoritative, pithy articles on everything from nanotechnology to urbanism to lightbulbs, it really is the definitive "User's Guide to the 21st Century" as the strapline has it.

And all priced at a very reasonable £24.95 (£16.46 on Amazon, though please support your local bookshop...) so guys, you know what to get all your friends for Christmas! Shameless plug, I know - but with a foreword by Al Gore and rave reviews from the other side of the Atlantic where it is already released, the book speaks for itself. Out officially on the 24th November.

Class divide in regeneration

2006-11-07T18:20:00.000Z

Wow. Pointing out the obvious...A study by the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) reveals that middle-class people aspire to suburban living and see regeneration as an aid to that - but working class people are less convinced by such change. "The lesson for regeneration agencies is that they need to understand how people feel about them, not assume that they will be understood. This shows just how successful middle-class residents have been at imposing their tastes when it comes to the places in which we live."

Basically, it says that working-class residents don't see themselves on a housing ladder and don't see any way of moving 'up in the world', so don't value regeneration for bringing an uplift in property values. They were most affected by lack of jobs and services and thought that public agencies generally did 'nothing' for them, while the middle-classes saw themselves as 'here for now' and didn't mind a bit of scruffiness if they were near to restaurants and bars. They saw themselves as eventually moving on, whereas the working-classes wanted to but thought they would never be able to.

Some were offended by the report, though I think this is a misreading. Pauline Davis, managing director of Liverpool's New Heartlands pathfinder programme which is where the research took place, said: "The suggestion that people living within the pathfinder area are incapable of long-term vision, strategy and planning is patronising, offensive and plain wrong."

In brief...

2006-11-07T18:10:00.000Z

In case you haven't heard:

I forgot to mention in yesterday's Gateway round-up the pretty hilarious news that part of the DCLG's strategy is to rebrand it as Thames Estuary Parklands in order to attract investors and residents.

That's as well as the 'oops' from the Olympics team as it was revealed that they had forgotten to add VAT to their budget estimates. You might think that at that level, mistakes like that wouldn't happen?

Residents of Croydon are bracing themselves for the big man after Will Alsop won a competition to carry out a 'visioning exercise' for the town centre.

Unconnectedly, plans for the controversial Gateway site in Croydon are apprently pushing ahead with a new planning application from Stanhope imminent.

Clever old Davis Langdon have announced they are going to offset all their carbon emissions and also start a carbon consultancy service for clients.

CABE has rapped the wrists of Dev Secs and Sheppard Robson for not being green enough on their £150m Oriental City scheme. It said: “We note that the retail units beneath the housing will generate excess heat that should be harnessed for the residential and school development. At a time of pressing energy concerns, we would view it as appalling if this were not the case and recommend that the local planning authority consider this as a condition.”

CABE also accused them of discriminating against the affordable housing in the scheme, saying “It would be unacceptable for the layout of affordable housing to be evident or for different levels of landscape design and maintenance to be visible in the garden deck. The establishment of a sub-community with a sub-standard garden courtyard must not be tolerated by the LPA.”

Anyone see a Barker review coming?

2006-11-07T18:04:00.000Z

Talk about planning reform is hotting up ahead of the Barker review publication.

Tony Blair has pledged to introduce a new planning bill, pre-empting the Barker report. This is despite Barker hinting in her interim report that she didn't think there should be another major shake-up of the planning system.

The government is also considering establishing an independent commission to examine major infrastructure projects including nuclear power stations, transport schemes and possibly large housing schemes.

This comes as the proposals in last week's White Paper, to remove major planning decisions from council committees to a nominated individual, received a mixed response, with the LGIU worrying that it will lead to corruption. The proposal suggests a single elected mayor or council leader could take all decisions on strategically important applications.

Meanwhile, a committee of MPs have reported on the planning gain supplement idea and said that it needs a lot more work to ensure its success, and that the government should consider a better section 106 system in tandem with the new proposals. There has been trading of comment between the parties on the fact that PGS will go to the Treasury and not local councils.

Locally controlled spending is at the heart of the Tory response, with Cameron publishing a sustainable communities bill on Friday, which proposes giving local authorities the power to decide how millions of pounds are spent. The bill has been drafted in conjunction with Local Works, a cross-party campaign for stronger local democracy. It would allow local authorities, after consulting members of the community, to work out their own alternative local spending plan and to allocate that public spending in their area in a different way.

Thames Gateway news...

2006-11-06T17:50:00.000Z

No phasing in Barking, barks Ken at Bellway Homes. A report presented to the mayor's latest planning meeting said Bellway and EP, its JV partner, had proposed a cap of 4,000 units on its Barking Riverside scheme until funding has been secured for a £295m extension of the Docklands Light Railway through the site. The joint venture envisages 10,800 homes spread across the 179ha brownfield site. But basically Ken wants no phasing to force the government to commit funding for the DLR.

Meanwhile the DLR link to Stratford International got planning approval, which will come as a relief. It will mean there is an alternative to walking 400m with your wheely suitcase between the Eurostar and the Tube station, although you will have to endure more escalators/crowded DLR carriage/etc in the process. Proposals for an airport-style travelator are still being contested by the government (pro) and LCR (anti).

Moving further out, a couple of EP projects around Basildon have hit the buffers, due to concerted local opposition and problems securing infrastructure funding. My crystal ball says that these issues will continue to dog every outer Thames Gateway scheme. They were due to create 2,000 homes and 6,000 jobs and the council leader Malcolm Buckley said EP should have sorted out the road improvements. "The Government wants us to grow but won't provide the necessary funding."

This comes as government procurement watchdog the Office of Government Commerce - which has the power to make recommendations to ministers - confirmed it has started a review of the effectiveness of public spending in the Gateway.

And surprise of the week, the The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management says that the government should relocate communities away from areas of flood risk, including the Thames Gateway, and go for managed realignment of coastal areas. It said: "...the wisdom in re-locating people here is debatable since in the Thames Gateway alone over 36,000 homes are proposed for areas at risk from tidal flooding."

X-listing eyesores?

2006-11-06T17:39:00.000Z

Over the weekend, I'm sure a lot of you read or heard about an idea from La Cameron's fave think-tank (the Policy Exchange) to x-list building s that 'the people' find ugly and demolish them. As almost everything the PE suggest seems to get made into Tory policy about a month later, this is one to spend a minute untangling.

From the Observer:
"The X-list manifesto, part of a collection of essays on a new 'green' approach to cities, admits that simply being ugly won't be enough to condemn a building to the wrecking ball. Candidates for destruction will also have to be uninhabited or unused, have 'a distressing and anti-social impact' and blight the local economy.

"Under the Policy Exchange plan, local residents would nominate urban architecture for X-listing. There would then be a three-month period for debate, a selection of a long list by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, and a final selection by an 'X-list jury' including architects, urban planners and developers. The aim, O'Shaughnessy says, is not just to watch buildings go boom, but to address 'political alienation' and urban blight by giving residents a greater sense of ownership over their surroundings. 'X-listing puts people first,' his essay argues, 'by giving them a direct say in shaping their environments.'"

Wow. First, CABE will think all the buildings that are nominated are modernist masterpieces, against the will of the unwashed masses who think Gropius is something perverts do in the park. Secondly - addressing political alienation by allowing people to topple buildings? Bread and circuses, anyone?

The whole thing should, of course, feature televised live gladiatorial battles between 'traditionalists' and 'modernists' over whether New Zealand House is nice or 'distressing'. Or, of course, it could be the conduit for interesting local debate over the value of the built environment, conflicting readings of urban space, and the promotion of a shared understanding of local identity accompanied by fairy cakes and tea. Feeling cynical today, would rather see the former.

Lemley spills the beans

2006-11-01T10:25:00.000Z

Ooh, how embarrassing. After resigning a couple of weeks ago as the chair of the ODA, when everyone said nice platitudinous things about him, Jack Lemley has exposed the real reasons for his departure to his local paper, the Idaho Statesman.

He claimed that politics was threatening to bring the project in late and over-budget. He said there had been a “huge amount of local politics” involved in moving the 300 businesses from the 700-acre Olympic site in East London. He said that the issue was the “kind of thing that confuses and frustrates the process.”

Lemley said that he resigned because he did not want to have his reputation of delivering projects on time ruined. He said: “I felt it better to come home now than face that in five or six years. I went there to build things, not to sit and talk about it, so I felt it best to leave the post and come home.”

Lemley also criticised the current debate over whether the main Olympic arena should be converted into a football stadium after the games declaring that: “A football field was not compatible with an athletic stadium”. Watch out, West Ham.

In brief: Allied London and other stuff

2006-10-27T17:57:00.000+01:00

Allied London, developers of the Brunswick Centre and endurers of a "rollercoaster of strategy shifts and ownership changes" over the last decade, are set to start acquiring new city centre sites in London with a new restructure that sees Allied's management retain a 20% stake, with Delancey and RBS taking 40% each. Quite big news - Delancey see it as forming a vehicle similar to the retail venture they have going with Centros Miller. They want to do big masterplan-able sites, mixed-use, medium-term.

Ashford are working on plans to establish the UK’s first financial institution to fund the development of local infrastructure.

The £1bn Omega Warrington development finally gets planning permission, after all the objectors got too tired to carry on fighting. Omega Warrington is a JV between RBS, EP and Miller. The first two phases include industrial and distribution space to the north of the site and office accommodation to the south. The south site will also feature complimentary uses and a hotel.

On the local authority side, finally someone gets through: South Cambridgeshire is the first to have its new-style core strategy passed as 'sound' by the planning inspectorate.

Nick Barley has been appointed as the new director of the Lighthouse, Glasgow's architecture centre.

Thames Gateway news

2006-10-27T17:49:00.000+01:00

The draft strategic framework for the whole muddy mess is out (well, unofficially, but reported everywhere), and Terry Farrell is crowing because his big park idea has really taken root. He says he is 'very, very gratified'. The draft framework proposes a Thames Estuary Park that “should be seen as an environmental network rather than an individual park” but it won't be a National Park because, of course, that would mean you couldn't build any houses in it.

Among its other proposals, and as if there weren't enough suits there already, the government is to set up a taskforce to speed up housing delivery as they've found that despite declaring it a growth area, it hasn't really seen a massive increase in housing starts. The LDA, EP and Housing Corp will be on it. They're also increasing the housing numbers from 120,000 to 160,000, with most to be inside London's boundaries (another idea from Farrell.)

It also apparently proposes the formation of a Gateway Design Pact, with the quality of new housing development to be policed by government design adviser the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. Well, we'll see how that goes with the taskforce to speed up numbers.

Local government white paper round-up

2006-10-27T17:39:00.000+01:00

Oh, what a let-down. Months late and keeping everyone in limbo, and then when it arrives, it doesn't really have much in it. Word on the street is generally: why didn't they coordinate the WP with the Lyons review of LG finance out in a month, and the Barker review of planning? Seems pretty daft. And also that Gordon Brown is commissioning a new study into city regions b/c he doesn't want to have them while Tony does, so that's why its so weak in that respect.

Anyway, in brief:

It institutes three new ways that councils can be organised - directly elected mayor, directly elected cabinet that nominates a leader with no executive powers, or councillors, cabinet and leader as now, but functioning on a 4-year cycle where everyone gets elected at once. (The others also have a 4-year term.)

It supports city regions but doesn't say what they will do about it.

A few councils will be allowed to apply for unitary status (Norwich has already put its name in the hat.)

A lot of boring stuff about overview and scrutiny aimed at making things more accountable. A 'Community Call for Action' procedure which will supposedly "give local people a more powerful voice to question decisions taken by their council".

London will be allowed to have Parish Councils despite concerns about this increasing social stratification as rich areas go for it and poor ones don't. PCs to have power to set bylaws and collect spot fines.

Making it easier to set up tenant management organisations and hand over ownership of community assets to community groups.

Caroline Spelman's response: 'toothless', criticises the lack of coordination with the Lyons report and the Barker review, says it doesn't go far enough to devolve power.

Guardian comment here which takes the same view of the watered-down proposals as being maybe worthy, but at least vaguely in the right direction.

Comment from Involve, IPPR, and a useful idiot's guide from ePolitix if you can't be bothered to read the rest of the guff.

BatterseaWatch

2006-10-27T17:16:00.000+01:00

Battersea power station continues to be in the news a lot. A double spread in this week's AJ and more, prompted by rumours of new investors, arguments over the s106 agreement, and much more.

Vicky Wang, (presumably daughter of the owner Victor?) gave an interview to Proerty Week this week in which she revealed that she wants to change the epmhasis from the retail-led to make the leisure aspects work harder, citing the Eden project as a precedent. they are calling it the 'Turbine Gardens' and as part of the plan, the station’s 6 acre (2.4 ha) roof will be converted into a landscaped garden and entertainment park. And apparently Yo! Sushi founder Simon Woodroffe is negotiating a deal to open a 40,000 sq ft Yo! Zone spa, including hot pools, steam rooms and massage tables.

Meanwhile, according to a local residents organisation, Parkview want to change their s106 agreement, which states that the power station must be redeveloped in its entirety before anything else can be developed. They claim ‘It is now questioning what is meant by “in its entirety”, and whether it can simply put a roof on it, and leave it as a shell that is watertight.’

But Parkview says it would get the building ready for tenant fit-out, which would include the installation of new floors as well as a provision of a roof over the turbine hall.

The residents blame the influence of prospective new financiers, Treasury Holdings. ‘Since it has engaged in talks with Treasury, it is happy just to get the site into shape, and start residential projects, which would be more attractive to Treasury. Treasury is not interested in hotels and shopping malls, it just wants to turn the whole site into luxury apartments like the rest of Wandsworth riverside, and Parkview realises that.’

Thameslink 2000 may be finished by...2020?

2006-10-23T18:19:00.000+01:00

We really can't do anything, can we. Richard Rogers wins the Stirling Prize for a foreign airport that took about 2 days to build in comparison to the Jurassic timescale of Heathrow T5, and Thameslink 2000 has finally taken a step out of the blocks only six years after it was meant to be finished.

The £3.5 billion congestion-easing rail scheme moved a step closer as the Government announced that it was giving planning permission and granting legal powers to Network Rail (NR) for the Thameslink 2000 project. However, Transport Minister Stephen Ladyman stressed that this did not amount to a final go-ahead for the scheme as the DfT was still considering the question of funding.

Talk about giving with one hand, taking with the other. Well, at least that means that at my Borough Market office, we still won't have to move out for a good long while yet.

Olympic stadium blues

2006-10-23T18:09:00.000+01:00

After the resignation of Lemley, there was more to set the hacks scribbling this week as it emerged that Richard Rogers has queried the designs for the Olympic Stadium, saying that it should be more 'iconic'. And this is after the ODA announced that it had appointed Team McAlpine as preferred bidder for the stadium because its submission was “the only one that met all the ODA’s prequalification criteria."

The only one? That's pretty desperate. The other team members are HOK Sport and Buro Happold, for the record - and its the same team as did such a good job over at Arsenal's new home. However, it seems like they've got a massively less organised client, as they have till Christmas whether to actually take on the job as they still haven't seen a final design brief. So I'm still unclear how Rogers can crit a design that hasn't even got a brief yet. Sounds like a very British mess already.

Amidst all that, it now seems that West Ham might move into the stadium after Spurs turned it down. Well, that would follow the precedent of Manchester City taking over the ex-Commonwealth Games stadium, in terms of a mediocre team getting a flash stadium and finding that all those extra ticket sales still can't stop them being thrashed by teams like Wigan...

Resignations all round

2006-10-23T17:54:00.000+01:00

Well, most of this will be old news to those of you who read any press at all towards the end of last week. But forgive me, I was sick in bed and couldn't get there first. But for the record:

Jack Lemley, the chair of the ODA, resigned in 'uncertain' circumstances. Everyone said nice things but the gossip is that he had differences of opinion with David Higgins, the charismatic Austrailan chief exec. Lemley was 71.

Then Vince Taylor, director of implementation at the Northern Way, left the organisation by "mutual agreement" this week. He probably won't be replaced, as after Prescott's departure, the Northern Way will probably be disbanded pretty soon.

Conference season round-up

2006-10-18T19:14:00.000+01:00

This post has been sitting unfinished for nearly two weeks. It's still unfinished, but maybe useful if you want to get the feel of the political landscape. Really its mostly about the Tories, reflecting the current zeitgeist that Labour won't be able to hold out for another term.

Tory
Basically, look forward to an easier ride if you want to build houses, in line with a 'competitive streamlining' of the planning system. Cameron has said that there is a social responsibility to provide more homes in rural areas. "We want to build beautiful, iconic new communities, not put the brakes on everything" said Simon Wolfson, CEO of Next but on the 'competitiveness' policy group which will report next summer.

Buzzwords include "positive planning" which means assuming that development should go ahead unless there are compelling reasons to stop it, building in rural villages to supposedly ease the lack of 'local housing for local people', not to mention abolishing use classes so that commercial and residential planning permissions would be effectively interchangeable.

They are also pro more roadbuilding because "better roads create wealth...one of the things we are determined to do is get traffic moving" but with magic green technology to ensure that Cameron's eco image is untainted. The Tories are considering proposals that would see homeowners forced to pay for improvements to the energy efficiency of their properties when they are sold.

David Cameron's quality of life policy review chaired by John Gummer plans to impose "very tough" standards for energy and water efficiency. It intends to bring in tougher green standards for building and refurbishing residential and commercial properties.

Caroline Spelman, Ruth Kelly's opposite number, pledged to 'streamline' the "50 different funding streams for housing and regeneration" into a single 'cohesion fund'. She also pledged to give businesses a referendum on whether to scrap the nine Regional Development Agencies - always opposed by the Tories, who would also scrap Regional Spatial Strategies and the Regional Assemblies.

Spelman added that an overhaul of the Pathfinder programme would be instituted by any future Tory administration. She said: "Thousands of Victorian terraces are being bulldozed regardless of local opposition. This goes against everything we have learned from the past."

Labour
Also leapt onto the green bandwagon with a vengeance and David Miliband had a good conference. Blair: the UK needs "the most radical overhaul of energy policy since the War" and to "make sure every new home is at least 40% more energy efficient." Here's Gordon Brown on the environment too.

Labour was defeated over the issue of building more council homes for the 2nd year on the trot - a rebel motion demanding direct investment in council houses was passed despite NEC opposition. Ruth Kelly pledged (in a rather feeble way) that the Government "can and will" build more homes, including council houses. Gordon Brown pledged to double spending on social housing in general, but of course we won't see any direct investment.

Miliband on the environment: "I propose we adopt a new goal as a country: to aim to live as a nation within the limits that the environment can tolerate, One Planet Living. The challenge is immense. But so are the tools at our disposal. We know how to build the low carbon home, make the 150-200mpg car, deliver zero carbon energy."

Also: on the city-region debate, it is still all to play for. Miliband said that we have "100 great British cities driving our country forward. They should trusted with the power and the politics to lead environmental change, driving forward sustainable housing, taking responsibility for congestion charging and improved public transport, heading the drive for new jobs and new wealth."

So: varying shades of greenwash all round. Such a nice easy vote-winner, at least until we all start calculating how much it will cost our pockets.

Technorati Tags: conservativeparty, green, labourparty, policy

Doubledecker houses in Barking

2006-10-18T13:48:00.000+01:00

Or rather, the return of the maisonette. Tres retro.

In one of the most debated development sites in the London Thames Gateway, Barking Riverside consortium has come up with a proposal to build “double decker” houses so that 30% of the 10,800 units planned for the site can be three or four-bedroom family homes without depriving the site of open space.

The houses would be similar to conventional maisonettes, but would have decking to provide high-level gardens, the consortium said. “There is a drive for family housing here, but it won’t all be traditional. These designs will allow us to get a lot of family housing on the site and the homes could be ideally suited for modern methods of construction.”

Tories to scrap use classes?

2006-10-06T10:06:00.001+01:00

Surely some mistake. Getting rid of use classes would basically mean no planning at all. The Tories have been talking about slimming down planning but this is the most radical yet.

Michael Gove, the Tories’ housing spokesperson, told a fringe event organised by CABE that the system of “use class orders” should be scrapped to give commercial and residential projects the same planning status. Gove’s proposals would mean that developers would no longer have to submit a planning application if they wanted to change the use of a building from commercial to residential.

Gove said scrapping the distinction between the two uses was a logical response to the lack of demand for commercial space. He said: “I am very attracted to the idea of abolishing use class orders and the distinction between commercial and residential. At the moment, we have hundreds of thousands of square metres of office space that is empty."

He said circumstances had changed since the late eighties, when the Tories introduced use class orders because commercial development was generally less polluting. Scrapping use class orders would also make it easier for developers to respond to market conditions. However, it is likely to anger homeowners because it will make it easier to build commercial schemes in residential areas.

Mixed-use failing to deliver

2006-10-06T10:06:00.000+01:00

Everyone knows that the only way to do development now and get it through the raft of policy and guidance is to do mixed-use. Apartment blocks have retail on the ground floor, office buildings have retail on the ground floor, big schemes mix it all up with residentially-led ones still finding room for retail, offices and live-work. All in the cause of sustainability, local shops and local jobs, less travelling and less fumes.

Except it seems that we haven't figured out how to masterplan and design all this new space to make it attractive to the market. About one-third of the commercial space in new mixed-use developments in London is lying empty, a report by London Development Research has revealed.

Within mixed-use schemes the long-term vacancy rate for offices is 34% and 27% for shops. Short-term rates are 75% for offices and 52% for shops. The research covers schemes that have been finished for between six months and five-and-a-half years.

The report calculates that a quarter of all residential developments finished during the five-year period, are mixed use, totalling 550 schemes. Residential developers have delivered almost 1m m2 of non-residential space over the period.

Commercial space struggles to find tenants for several reasons. Some space is not in the right location, having been built to satisfy local authority demand rather than market requirements. Some schemes featured space that had not been well designed for commercial users, with units that are too small or too large, irregular in shape or with low ceilings.

The boroughs with the greatest problems letting office space were Camden, Hackney, Lambeth, Southwark and Wandsworth. Those that struggled most to let retail space were Hackney and Lambeth. The report pointed out that some of the vacant space would be let if local authorities would allow a change of use.

“Developers are learning more about how to specify and let commercial space, and planners are becoming more sensitive to change. It is becoming clear that the policy isn’t working,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if mixed-use policy isn’t tweaked to reflect the marketplace.”

Wimpey halted in Purfleet

2006-10-05T15:10:00.000+01:00

A planning appeal to build more than 570 homes in Purfleet, Essex, has been rejected by Ruth Kelly on design grounds.

Wimpey appealed against Thurrock Borough Council's failure to grant permission for the homes, as well as public space and a river walkway, but after a public inquiry Kelly has upheld the refusal, stating that the site should instead make way for a future "world-leading" development.

She notes that the site would be "highly conspicuous", lying at "the gateway to the [Thames] Gateway" and whatever development takes place on it should be of "high design quality".

The decision was taken following design advice provided by CABE. A spokeswoman from Wimpey said: "We are looking at the implications of the decision before planning any next steps." The company has already secured an earlier permission for 504 homes on the site.

Update: I just read that this scheme is designed by Ian Ritchie Architects, a well-known design firm whose prinicpal judges the Stirling Prize. This must be quite an embarrassment.