Sharing Doors
“I’m not too old for that”
• Foreword
• Foreword
The door is the entry point to the home, and usually the first point of physical interaction. It is something that can uniquely distinguish a home and add to the character of the architecture. It is something that can act as separation between the outside world and the personal space within.
It is a given fact that the UK has an ageing population. As healthcare and technology get better, it is inevitable that we live longer. This should be a good thing, right? But with more people living longer, and with a housing supply that cannot keep up, we end up with a crisis. This is perpetuated even more when housing by design is biased towards younger, more able people.
Since Margaret Thatcher introduced the Right-to-Buy of social housing in the 1980’s, millions of homes have been sold through the scheme to tenants. You can usually tell which were sold through the scheme from observation, due to their differing door panels. When mass council housing was built, the design tended to be monotonous, with elements such as doors being consistent in at least style across the whole estate. Repetition throughout the design of council homes kept costs to a minimum. Though, once purchased, the occupiers were able to make their home unique to them. Many then did not want their home to be associated with being a ‘council house’, and one of the easiest ‘fixes’ for this was replacing the front door. Though the door may be seen as a banal architectural element, it is more than just a piece of architecture, it carries with it political and social depth, which I have begun to explore in this project named ‘sharing doors’.
The question and potential solution I am beginning to explore is: “How can we solve this housing crisis by designing homes specifically for an ageing population? Is there a way we can create homes that will ultimately reduce demand on health and social care, whilst still improving access to housing for those on housing waiting lists?” Eventhough this problem is not limited to one particular place, I will situate myself within The Pepys Estate in Lewisham as a microcosm to explore and demonstrate how Local Authority estates can be adapted to become age-friendly through physical and social architecture.
Contents
Sharing Doors The Catelogue The Environments The Door The Building The Neighbourhood The City The Estates
5 7 11 15 20 27 31 39
“I’m not too old for that” The Ageing Population The New Housing Model The Network The Anecdotes The Microcosm The Gratification Appendix
55 57 65 69 70 85 103 122
The Catologue • All The first area is a catalogue dedicated to showcasing a variety of different types of doors from a variety of backgrounds. You may recognise some of these doors as having religious and cultural connotations, others merely as utility or functional doors. These doors are presented on the website so that the user of the website can categorise all these doors using a selection of words.
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The Catologue • Categorise The words are subdivided into 6 macro categories, relating to the home; protective; decorative; cultural; interactivity; materiality and permeability. Though not all doors in the catalogue are ones that you would particularly use within the home, the categorisation aids to show them alongside doors maybe of historical and commercial contexts. For example how this works, if you were to click on ‘cultural’, this will filter the doors of obvious cultural contexts, such as the Japanese shoji screens that have multiple uses as a door, window or room divider in traditional Japanese architecture. Another example would be to filter the doors by ones that identified to be hand crafted. Many of these overlap with other categories also. For example, the elaborate Georgian front door, carefully crafted to clearly mark and make an obvious entrance to the home. The highly decorative fan glass design above and large door leaf signified wealth and social class. However, many doors here are seen as rather abstract to how they are used in the context of the home.
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The Environments • Georgian Terrace The second area showcases the environments that each door will have been used within. Following on from the example of the elaborate Georgian door, this particular environment shows the architectural character of a Georgian home. It is recognisable for its often raised entrances and all having basements except the very poorest of housing. The design allowed for two separate entrances, one for the middleclass homeowner, undoubtably grand and elegant, and another to segregate the maids and servants, that would enter via the basement where kitchens and other services spaces would be positioned. This social class divide is something which I will touch upon through the ‘sharing doors’ segment of the portfolio.
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The Door • Dimensions Having said all of that though, this is my door and I can tell you it’s a lot less elaborate than a Georgian door, in fact it’s a rather simple door. Since Margaret Thatcher introduced the Right-to-Buy of social housing in the 1980’s, millions of homes have been sold through the scheme to tenants. You can usually tell which were sold through the scheme from observation, due to their differing door panels. As Danny Dorling comments in his book ‘All That is Solid’ “Those are the signs of home ownership or, more likely nowadays, of Private Rentals”. When mass council housing was built, the design tended to be repetitive, and elements such as doors were consistent across the whole estate, at least in their style. This is because repetition throughout the design of council homes kept costs to a minimum. Though, once purchased, the occupiers were able to make their home unique to them. Many did not want their home to be associated with being a ‘council house’, and one of the easiest ‘fixes’ for this was replacing the front door.
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The Door • Exploded The exploded axonometric shows the physical elements that make up the door. It is quite generic in the terms that all these elements are typically required to fabricate a door system in some ways or another. Though, I began to think about the customisations of some of these which was something I would later develop. For example, the door leaf and handle are things we most commonly interchange, sometimes the architrave also subtly varies. Then we can start to think about add-ons like a view port, lock, chain, letter box or a closer for fire safety.
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The Door • Orthographical Diving into more detailed sections of the door, I wanted to show details how the door functions on its own with specific relationships between the door leaf and the frame as well as their scales. For example, accounting for tolerances between parts of the frame which are fixed components such as the jamb and the stop, and the door leaf itself which is the component that is designed to move. Though, the leaf can only move on a fixed pivot if the hinges are present, and only is the latch is released from the insert in the strike plate, by the lever of the handle being activated. So again it kind of identifies the reliance on multiple components. Similarities can be drawn between Elizabeth Shove’s ‘matters of practice’ when she describes the loaf of bread requiring a list of ingredients, and then the oven to cook the bread (like us to use energy to open the door). The list of relationships is endless.
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The Building • Layering of Space It’s this idea of repetition that inspired me to map the doors within my flat. You can find this in the next section called, the building section. 6 out of the 9 doors were identical in leaf, but with varying elements such as handles and locks, no doubt signs of previous tenants customising doors to make the home unique to them. You will notice I have categorised these doors by primary, secondary and tertiary, and this relates to the order in which we have to access them when entering the flat. To put this into context, you have to walk through the front door, before you walk through the living room door. Similarly, you have to pass through the living room door before you can pass through the balcony door.
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The Building • Relationship to Street We often associate the front door as what separates where we live from the street level, but what I found interesting about my flat in Southwark, is that there are actually 5 doors that separate my flat from the street level which reinforces the theory that lower status housing tends to have a higher number of doors to pass through.
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The Building • ‘Poor door’ analogy What I found even more interesting is that there are other doors, locked doors, that separate our side of shared ownership and affordable housing from the other side of the building complex which is full ownership. This reinforces the idea that doors can act as dividers of social classes too which follows on from the Georgian house typology that I spoke about previously. It’s ironic that doors are often seen as a symbol of opportunity, we say when a door is open, there is an opportunity to be had, but in our case the door that connects the richer community with the poorer it literally closed and locked shut.
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The Neighbourhood • Scovell Estate, Southwark In the next area, I chose to look even further afield, at a neighbouring estate. Immediately I noticed the variety of doors, which links to Margaret Thatcher’s right to buy scheme. It’s through these doors that I began to analyse ones that were potentially council let, and privately owned through features such as door handles, leaf design and surrounding garden features.
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The Neighbourhood • Methodology & Ethics It is worth noting that the methodology for this exercise was biased. This map shows which doors within the estate I photographed, a small percentage of the total dwellings. This was down to my own judgement of which doors I felt comfortable with photographing due to them being obscured from view or the lack of permeability of the door panel. This touched upon the ethics of working. Even though the door itself is an inanimate object and there is no person in any of the photographs, it is seen as an invasion of privacy, which highlights the personal connections that all of us have with our own door, as it is essentially a point of vulnerability of our shelter.
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The City • London Borough of Southwark It’s the analysis of home ownership and social let within the estate that brings me to my next area. I first looked at how this extrapolates to Southwark at a borough level using statistical figures. From my research, housing in Southwark can be divided into 4 groups that show a particular geographical trend. As you can see, higher proportion of private rented, more expensive housing tends to be located near the riverbank. In fact 25 out of every 100 household, represented in this diagram by doors, are privately rented. The majority of households are local authority and clustered in the middle of Southwark. That’s the equivalent of 39 out of every 100 doors. In contrast, only 13 out of every 100 households are owned outright and compared to other housing types they tend to be less centrally located, towards the outer rim of the borough, bordering Bromley, an outer London borough.
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The City • Greater London It’s within these outer London boroughs were the trend seems to be reversed. Bromley for example has a higher proportion of houses owned outright. I’ve also mapped how Southwark compares to inner London boroughs, and then outer London boroughs. Even though Southwark has one of the highest proportions of social housing within London, coming second to Hackney, there is obviously still a lot to do, as the borough is ranked one of the most deprived boroughs in terms of barriers to housing.
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The City • Number of Households
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The City • United Kingdom On the scale of the United Kingdom that also includes outer-city regions, the picture is very different. Similar to the outer London boroughs just mentioned, the majority people in the UK either own their home outright or have a mortgage in the progression to eventually own. Local Authority is the least popular, which has seen a major decrease in the last 40 years. In 1979 at its peak, 42% of the population were housed in council homes.
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The Estates • Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate, Neave Brown The drawings of the following estates, including the Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate is a way of analysing them and how people interact with them. Unlike most new estates, all doors to dwellings on the Alexandra and Ainsworth estate open to the outside. Though, these are not all on ground level. The estate was completed in the 1970s, where all the craze was the ‘streets in the sky’ so doors open onto common walkways, assessible by staircases. The ziggarut design allows every dwelling to receive the maximum light and the luxury of a spacious outdoor terrace. Pedestrians are separated from cars, as the entire estate sits on stilts with an underground car-park and service yard.
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The Estates • McGrath Road, Peter Barber Peter Barber’s McGrath Road estate is a reinterpretation of the Victorian back-to-back housing typology. It has a central courtyard that references medieval London through to more recent 19th century worker housing. The courtyard is accessed by an arched entrance that references the pre-war Peabody housing. Each dwelling has a direct off-street entrance that are set in deep arched brick reveals, that create a covered, semi-private space.
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The Estates • New Ground, Pollard Thomas Edwards New Ground is a co-housing development managed by the Older Women’s Co-housing (OWCH) that houses women over the ages of 55 exclusively. It is designed around a courtyard that contains self managed gardens, allotments and crafting sheds. The range of one, two and three bed apartments all have generously sized private balconies that allow for maximum exposure of the outdoors. The light-colour brickwork harmonises with the neighbouring buildings, as does the pyramid pitched roofs to reflect the adjacent Victorian and Georgian properties. Despite being domestic scale, the development has an elevator that allows for step-free access to every apartment which is essential for older age. Been a co-housing scheme, there are shared laundry, dining and kitchen facilities are available whilst still maintaining idependence and privacy of individual apartments.
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The Estates • Burbridge Close, Peter Barber Peter Barber’s Burbridge Close is a small infill development nested between existing housing stock on the Becentree Estate in East London. It was built in the place of run-down and disused local authority garages, so it makes efficent use of space. The purpose of the infill development is to encourage elderly residents to downsize, freeing up larger under-occupied homes on the rest of the estate. The narrow off-street alley creates a space that encourages social interaction and helps defeat loneliness in the elderly. Everyone gets their own front door and front yard to give independence and sense of ownership which also draws on the traditions of the old East End of open front doors and people sitting chatting on their front door steps.
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The Ageing Population • Population over the age of 65, by ward, 2015 This map of London shows where people over the age of 65 resided as of 2015. As you can see from the darker shaded regions, more over 65s live in outer London borough wards than inner London borough wards.
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The Ageing Population • Population over the age of 65, by ward, 2030 The next map shows a projection for 2030, and as you can see, there is a growing number of over 65s across all of London. However, not all borough wards will see the same growth in its ageing population, some will inevitably see faster growth than others.
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The Ageing Population • Percentage change in population aged 65 and over, 2015-2030 What is interesting about this next map of London is that it projects it’s the inner London borough wards that will face a higher percentage change in their ageing population. Which means more emphasis needs to be put on making inner London age friendly.
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The Ageing Population • Predominant tenure of residents aged 65 and over, current There is a preconception or perhaps a stereo type that older people, particularly those over 65, own their own home, when in actual fact the areas that are projected to see the greatest increase in an ageing population, will see the over 65s predominantly in social rents which Unfortunately have all been built without the specific needs of older people in mind. You only have to look at ageing local authority estates that feature high rise towers, and multi-storey 1960s scissor design. These are unsuitable for the elderly and can often perpetuate isolation and inaccessibility. What tends to happen as we get older; children will leave their elders behind which means over 65s will live in underoccupied homes.
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The New Housing Model • Model Overview The solution that I would like to propose is a housing model that will enable the development of age-friendly infill housing on local authority estates. This would allow elderly people to stay in their local area, maintain social networks, without displacement to institutional settings such as care homes or even hospitals. This will still lead to a net increase across the estate, by freeing up the elderly’s under occupied homes and those no longer fit for purpose.
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The New Housing Model • Model Breakdown As the diagram shows, the older people currently living in the existing general needs housing stock will help co-produce the specific needs housing. Once that has been completed, they will move in, leaving their old property to be refurbished ready for it to home a new family on the housing waiting list. This housing model was one that I developed alongside my placement at Community led housing, as a response to situations where estate residents’ needs would change, but they still wanted to remain within the community. This approach is also seen as a more financially viable approach, with councils and developers constructing smaller homes, in order to free up larger ones. Lewisham, where I currently live is one of the inner London boroughs that is due to see one of the biggest percentage growths in over 65s by 2030. Lewisham is also in the top 10 of London boroughs that have the longest waiting lists for social housing, with nearly 10,000 households, many of which are families.
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The Network • Current Core Contacts Through placement at community led housing I situated myself within the practice. I was project lead on the ‘doing housing differently’ webinar series that had me reach out to relevant speakers, building a network of contacts. I also had regular contact with their expanded advisory group and other stakeholders. Through this, I was able to connect with relevant people, build a network, and speak to them specifically about my project. I have spoken to Lewisham Council about how they plan to deliver new housing through infill small sites and rcka architects who are developing the supplementary planning document specifically for small sites.
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The Anecdotes • Designing for a need Through these discussions I collected a series of anecdotes of their everyday challenges whether that be physical or social. There is a preconception in architectural design that for housing to be age friendly, there just needs to be a ramp to every door and handrails on every wall. So, I produced a series of design responses to the real-life anecdotes I was told. These include solutions to, wet rooms becoming flooded, flushing the toilet, doors being too heavy, cobwebs in the coving, cupboards being too high up and taking the bins out! Though, these may not be seen as the most practical for domestic scale with robotic dusting arms, permeable floor systems and vacuum waste disposal, I see these as a joyous, possibly utopian response, that begin to humanise the otherwise dry metric handbook and approved documents. Going forward, it is the intention that I will continue to collect anecdotes, building a catalogue of design responses that will be used to form my proposal of infill housing on the Pepys estate.
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The Anecdotes
1
“the showers in the wet rooms don’t drain and they flood the flat!” What if... there was an age friendly wet room with a permeable floor covering for the water to soak through.
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The Anecdotes
2
“the loo flushes are difficult... there’s a hole with a metal thing that you push. I find it extremely difficult for arthritic fingers. If you had a handle it would be much easier” What if... there was an age-friendly flush handle that reduced the impact and strain on arthritis sufferers.
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The Anecdotes
3
“the doors are too heavy for some of the women to open!” What if... there were age-friendly doors that automatically opened when you stepped on a biometric pressure pad.
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The Anecdotes
4
“there always seems to be some cobwebs in the coving that I always seem to miss, and it’s an exhausting job to get them...” What if... there were robotic dusting arms that could dust hard to reach spaces on the push of a button.
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The Anecdotes
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“the top shelves in the cupboards are too high up for me to reach, I have to get the stool out to stand on, which your dad goes mad about incase I fall off!” What if... there were age-friendly wall mounted cupboards that can have their height adjusted to suit the user.
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The Anecdotes
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“taking the rubbish out is a bit of a pain, especially when the weather’s a bit bleak... and then having to drag the wheelie bin up the drive!” What if... there was an age-friendly way to take out the rubbish by having an in-house vacuum waste disposal unit.
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The Microcosm • The Pepys Estate The Pepys Estate in North Lewisham contains around 1,400 dwellings, with 80% of these being social rents, whilst the remaining 20% are private leaseholders, sold off through right-tobuy. Once an old naval yard, the 11 acre site was sold to London County council for housing in 1958. The estate has seen several interventions over its course, most severely seeing large parts of the estate demolished in the last 20 years, to be replaced by affordable tenure blind blocks managed by Hyde Housing Association. Another notable scheme was the sale of Aragon tower to Berkley homes in 2002, losing 144 council homes purely for the private housing market.
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Above: View of The Pepys Estate from my window in Surrey Quays, looking south. (Own photos) 86
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Above: Aerial view of The Pepys Estate and surrounding area Right: 3D view of The Pepys Estate and surrounding area (Google)
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The Microcosm • Surrounding Developments Positioned close to the border between Lewisham and Southwark, the Pepys estate is currently being sandwiched between several large-scale developments. The Canada water development is seeing the construction of over 3000 dwellings, Deptford timber yard over 1000, and the largest being convoys wharf with 3500. Many of these new homes are 1- and 2-bedroom flats that are being marketed at young professionals with its close connections to the city and canary wharf and doesn’t meet the needs of the Pepys estate or Lewisham that require family homes, and those accessible for the ageing population. It runs the risk of causing gentrification.
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The Microcosm • Local Amenities / 20-Minute City “Around the world there is growing interest in creating places in which most of people’s daily needs can be met within a short walk or cycle. The benefits of this approach are multiple: people become more active, improving their mental and physical health; traffic is reduced, and air quality improved; local shops and businesses thrive; and people see more of their neighbours, strengthening community bonds.” This is especially important for older people, who may be unable to travel far distances for essential services. This has become essential during the Covid-19 pandemic when going outside and travelling far from home is daunting to older people due to the fear of infection. Having local amenities closer to home also may reduce the risk of slips, trips and falls that are more common in older people.
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Above: Lanyard House Right: Clement House, Pendennis House, Bence House (Own photos)
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The Microcosm • Tenant and Residents Association The estate has a very community-led approach about it, with each block being represented by a tenant and resident association. These are all represented collectively by Everest Deptford that is a resident steering forum for Lewisham council’s Evelyn Ward. Some of these even have active twitter feeds to ensure their voices are heard by the council.
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The Microcosm • Potential Care Home Displacement The housing model that I have proposed intends to reduce the displacement of older residents to care homes and hospital settings. The diagram shows the potential displacement of current residents of The Pepys Estate to care homes, which can often be very far away from their current home. This means that these people can become isolated and lonely as they are too far away from their local network.
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The Microcosm • Potential Sites Though there are no official small sites currently allocated within the estate, Lewisham council prioritise the development of infill housing on the sites of old local authority garages and car parks to begin with. With the car culture been at its peak in the UK in the 1960s, the Pepys estate was designed with the car at mind, meaning that there are many potential sites for development, which you can begin to see from the mapping and the photograph.
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The Gratification
1
“Many housing schemes have a long, long, long corridor with door, door, door. No windows, nothing. It would be very difficult to meet anyone.” What if... every flat had a window into the corridor to promote interaction with neighbours to help defeat isolation and loneliness?
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The Gratification
2
“cold water swimming may protect the brain from degenerative diseases like dementia, researchers from Cambridge University have discovered” What if... every new specific built home for the ageing had access to an ice bath?
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The Gratification
3
“Food produced on urban allotments could form the basis for economic regeneration with older residents as the main drivers through a process of bartering and exchange.” What if... some green spaces were reappropriated as urban allotments?
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The Gratification
4
“Just because you reach a certain age, doesn’t mean you don’t want to have fun anymore. How can we challenge stereotypes of age-appropriate spaces?” What if... the riverside youth club became a nighttime venue reserved for older residents for one night?
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The Gratification
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“A Repair, Re-use and up-cycling centre that could provide older people with simultaneous experiences for work, play and learning in the heart of the community.” What if... the disused neighbourhood office became a productive centre of remaking and repair to promote ageing enterprise?
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Appendix • ‘Designing for a Need’ and ‘Designing for a Desire’ narratives The following diagrams map the time, scale and the initiators of the ‘what if’ design scenarios. Within the Extended Project Brief, each scenario is accompanied by a short narrative, numbered I-XI, which are told by urban actors of older residents who will experience them and collaborators who help make them happen.
See Full Extended Project Brief here:
Designing for a Need
Designing for a Desire
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Appendix • Network & Placement Diagrams The following diagrams draw upon the connections that I made throughout my placement at Community Led Housing London. Connections were accelerated due to myself leading on the ‘Doing Housing Differently’ webinar series in November 2020. Screenshots from these sessions can be seen below.
See Full Placement Research Report here:
