Reflections for future practice and thinking

REFLECTIONS FOR FUTURE PRACTICE AND THINKING EXHIBITION TALKS AND ROUNDTABLE Dhruv Sookhoo, Elanor Warwick and Neil Deely

“A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA” ... SOMEWHERE ...

PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA

FOREWORD

REFLECTIONS ON A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA Metropolitan Workshop has been committed to thinking critically about how innovative forms of suburban housing and neighbourhoods can enable greater sociability and liveability since our inception in 2004. So, when we launched our programme of practice-based research in 2019, selecting suburbia as our first research theme felt like a natural starting point.

A New Kind of Suburbia, sought to do many things, reflecting our varied interests as architects, urban designers and researchers.

We value collaboration, and envisaged our research programme as a dialogue between designers, developers, and policy-makers, intended to refine our long-term thinking and doing in relation to emerging, pertinent practice topics. We intended A New Kind of Suburbia to offer room to think more deeply about our shared work with collaborators in relation to suburban placemaking, and by doing so enrich our creative endeavour within the practice. With an expanding portfolio of suburban projects across our busy London and Dublin studios, the need to critically evaluate our design thinking in relation to emerging social issues felt particularly pressing. We recognised that while most people in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland continue to live in suburban places, suburbia is ill-defined and the varied experiences and aspirations of suburbanites are commonly takenfor-granted by the housing market. We anticipated that through our research project we would better understand the challenges faced by existing and new suburban residents, and be well-positioned to create design-led responses, able to harness social and technological innovations to improve resident’s quality of life.

This document, Reflection for Future Practice and Thinking, is a companion to our practice publication, Prospects One: A New Kind of Suburbia, published to coincide with the launch of our exhibition and event series in London (16 May 2019)1. Our exhibition captured our initial thoughts on suburbia and those of collaborators. Our practice publication, reviewed existing policy and academic literature related to suburbia, and featured contributions by leading architecture studios, including: Levitt Bernstein, Studio Partington, Sarah Wigglesworth Architects, and Proctor Matthews Architects.

Contributions produced by colleagues within the practice, included reflections on past and ongoing suburban projects, and most interestingly, their consideration of how their formative experiences of suburbia shape their 2

design intent as practitioners.

This collection of exemplar projects and perspectives on suburban development grounded provocations by expert practitioners during the exhibition launch event. Taken together, our exhibits and the provocations they contextualise served as a resource for a stimulating and wide-ranging roundtable with invited practitioners and academics with an interest in suburban housing (11 June 2019). Discussion focused on the potential of future suburban places to address emerging social challenges through better approaches to design, development, construction, and management.

Here, we present a record of invited exhibition talks by David Birkbeck (Chief Executive Officer, Design for Homes), Peter Freeman (Non-Executive Director, Argent), Mark Latham (Director of Regeneration, Urban Splash) and Gus Zogolovitch (Founder and CEO, Unboxed Homes) pp. 4-13. This is followed by analysis of our roundtable discussion prepared in collaboration with Dr. Elanor Warwick (Head of Strategic Policy and Research, Clarion) pp. 14-23. It documents practical themes that emerged from a conversation with leading experts, intended to develop our thinking about suburban design, development, and management practices, and with implications for our ongoing design and research practice.

Reflections for Future Practice and Thinking, documents a midpoint in our first research project. Our London exhibition continued into the Clerkenwell Design Week (ending 23 May 2019), and the Studio Lates as part of the London Festival of Architecture (07 June 2019). Our Dublin studio initiated an examination of suburbia in the context of the Republic of Ireland led by Jonny McKenna (Director, Dublin Studio) and Denise Murray (Senior Architect), leading to the launch of a partner exhibition to coincide with the Irish Architecture Foundation’s 2019 Open House Dublin (11 - 13 October 2019)2-3. In addition to displaying best practice via exhibition, we committed to disseminating expert perspectives on past and future models of suburban development to reach new audiences, e.g. published interviews in international architecture journals4-5. In early 2021, we published an evaluation of research project alongside leading, international practitioner-researchers working within urban design6. This reflection considering how best to refine our approach to undertaking future practice-based research as we incorporate new themes, as well as

Words by Neil Deely Co-Founder and Partner, Metropolitan Workshop

evaluating the practical implications of our findings for designing future suburban places.

On a personal note, it has given me great pleasure to see A New Kind of Suburbia extend our shared vision for architecture and urbanism into the process of research. I founded Metropolitan Workshop to enable more collaborative, critical ways of creating buildings and places. So, it is apt that our research process has seen our own work assembled and displayed alongside the work of peers we have long admired. It is also fitting that our research design was geared towards the generation of ideas through critique and creative exchange. As I am often reminded, this inclusive approach to dissemination and research often leaves loose ends. But I feel the approach we adopt also generates the new collaborative networks and practice ideas best placed to address emerging real world problems. I anticipate that to be at its most productive and applied, practice-based research, like design processes, comes with no neat full stops. We continue to refine our ideas about suburbia, through discussion, publication and most importantly, the act of design. I am sure the ideas that were generated and challenged during A New Kind of Suburbia will have a positive impact on how we collaborate in the creation of new suburban places. Beyond the theme of suburbia, I hope that the knowledge we have gained as a practice about how to conduct research will refine our continuing research programme and enable further collaboration within and outside our practice.

Lastly, I would like to thank all those that made our project possible. All external contributors who supported the development of A New Kind of Suburbia. A full list of external contributors that have supported this stage of the programme can be found at the end of the paper. I am also grateful to John O’Mahony (Director, O’Mahony Architects), Michael Pike (Director, GKMP architects), Joe Brady (Associate Professor, School of Geography, UCD), Eddie Conroy (County Architect, South Dublin County Council) and Brian Moran (Senior Managing Director, Hines), for their contributions to events held in our Dublin studio.

Dhruv Sookhoo, Neil Deely and Gareth Bansor, A New Kind of Suburbia (Prospect 1) (London: Metropolitan Workshop, 2019).

2 Jonny McKenna, Denise Murray and Neil Deely, A New Kind of Suburbia (Prospect 1) (Dublin Version) (Dublin: Metropolitan Workshop, 2019).

3 Jonny McKenna (2019) “The Homestead: the basic building block of a new type of suburbia”, in RIAI Journal, November/ December 2019, iss. 308., p.35.

4 David Prichard and Dhruv Sookhoo (2019) “Recalling Milton Keynes: visions of suburbia,” in Architectural Research Quarterly, vol. 23, iss. 3, pp.288–295. doi: 10.1017/ S1359135519000344.

5 Latham, M. and Sookhoo, D. (2019) “New suburbia, now: The possibilities of modular construction,” Architectural Research Quarterly, vol.23, iss. 2, pp. 195–200. doi: 10.1017/ S1359135519000253 6 Dhruv Sookhoo. 2019. “Reflections on A New Kind of Suburbia,” Urban Design Group Journal, iss. 157, January 2021.

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EXHIBITION TALKS

LAUNCH EVENT A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA We invited Peter Freeman (Argent), David Birkbeck (Design for Homes), Mark Latham (Urban Splash) and Gus Zogolovitch (Unboxed Homes) to offer ten minute propositions on the future of suburbia to launch our exhibition, stimulate conversation during the evening, and create a context for the later roundtable.

Following an introduction to the project

by Neil Deely, Birkbeck reflected on his experience reviewing submissions to the Housing Design Awards, observing a progressive shift towards denser forms of suburban development among exemplar housing schemes. He related this change to altering perceptions among residents of what constitutes privacy and amenity within suburban developments. This appetite among consumers for suburban innovation was contrasted with the potential for developers to be doubtful about the popularity and saleability of more pioneering house types relative to more conventional forms.

Freeman examined his formative experiences of suburbia and professional experiences as a developer, to argue the liveability stems from an easily, walkable access to a range of different types of uses is essential to realise the social potential of new settlements. His concept of critical mass is applied to the proposed market town of Mayfield, MidSussex and the regeneration of King’s Cross, London. Freeman identified the need for developers to invest in creating the social networks necessary to form and sustain communities within new developments, and connect the business plan to the vision proposed in the masterplan to realise the social potential of urban and suburban places.

Urban Splash’s hybrid approach to internal customisation of suburban types and their attention to placemaking achieves forms of suburbia geared towards consumer choice, efficiency through standardisation, and sensitivity to local character. The potential of these innovations to advance the form and social potential of suburbia are explored in greater detail in a subsequent interview.1 Zogolovitch described how a market for planning applications reduces opportunities for self-builders, and how the imperative to generate profit has potential to reduce consumer choice. He argues constrained choice in dominant speculative housing markets supresses design and construction quality across the entire housing sector. He contrasts speculative developer attitudes towards long-term design and construction quality with that of self-builders, who are likely to invest considerable resources in the generation of more varied forms of value, with positive outcomes for energy efficiency and social outcomes less readily measured.

Zogolovitch argues that if more consumers had the opportunity to undertaken self-build or customisation, then the levels of quality in speculative development would have to rise to meet competition. He posits a self-build suburbia would be more likely to reflect the actual lifestyles of those living and working within it. Zogolovitch relating this to the social potential of pioneering consumerled developments that seek to reinterpret ailing or compromised forms of public and commercial provision to offer greater choice within the wider neighbourhood.

A full record of their contribution is presented below.

Dhruv Sookhoo and Mark Latham. ‘New Suburbia, Now: Quality and Choice through Modular Construction’, in arq (Architecture Research Quarterly) vol. 23, iss. 2, in press.

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Latham described a tendency for the suburbia produced through speculative development processes to result in sameness.

He drew on Osbert Lancaster’s satirical suburban style of bypass variegated, to claim that continuity of development processes has resulted in nondescript places since the inter-war period. Latham concludes that

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PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA

EXHIBITION TALKS

WELCOME! WHY SUBURBIA NOW? Arguably, there is no greater threat to our society than the failure to provide more inclusive access to better quality housing. Housing plays a central role in providing equality of opportunity and is part of levelling the playing field for all aspects of life. Our question is: does the twentieth century model of suburbia still serve the socio-economic and cultural challenges confronting people today, whether in terms of type, tenure and environmental impact? Or, is there a need for A New Kind of Suburbia, one that better supports community, by promoting new forms of tenure, affordability, durability and offers scalability without sameness?

Our work as a practice is built on the legacy of some very fine thinking from the leaders in the field, our friends and mentors: David Prichard and the late Sir Richard MacCormac. The values and insight that informed their proposals for sustainable suburbia and our shared response to the interplay between density and community evidenced in our dial-a-density idea for the RIBA/ Wates 2013 competition, perhaps show that thoughtful responses to suburbia is our DNA1-2. Our recent projects, including Oakfield in Swindon for the Nationwide Building Society, have continued to reflect on and hopefully address what sociable, socially equitable models of suburbia might be like.

Beyond Metropolitan Workshop’s practice, there is a growing number of good examples of suburban housing model to learn form in across the country. These inspire us, but we are aware there are nowhere near enough of these projects to see the innovation and change required to have suburbia realise its full social potential. Perhaps, now is the time to review and update the concept that the United Kingdom first invented?

Richard MacCormac, ‘Sustainable Suburbia’, in Planning in London, iss. 61 (April-June 2007), pp. 32-36.

2 RIBA Competitions. Flexibili-T: Housing in the Private Rental Market: Ideas Competition (London: Wates/ RIBA Competitions, 2013).

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Words by Neil Deely Co-Founder and Partner, Metropolitan Workshop

EXHIBITION TALKS

PRIVACY IN HIGHER DENSITY HOUSING: SNAPSHOTS FROM THE HOUSING DESIGN AWARDS MY PRESENTATION CONCERNS PRIVACY IN HIGH DENSITY HOUSING. My ideas come from analysing entries to the Housing Design Awards, and insight from research between 2001 and 2003 to explore what housing would be like after responding to PPG3 (Planning Policy Guidance 3, 2000).1 We used to work to a series of strange rules that limited density. Developers used to work on the basis that anything above 12,000 sq ft to the acre was unsaleable. Many developers thought it was inappropriate to build more than 10 homes to the acre. There were planning rules with strange origins, such as Tudor Walters 1919 by an aristocratic liberal lord. He used a team of people in 1918 who tried to work out what’s the appropriate distance between the windows of a couple of dwellings. They came up with an answer.

It is the distance at which you can no longer see a woman’s nipple from one window to the next. We are still living with that and, funnily enough, so are the Irish. We have some strange rules, slowly being altered and broken.

This is an award winner from about 1998 [Figure 2]. It was at a time when everything was BB32, now I’m going onto 32 layouts, everything had a hammerhead, everything came off the local distributor road and then you went down into one cul-de-sac that would never connect with other cul-de-sacs.

And they were all designed for bin lorries.

But this was 12,000 sq ft to the acre, and was popular. It still is popular! A model that was chosen for a series of strange rules.

This is a scheme from 2004 [Figure 3]. The first thing you notice is there is something that looks like an orthogonal block. That was exciting for the judges at the time. An orthogonal housing block was revolutionary.

It even had connected terraces, and buildings that turned corners.

We start to see the houses without the gardens always at the back, always to the front, and nothing to the side. Suddenly you have ‘L plan’ houses, it’s created a courtyard garden. Again quite radical.

About 2005-2006 [Figure 4] this came along. I remember seeing the masterplan, and thought it had been printed wrongly.

It was so different to everything else at the time. Everything was straight except for the path that feeds through. But there were other things going on we had never seen before. There were spaces outside. Suddenly the private amenity space was being incorporated within the plan at a higher level within the house. We discovered with that privacy and density research was what people did in private outdoor space. It is not what they used to do.

Here’s another one [Figure 5a,b&c]. A winner from 2008. Same year so something was happening. All these ideas take root in various places at the same time. This practice has become almost obsessed with these ideas and I am grateful for it because it gives us lots of award winners. This is a scheme in a humdrum place, the Cambridge Fens, and this is a radical housing scheme for that market. It’s courtyard houses with the outdoor space at first floor coming off the bedrooms. A very private space. And increasingly private gardens at ground floor.

A scheme called Hereward Hall built for the Guinness Trust, designed by Proctor and Matthews.

Nowadays, people practice Tai Chi, their golf swing. They read newspapers in their underwear. What they asked for when interviewed was private outdoor space. That often means nothing at the ground floor, but the upper level, and you have an example of that here. Same year so something was happening. [Figure 6].

This is Accordia [Figure 7], and I am grateful to Paul Drew who is in the audience. He let all the Irish into his house yesterday.2 We all clambered all over its private spaces and we were impressed. You can see the way they are incorporated within the footprint. It has three different levels with private outdoor space.

Two of them at upper level. It looked like the most private place we saw, even though the scheme is high density.

Words by David Birkbeck Chief Executive Officer, Design for Homes

This came along at the same time [Figure 8] and was canned, because they took it to CABE and asked them: “what do you think of this?” And they were… threatened essentially.

“If you ever build anything like this, we will tell how awful it is.” This is the Berkeley Urban House. It isn’t good. I think CABE were right but you can see again something strange is happening here. You are looking at a townhouse with private amenity space on the roof. The problem is it’s very narrow and you get no daylight into most rooms. So they redesigned it. They are building them in large numbers at a factory on the south side of the Thames. I wouldn’t be surprised if you see several thousands of these built in London every year. The whole idea is they are very narrow, deep plan houses with light getting in through the roof of the bedrooms. You’ve got stairwells that help illuminate the backs of the properties. They are not perfect. One of the problems of a narrow townhouse is you have nowhere to put the downstairs toilet using the new regulations, so it always goes in the worst place. But when you get up to the private space at the top, it’s very attractive, very private and you can imagine getting a kick out of having this. It’s far more private than any kind of garden.

This is the final example [Figure 9a&b].

This is the one the Irish are fascinated by.

It’s three bits of a single block, so you have three different types of house. You have some substantial ones, but I am going to talk about smaller ones. These are typically up to about 3,500 sq ft and these are about 2,500 sq ft.

The ones down the middle are exactly 151 sq m. These are very intriguing. It’s in a new street. It’s six, one road between the other two roads, you walk around the front and you find the doors. You come round the back, you find garages. You look up and there is a parapet up there. Not entirely sure what’s behind it. You look at the plans. They are modified from the original which apparently when it was designed by Proctor and Matthews, the agents said: “don’t even think about moving that, they will never sell”. They were something like 15 of the first 20 units

that sold. They were the most popular. All the members of the public that went to see these, just decided that was the house for them.

The big idea was this terrace serving the combination living-dining at first floor level.

And these two very private terraces almost like a his and a hers, for a pair of sharers. The bathrooms in the middle act like a kind of acoustic break.

So revisited. This is how they now sell them in Countryside’s literature. Bizarrely they have used one of the actual views expressed that we got at an interview when doing our density research. Countryside are saying: “It’s the terrace, a first rate place to chill out.”

Several of the people we interviewed talked about having private balconies and gardens which were places to chill out. So clearly they’ve decided to exploit that. You can see how it works. These are extraordinarily popular houses. It’s something that works very well for renting out to a couple of separate people coming together.

So, back to the rules. Housebuilders used to have this idea that 12,000 sq ft was good.

Now most of the house builders will operate one product like 15,000 sq ft to the acre, another 16,000 sq ft to the acre. The coverage rate for these houses is 44,000 sq ft to the acre. So they are potentially trebling their money when they build this type of product.

There are not many reasons why developers throw everything in the bin and start again other than trebling their money. It’s a very good idea, which a lot of people are very excited about.

Images below (left to right) Figure 2, Figure 3, Figure 4, Figure 5a: Hereward Hall

by Proctor and Matthews Architects

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PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA

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Images below (clockwise from top) Figure 5b: Lime Tree Square by FCB Studios, Figure 7 Accordia Townhouse by FCB Studios, Figure 8 Berkley Urban House, Figure 5c

Images below: Figure 9a&b: Great Kneighton Townhouse by Proctor and Matthews Architects

Ground Floor

First Floor

Second Floor

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PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA

EXHIBITION TALKS

HOW DO WE DELIVER NEW SETTLEMENTS WITH THE CRITICAL MASS NECESSARY TO DELIVER THE SOCIAL POTENTIAL OF A NEW MARKET TOWN? Hampstead, Cricklewood, Holland Park I feel half-qualified for this evening. I was born in suburbia, on the edge of trendy Hampstead, and untrendy Cricklewood. It’s probably very trendy now. I cannot compete with many of you who talk about the design of individual, or groups of buildings. But what I spend some time thinking about: what brings people together, what creates a cluster, and a critical mass able to change the value of a place. It all started for me in suburbia. Yet, I don’t think I have ever done a building in suburbia.

I used to walk to school when I was five, which doesn’t happen very much anymore.

My mother used to cross the road opposite our house with me, and then I would walk around the corner, and the lollipop man would hold out the lollipop, and I would go to school. That is what most five year olds did then, and it created a sense of independence.

On the way back, I could stop at the sweet shop and get gobstoppers. That was a great aspect of life.

I spent most of my adult life around Holland Park. In some ways this area demonstrates the best characteristics of suburbia, because it is dense enough that people can walk to school, it has shops and cinemas. It’s no coincidence this is the most expensive borough in the country, and the most densely built.

Mayfield Market Town, Mid-Sussex A starting point for me is if you have a home within walking distance from different nearby places, the better off you are, and this implies density. This is Mayfield, which I hope one day will be a garden town. [Figure 10].

You always have some heritage whether it is a greenfield site or King’s Cross. Heritage is a mixed bag of advantages and disadvantages.

It makes one place different from another.

You work with heritage, because it gives you the canalside or a listed building. It means you can’t just layout buildings in a row.

That’s the part heritage plays in design and development.

This is the heritage for Mayfield. It looks like gorgeous farmland. But it’s barely farmed at all. It is used for hay. In the middle of all this, I discovered this is where most of the iron was made for canons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The wood was cut for ships. So, what is perceived as rural and pretty, was quite industrial in a different age. Three streams fun through it, which 8

were being used to barge the wood down to Shoreham harbour.

What is the logic of making a place like Mayfield? I focus on things which are big enough to create their own critical mass.

That relies on fitting into the big picture.

If you are not somewhere in relation to an airport, or a teaching hospital, you are kind of nowhere. This is an area called the Gatwick Diamond [Figure 11], between Croydon to Brighton. The Government will probably announce shortly that this is the second growth corridor, after Cambridge. It’s got a motorway. It’s got the southern railway line.

It’s got beautiful areas, like the South Downs, and sea. There’s something for everybody.

Three railway towns are close by, Haywards Heath, Burgess Hill and Hassocks.

But Mayfield is not a railway town. How can you be sustainable if you are not a railway town? The answer is you have to have enough education facilities, health facilities and jobs so you can travel within the neighbourhood.

Who wants to pay the financial cost of commuting? Where both partners work, it is important that at least one of them works near home.

The first problem to overcome to create a new workable community is can it support a senior school? If it can’t, then hundreds of people are exiting every morning, quite probably in a parental car. Around 7,000 homes justify a secondary school. Or if there is an established village, maybe a new community adds around 3,000 or 4,000.

You can begin to create a good high street on surprisingly few shops. I go quite often to a lovely high street, and it has that despite having only 3,000 homes, because it’s nicer than other places nearby. It has a surprisingly huge car park in the middle as I discovered. It is transformed into a market and becomes an attractive place. Although high streets up and down the country are facing decline, if you make an attractive place 7,000 homes should support it.

That’s a masterplan at the moment [Figure 12], talking about what the grain gives you.

It is shaped by the tributary of the river Ada. We have planned for three linear parks. One park accommodates a gas main and you can’t build on it. There is always a reason that drives things, and you work with it. The project includes a traditional town centre [Figure 13]. We defined it as a market town.

They are more interesting and more attractive

than what is around them. It’s where you do business and meet mates. We also thought spa towns, because market towns generally grew up over five hundred or a thousand years. Whereas spa towns happen because there was suddenly a point in the eighteenth century when there was the money for them.

Most of the spa towns have big open spaces, because they were about promoting healthy living. Healthy living is linked to reasonably high densities and the ability to walk to a mix uses.

King’s Cross, London From Kings Cross, one of the most important lessons, because we own the whole 67 acres (8,000,000 sq. ft.), ten public open spaces, it made sense to curate events from early on, concerts, yoga things, whatever. Communities need help to establish. Maybe in the old days when the community was centred on the church, and there were a few hundred people who knew each other and were interrelated, community didn’t need as much help. Today you need some kind of owner.

I’m not totalitarian about it. But somebody who is going to partly pay and put out the message that things are happening. It also goes to the type of retailer. If you control a bigger area – that’s this slide – you can mix and match between people who pay high rents and people who have some other form of value [Figure 14]. You cannot do that if you own a single building. One of the big questions for suburbia is: if you wanted to densify all around the tube station, say about six or seven stops outside the centre, is the government going to give CPO status so you can amass enough land to change things?

People enjoying themselves there [Figure 15]. It’s an interesting mix and match of expenditure. We spent about £70,000 per granite bench and there are eight of them in the square. Then we bought cane chairs for about nine quid each which do the job at least as well as the expensive benches. This is possible because we control the whole of King’s Cross. Although, in suburbia it is harder to do some of those things because it’s more spread out. There is a relationship between how much you can do, and, how much land you control.

Four pillars of integrity [Figure 16]. Sounds a bit poncey. I think if you just do the masterplan or you just do the business plan, or you just do a joint venture agreement or you just put the ownership together, you don’t really have it [integrity] unless you have all of it. If you want to create something on a large

Words by Peter Freeman Co-Founder and Non-Executive Director, Argent

scale, it probably means that different owners have to become shareholders. So you’ve got to create a vehicle in which they have some liquidity. A vehicle that has governance that means they are not going to be in dispute the whole time and the scheme stops. You need a business plan that reflects the masterplan.

That’s what anchors and helps realise the vision.

Images below (top to bottom) Figure 10: Mayfield site boundary Figure 12: Mayfield Masterplan Figure 13: Mayfield Town Centre - Early Phases

BEFORE WE STARTED MAYFIELDS

MAYFIELDS’ TOWN CENTRE EARLY PHASES

Images below (clockwise from top) Figure 14 King’s Cross, Figure 11 Gatwick Diamond, Figure 16 Four Pillars of Integrity, Figure 15 King’s Cross.

STRATEGIC LOCATION – GATWICK DIAMOND

MASTERPLAN

OWNERSHIP

HOLISTIC APPROACH

GOVERNANCE

BUSINESS PLAN 9

PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA

EXHIBITION TALKS

HOW DO WE AVOID THE SUBURBIA OF SAMENESS TO DELIVER SCHEMES THAT DELIVER AND EXPRESS GENUINE CONSUMER CHOICE? I WANT TO TELL YOU about Urban Splash’s work in modular and how that might turn into something interesting in the suburban context. I thought I would start with this slide: Osbert Lancaster’s book Pillar to Post, a fantastically witty pre-war book which characterises in one page and one sketch architecture [Figure 17] from the dawn of time to modernism. If you don’t know it, I recommend you find a copy.3 This is about “Bypass Variegated”, the speculative inter-war arterial road development. He says: “If an architect of enormous energy, painstaking ingenuity and great structural knowledge, had devoted years of his life to the study of the problem of how best to achieve the maximum of inconvenience, in the shape and arrangement under one roof of a stated number of rooms, and had had the assistance of a corps of research workers ransacking architectural history for the least attractive materials and building devices ... it is just possible... that he might have evolved a style as crazy as that with which the speculative builder, with no expenditure of mental energy at all, has enriched the landscape on either side of our great arterial roads.”

The quality of suburbia is not a new problem.

Another reflection is that when we talk critically about suburbia, what kind of suburbia are we thinking about? About beautiful garden city suburbia which has lots of enormous positives? Or are we thinking about volume- builder suburbia, “Nowhereville”. The sort of place that most of us would feel quite troubled to find ourselves living in. There is a huge range in between those kinds of suburbia.

We are a baby in volume-building and suburban development. Our name says it all, Urban Splash. We are now thinking hard about Suburban Splash as a brand!

We expended a lot of energy developing a modular house and the headlines have emphasised the factory-built nature of the homes. But we started not with a construction technology, but with a set of principles about what we wanted to offer. It 10

was more about space, light, high ceilings.

And particularly about consumer choice in layouts. So instead of buying a set of rooms you could buy space and then adapt it.

From that set of principles came the idea to generate it through a factory process. That agenda off-site manufacturing agenda has gained a huge amount of steam in the last few years. The stars are aligning. We want choice. So how do we avoid the suburbia of sameness? Volumetric off-site manufactured homes offers the consumer the opportunity to configure their house as they want.

This is more about the technology of how it’s assembled on-site. Have a look at our website.4 It has a configurator you can play with, a consumer experience, choosing and designing your own house. It is a simple five-by-ten box you can stack in two or three storeys. It is a terrace typology. You can decide if your living space is on the ground or upper floor. You can define how rooms are laid out. Within prespecified configurations we developed it so you could do multiple configurations. We thought that might generate “choice fatigue”. So we limited it, but you can have 72 configurations out of one box.

The internal configuration of that same set of spaces can allow all sorts of different lifestyles, household formations and choices about changing it over time. You can start with a big open plan 1,500 sq. ft. one bedroom house if you want with no internal walls other than the bathroom. Everything else can be open plan. Then as you go, you can cellularise. For children, another partner or if polygamy is your thing?

The point is you can change, and you can change back from more cells to less. Whatever suits your lifestyle. It can be a gay couple that has a massive bar installed on the top floor as in one of our houses in Manchester.

That means less normative households in a suburban location. It means any family or household can choose how they live.

The second issue we are grappling with is how best to standardise and rationalise to achieve efficiency through construction and technology. There is a tension between

variety and specificity. We are working with Stephen and Proctor and Matthews Architects, and Neil and Metropolitan Workshop, as to how that works in a masterplan context whether it is in Northstowe, Cambridge [Prospects 01 pp.35], or Campbell Park, in Milton Keynes [Prospects 01 pp.37-39].

How do you use a standard set of typologies in a locally sensitive way? One of the answers is how you elevate it and the materiality and the colours you use. We are doing a lot of r&d to develop systems that respond to that while being standardized.

Our first four schemes are similar in their planning approach and we recognise that needs to change.

The third point is about how you place houses together. Are they in crescents, are they semi-detached or, can they be detached? This is a project in Birmingham we are developing. These are two storey versions of this three storey house. Just off the picture here there is another set of standardised typologies. So forming the wider neighbourhood with a series of different types, and developing a family of types that work together, fit together, turn corners together, or vary the streetscape.

We developed, with shedkm, a prototype called Row House, which is a version of House. It is a narrower footprint and a smaller square footage. It is still efficient and rational. The choice is whether you have a two storey one, a two and a half storey, so a half third storey with a terrace, or a full third story. We have talked to planners about whether they could live with the idea that they don’t specify in a street whether it is a two or a three storey. You end up with a variegated streetscape. It’s about developing a set of standardised typologies which can be configured together to make interesting and varied streetscapes.

Then the final thing is a wider masterplanning point. It picks up on what Peter’s [Freeman] remarks. Responding to the specific, wider context of landscape, topography, history – those things provide rich ways to place standard types into

Words by Mark Latham Development Director, Urban Splash

a context which ends up looking very specific and feels like a place which isn’t just nowhereville.

Again, the work we are doing with Metropolitan Workshop, on those two sites are illustrative of that attitude. With Andy and Stephen [at Proctor Matthews] in Northstowe we are using the inspiration of some of the archaeology of fenland defensive settlements that are ringed and sit on gravel ground raised up from the marshy fenland.

It’s amazing to reinterpret that. Whereas in Campbell Park, Milton Keynes, somewhere you think all the history has been erased, there is a big, mature, hedgerow on a greenfield site in the centre of Milton Keynes and it is an ancient Roman way. If you look hard enough you can find threads to create somewhere specific even though you may using modular off site manufactured types.

Finally a reason to be extremely positive.

Hopefully for the whole industry. We have announced a partnership with the world’s largest housebuilder, Sekisui House, a Japanese builder. They produce 45,000 homes off-site a year. All bespoke. They are light years ahead. They have found a way to be specific and bespoke, efficient and standardised. Not all of those lessons will be applicable. We have our own ways of doing things. One of the reasons Sekisui have chosen to partner with us, is because they recognise they can’t enter a market as mature and complex as the UK by cutting and pasting their Japanese model. It took them 10 years to unravel their Japaneseness and to find an Australian way of doing things for example.

It is an interesting and exciting moment for us, for the industry, there is a massive amount of learning to be derived from people who have found ways to be specific and standardised.

Image opposite Figure 17: Bypass Variegated by Osbert Lancaster

The quality of suburbia is not a new problem.

11

PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA

EXHIBITION TALKS

SELF-BUILD SUBURBIA: WHAT ROLE COULD NICHE DEVELOPERS PLAY IN THE ROLE OF SUBURBAN DEVELOPMENT?

Words by Gus Zogolovitch Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Unboxed Homes

Figure 18b: Cutaway axonometric illustrating the triple height void

MY GRANDPARENTS LIVED IN THE SUBURBS, so I spent a lot of time in Mill Hill, sitting in the back of my Dad’s car as he drove around. Occasionally he made an emergency stop to point out some strange site, while I was reading my comic. I am going to talk about self-build, custom build, and customer choice.

How many of you own a house built in the last ten years?

OK, so we are all, unless there are some gate crashers, in the property business. We all talk about property - new build, but none of us expects or wants, except for a few, to live in new build. How many of us would like to build their own home? So that is not unusual. This is what the surveys point to, that what is built is not what any of us want to buy. Yet, all of us want to build our own new homes, because new build can be brilliant.

It can be energy efficient, layout can work, design can work.

It can reflect who you are and yet we are down to less than 10,000 people a year doing it.

Across Europe, Australia and America, the number of people that self-build delivers around 40-45 per cent of their new build housing. We are delivering about 7 per cent in England.

It goes up to about 10 per cent if you include Scotland. They have more land.

We have to build another million homes. Each year we build only 150,000. One of the big arguments is let’s do something in the suburbs, let’s densify them. My thinking is around making sure we build homes you want to live in. There is no demand for homes no one wants.

12

One of the big problems is what I call the misalignment of incentives. First of all, it’s the money. When I go and buy a site, I have to convince the bank, the investors, and the landowner that I have the money. If I have the money, great. But the people that are putting money in are looking for a financial return. They do not care necessarily about the quality. You say we want to spend a bit more on bigger windows, higher quality flooring. They say: “Is that going to give me more money? Is that going to deliver me a better financial return?

They are driven by financial incentive. If we want good quality homes, we must think about it in a different way. I built my own home [Figure 18a,b,c]. I was lucky. I bought a little site at auction no one else wanted. It had been through planning, gone to appeal and failed. It took two years to get planning, and then another two to find a builder...because I got my Dad involved. Bad idea! He made the design complicated.

All the builders said: “I’m out.” I had to go to Germany, to a bespoke manufacturer. They built the shell and when the shell was up the builders would walk around and say: “OK, now I understand it.” It took five years from when I bought my plot to the day I moved in. When I bought my plot I had a girlfriend. When I moved in I had a wife (same person), one kid and one on the way. There are so many of us who want self-build, but it is really hard.

What I noticed about myself and the reason I am so interested in self-build is, because when it came to making decisions about a material, size of the windows, I went with the best quality I could afford. I drive an old Ford Galaxy. Kid’s stuff

all over the back seat. But when it comes to my house, it’s something I live in, it’s appreciating in value. So the theory is: spend as much as you can on your own house. That’s good for me, it’s good for the environment, because I put in triple glazed windows rather than double glazed windows. I whacked up the insulation. It’s low maintenance, because it’s high quality. It’s so much better.

All of these things are different to what housebuilders do.

They have to make that thing look as rosy as possible on day one. A few weeks, months later, people realize the quality is not there. That is driven through shareholders saying: we need you to maximize the profit. So the more people who build their own homes the higher quality homes we will have.

The second point is around planning. We all have to deal with the planning system. The thing that really destroys the potential of more self-build houses, is that there are businesses set up solely to take a piece of land, get planning on it, and sell it. While we have businesses that profit from planning risk, we will have a broken market.

They pay an inflated price for that piece of land. They know the glass ceiling of what they can sell it for is here. They have already paid up to here for the land. What can they do with the quality of the house? If we want quality, we have to rethink the planning and the financial systems.

It comes back to the suburbs. I thought self-build suburbia has a nice ring to it. I don’t necessarily mean this is all about

Mr Banker said: “Yes, what we want you to do is put a Sainsbury’s on the lower floor and build eight flats above. Then we will lend you the money.”

Figure 18a: 1a Donaldson Road front elevation

residential, because the suburbs become interesting when they become places. Originally, the suburbs were about densification around the city, where people could live, and commute into the city. Our lives are changing. The way people work and where people play is different, so we should go all the way back to when cities were a conglomeration of little villages, like London. It doesn’t require just interesting housing, but also interesting places to work.

Earlier this week, I met with a developer who had bought a big building. He wanted to raise money. He went to the banks. Mr Banker said: “Yes, what we want you to do is put a Sainsbury’s on the lower floor and build eight flats above. Then we will lend you the money.” Then it went to planning. Guess what?

The community said: “We do not want another Sainsbury’s.

We do not want eight flats. We want something interesting.

We want to stay in the area and work. We want somewhere we can hang out.” In the end what he is doing very bravely, and he’s won massive community support, is not a Sainsbury’s, but interesting community space with a restaurant at the back and all open. Think of a kind of twenty-first century library. How if it is almost like a shop, people feel ok about wandering in.

People want community spaces.

I had another conversation today with someone trying to re-invent the pub. We see pubs closing all the time. In the suburbs you have the odd pub, but if they are not used they get converted into flats. Pubs serve an important role bringing community together. But we need to re-think them, because they are not functioning in the way that we live our lives now.

These are examples of some of the things we need to be thinking about. When I think about the term self-build suburbia, it is not just about self-build housing. It is also about self-build for commercial, for the kind of health services we need. It is about involving community and it’s about choice, about letting all of us say: yes, I’d love to live in a new home, but nothing that I have seen in a new home has made me want to go and buy one. It’s about saying: I want to have the choice to live with interesting people and bringing communities together.

Figure 18c: Connected views from living space to lower ground dining area

13

PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA

THE ROUNDTABLE

FUTURE SUBURBAN PRACTICE, FUTURE SUBURBAN PLACES The exhibition and event lectures presented portraits of suburban experience and potential. They provided rich material and were the prompt for a collective conversation to draw out key themes and dig deeper into areas of consensus or conflict.

Our roundtable sought to develop Metropolitan Workshop’s thinking on suburban design, development, construction and management practices, by capturing perspectives of contemporary practitioners in architecture, housing and community participation. The discussion aimed to enrich ours and others’ practice by generating productive trajectories for practice development and ideas for design research.

This section summarises the challenges and opportunities experts identify in relation to recent and emerging practices. It concludes with objectives for Metropolitan Workshop’s future practice. We hope they provide others with food for thought.

• • • •

Participants, included: Andy von Bradsky (Head of Architecture, MHCLG), Keith Brown (Community Organiser, Nationwide), Graham Cherry (Chief Executive, Countryside), Vincent Lacovara (Head of Planning, Enfield Council), Chris Langdon (Development and Investment Director, ENGIE), Prof. Stephen Proctor (Founding Director, Proctor Matthews Architects), Prof. Mark Swenarton (Emeritus Professor of Architecture, Liverpool University), Sarah Wigglesworth (Director, SWA). Dhruv Sookhoo (Head of Research and Practice Innovation, Metropolitan Workshop) and Neil Deely (Partner, Metropolitan Workshop) are particularly grateful to Dr Elanor Warwick (Head of Strategic Policy and Research, Clarion) facilitating the discussion and helping author this section.

•

The roundtable captured perspectives of practitioners engaged in a range of activities to plan, design, develop and construct suburban places. The conversation evolved from themes that emerged during the exhibition process and literature review1. These included:

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• • •

Defining suburbia and policies for better quality suburban places Design-led approaches to maximising social potential Dominance of existing models (and potential disrupters) Marginalised role of architects (and the equivocal relationship of many architects to suburbia) Proactive planning and civic leadership as a means of promoting better places Challenge of community participation when future residents are unknown Design-led approaches to providing consumer choice Increased urbanisation and intensification of new and existing suburban neighbourhoods.

Defining suburbia is problematic. However, its contingencies provide a productive means of exploring the challenges and potentials of planning, designing, developing and maintaining suburban places.

The suburb was provisionally defined in terms of its peripheral location relative to dominant urban centres, its residential character in relation to its lower density and dominant residential typologies (e.g. semi-detached properties), and more abstract concepts of suburban cultures (e.g. gendered spaces implicated in the replication of modes of consumption and production).2

e

e

r lls

Productive landscapes as social spaces

Woodlan

Green spine and community square - celebrating the life of the place

The com realm n of the co resident and is p central commu planned places. P but give coming as temp strategi at groun have the blocks w commun develop

Concept masterplan Woodland

Pedestrian routes

Community uses

Cyclist routes

Public transport

Swales/ rain gardens

Vegetable gardens

Retail uses

Education

Parking barns

Tool sheds

Small businesses

Hobby rooms

Recycle/ reuse water

Orchards

N

Green fi meanin

Suburban Morphologies forms (e.g. mews, back alleys, courtyards, freedom for individuals and households, the reinforced the continued importance of There was a shared acceptance of the garden squares, etc.). The group explored the potential for suburban contexts to reproduce transport for enabling suburban residents to underpinning drivers for suburban models, conditions necessary to reapply these semiand express forms of social exclusion was connect to urban employment and leisure, which emerged as a means of offering public spaces within a less urban context, acknowledged. Dispersed transport, poor participants reflected on the implication healthier lifestyles associated with the to foster social opportunities that arise accessibility and connectivity to services of increasing numbers of people choosing countryside, combined with ready access from emerging higher-density residential and employment was identified as a cause to work from home. Facilitated by digital to employment and typologies being applied of social exclusion. Participants7explored technologies and flexible working, suburbia 5 in suburbia.

6 4 leisure in urban centres. Drawing on Mark Swenarton’s how suburban conditions can mask social is likely to become a space for varied forms of historical insight into the rapid processes A Site of Domestic Consumption exclusion arising from a lack of affordable production, as well as domestic consumption. of suburbanisation during the early and Production housing.7 Dr. Elanor Warwick recalled being twentieth century to trace the suburbs’ It was felt suburbia still constituted a told that the stigma of public housing was Vincent Lacovara reflected on a university evolutionary stages. Initially promoted by gendered space of domestic consumption. masked, as at least there were no poor doors project where students undertook social the Garden City Movement, advocated by The location between the city and in suburbia. Yet inspection of the number surveys and made proposals for a population the Tudor Walters Report, and adopted at countryside reinforced socio-historic of doorbells, letterboxes and bins outside a within a defined suburban setting. There scale by local authorities, it delivered an assumptions about divisions in productivity semi-detached property strongly indicates the was clear evidence of the potential for new alternative to crowded row housing.3 The based on gender. Academic literature depicts extent of unplanned densification associated business and workspaces to be established provision of semi-detached and detached the 1940s suburban home as primarily the with (un)licensed houses in multiple in suburban neighbourhoods, within homes Establishing communities Moments of celebratio Productive landscapes for the wider belt edge Green fingers as key connections homes with private gardens necessitated woman’s zone for producing the family and occupation. These subtle signs of overand small community facilities. The urban squares community • space Creating a walkable neighbourhood on the outer edge adoption • Key which link the widespread of connections these now dominant participating in domestic consumption. This occupation, often by younger people within trend of shared co-worker and cafés by establishing neighbourhood • unaffordable Hubs of activities – • theA suburban shared setting’s resource forwas theseen wider essed by the productive landscapes toisthe residential typologies by competitive, differentiated from commuting distance of relatively as an outcome of insufficient space centres within each of the three community communities in the area woodlands speculative developers. Mass production of secondary role for men of the period as a urban centres speak to unaffordability. for homeworking within smaller apartments maintoneighbourhoods series of hubs – k Opportunities for hobby rooms, blic courtyards • based Effective pieces of infrastructure neighbourhoods on semi-detached private retreat from• their weekday commute This led to a broader issue of•howAyounger and the desire for lone consultants and detached houses set swales, within private do something and inbarns, public.5 tool sheds work in more social environments.

Sarah homespeople • Adaptable that experience allow forexisting suburban andplaces learning, skills and n edge to create with rainplots, gardenstoand water remotecycle resulted densities and more recent literature considering post-war and might be encouraged to makecommerce a stake in Wigglesworth growth for and changing needs of and reta additional accommodation for identified the potential tion between thein reducing channels that lead downMore to the dispersed communities. plots suburbia recognises experiences likely suburbia, e.g. during community consultation space outside the homeindividual to provide families and growth visitorsare and locals to slack bring revenue lowerStandardised lying woodlands offered self-containment and private space to differ depending on class, older residents are frequently•represented opportunities to nurture forms of economic Parkingbutbarns as fu and ethnicity, life intoand these growing spaces for leisure in back gardens with front gardens spatial relationship to urban centres6. younger residents are not. and social entrepreneurship “under the opportunity sites acting as a stage for public display.4 This The insight that past models have potential radar”, with lower costs than in urban centres morphology of low density had implications to constitute and perpetuate gendered spaces Critically for our understanding of suburbia, and outside employment practices. Apple was for social opportunities, such as increasing based on historical conceptions of female these informal, poor quality forms of founded in an underused garage. degrees of privacy and privatisation of and male roles, is relevant for contemporary densification, unstructured approaches leisure space, rather than the semi-public practitioners considering how suburban to sharing resources and the inequalities Social Inequality spaces formed by more urban residential settings support work. While discussion that they expose, are in opposition to the Despite suburbia providing opportunities for

‘I don’t mind towns growing , so long as they grow and don’t merely spread like gravy over

H

15

PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA

THE ROUNDTABLE established image of suburbia providing a model of housing that offers affordability, privacy and individual choice.

Understanding the social potential of new forms and challenges impacting new and existing suburban neighbourhoods requires innovation from planners, architects, developers and policymakers, if it is to gain the support of communities and decisionmakers and to be replicated at scale. Drawing from their diverse experiences, participants discussed several interrelated issues.

Including:

• •

•

•

How best to accommodate new housing and communal facilities through proactive planning.

How to incentivise growth and add value to neighbourhoods and establish new communities through upfront investment in infrastructure and by overcoming poor public transport.

How to offer consumer choice in new developments through the exploration of residential typologies and models that balance standardisation with a sitespecific response to public realm.

How to sustain shared communal space through community-led management and maintenance approaches.

Accommodating the Communal The discussion frequently returned to the continuum of private, individual spaces offered by suburbia and the potential for managed public or communal space to offer shared resources and conviviality. Existing suburban models were closely associated with the provision of private space.

Proactive planning and sympathetic intensification were seen as means of enhancing opportunities for social and economic entrepreneurship and increased residential affordability. An example was given where owners of suburban properties had agreed to sell a portion of their long, underused gardens to assemble land for a new mews development. They benefited financially and reduced their liability for maintaining large gardens. Backland development raised the potential of unlocking underused land for additional housing, alongside opportunities for small-scale social and business use to enhance local economies.

For example, suburban neighbourhoods can support small to medium social enterprises, such as crèches and co-working facilities.

Existing practice in planning departments and attitudes of councillors was identified as a barrier to positive intensification. The requirement that street-facing infills and

backland developments should always be subservient to existing heights and massing was an example of non-planning policies limiting potential.8 Andy von Bradsky welcomed emerging practice in planning departments promoting sensitive intensification through design codes and pattern books for permitted development.9 These aim to reduce planning risk for householders and community groups. The piecemeal transformation arising from varied permitted uses and forms, would potentially disrupt the repetition and calm associated with suburban neighbourhoods. Yet this looser design-led response, tempered by proactive planning, is a means of ensuring productive and judicious change in the long-term.

Shifting planning practices to more effectively use existing planning policy levers to foster quality design processes, requires greater design expertise and design capacity in local authorities.10 Low levels of design capacity, and rationed professional time particularly impacts on suburban neighbourhoods undergoing retrofitted intensification, which are not subject to the same design scrutiny as large suburban extensions.

Enabling interventions such as those of Public Practice11 act as a stimulus to good practice, could be turned to the development and implementation of planning policies and decision-making necessary to realise well-designed, socially innovative suburban environments.

Infrastructure Investment Upfront to Support Growth Communities are often asked to accept disruption in anticipation of growth that may benefit their neighbourhood. For example, accepting increased density in expectation of increased accessibility and connectivity through the improved transport provision a larger population supports.

Earlier investment in infrastructure was identified as creating development value and demonstrating an upfront commitment to those moving into an area, front loading the creation of a new community.

Graham Cherry explained Countryside’s proactive approach to achieving a critical scale of development, making delivery of infrastructure and amenities upfront more affordable for developers.

Figure 2: Aerial view of the self build site at Graven Hill, Bicester

16

Early infrastructure investment is also a useful incentive for residents being asked to accommodate change through the incremental densification. Planning authorities must be proactive in identifying and facilitating appropriate infrastructure to support positive growth. Integrated planning at county and district council level would re-connect the requirements for schools, healthcare, leisure, transport and employment described within neighbourhood plans. While participants acknowledged central government’s recent commitment to better coordination between housing and infrastructure investment (e.g. housing as infrastructure in some cases 12 ), there was consensus that government and public bodies could better coordinate

other strategic funding programmes with housing (e.g. public health, crime reduction, communities, recreation, etc.).

The need for proactive planning to support integrated investment in housing, physical and social infrastructure and the placement of community services applied equally to new and existing suburban contexts.

Vincent Lacovara explained the dual benefits of introducing a tramline to Croydon, both reducing private vehicle traffic and increasing popularity of low-density areas such as New Addington by reconnecting access to employment, services and recreation in Croydon and Greater London.

It was anticipated this investment in public transport would support intensification with potential for increased social equality.

Suburbs are still perceived as a car dominated land use. The weaknesses in public transport experienced in suburban contexts beyond London, the South East and other major conurbations, was seen as a barrier for more sustainable proposals. Describing his work as Community Organiser at Oakfield Village, Swindon13, Keith Brown, explained that a detailed understanding of residents’ existing and desired transport modes had been integrated into a scheme that connects the surrounding communities to the local amenities and to each other along attractive new routes. Yet even with this level of developer support and design, with pedestrian-priority shared areas which integrate parking with footpaths, the limited public transport made planning for high levels of car provision per household unavoidable, if not to potentially disadvantage residents. This contrasts with anticipated advances in driverless technology being trialled in Milton Keynes.14 Further forward planning for a carless future was illustrated in the layout strategies adopted at Greenwich Millennium Village (completed, 2004) and more recently in a competition entry for a expansion to Letchworth Garden City (entered, 2019) [Figure 1]. At Greenwich, car parking was relegated to the edge of the development, clustered around car charging points, in anticipation that declining use would enable these spaces to take on different communal or residential functions.

Likewise, the Letchworth entry grouped car charging points, recycling and other facilities to produce community hubs that encourage sociability and movement through the scheme. Reduced distances between homes and communal facilities are intended to promote a modal shift away from private transport towards self-propelled transport, with benefits for health, air quality and other environmental considerations. This relies on providing safe pedestrian and cycle routes, which are attractive to use at all times of day and night, throughout the year. These schemes anticipate a domestic environment outlasting patterns of car dominance, releasing land for more sociable, communal uses. Decreasing car use based on declining ability to drive among younger people15 coupled with greater willingness for short-term rental was evidence of this shift,

suggesting more reliance on public transport in future. A counterpoint was that car use in rural and less-connected suburban areas is still a necessity. Balancing this spatial inequality requires a realistic, differentiated approach to planning, with regulatory and cultural encouragement for carpooling or car clubs alongside transitional designs to limit and futureproof integration of carparking into schemes.

Offering Choice Within historical layouts, density of homes provides a convenient but crude shorthand definition. Yet density per hectare or other appraisal metrics were challenged as a starting point for considering the potential of new developments. Suburban homes tend to be low density and low occupancy.

New forms of suburbia should draw on lessons from residential typologies beyond the suburban detached and semi-detached house founded on a better understanding of consumer preferences.

Graham Cherry’s development expertise provided insights into the role of land value, sales processes and how housing market characteristics suppress consumer choice and perpetuate existing typologies.

Restrictive planning practices were seen to inflate land values and require housebuilders to seek efficiencies though standard house types. Housebuilders who offer greater variation have experienced unreliability of supply chains, reduced profits and fears of poorer customer service at the point of sale. Tellingly, suburban developers are more likely to adjust standard house types in more buoyant markets or where local authorities demand a contextual response.

In a stagnating housing market with falling prices, buyers are less likely to purchase off plan. They are more likely to purchase a house that is nearly complete, reducing potential for them to influence its design.

First time buyers, through subsidised schemes such as Help to Buy are unlikely to be able to fund variations or unfinished space for future conversion. This leaves custom build, even on the large-scale group self-build of Graven Hill in Bicester, Oxfordshire [Figure 2], an unaffordable dream for most.

Following these routes can be challenging for homebuyers who find it difficult to articulate what they need or want.

Architects around the table recognised the need for standardisation to build homes rapidly and affordably. Stephen Proctor advocated for architects’ design skills adding value by successfully assembling a standardised product to reflect and enhance characteristics of a specific place.16 Directing the design process towards bespoke contextual standardisation potentially would produce more distinct suburban neighbourhoods. However, as one architect chided, architects should avoid positioning themselves distantly as arbiters of taste, and should collaborate with housebuilders, who are more attuned to market needs.

Taste also constrained adoption of modern 17

PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA

THE ROUNDTABLE methods of construction, according to the late Richard MacCormac in Housing and the Dilemma of Style, which attributed reluctance to the misperception that mass production conveyed cheapness compared to handcrafted aesthetics of traditional materials and techniques.17 While there is anecdotal evidence that consumers value materiality that communicates robustness and thoughtfulness (e.g. brickwork that interprets local, historic building practices), one way to overcome prejudices towards modern methods was by explaining benefits in terms of construction quality, consumer choice and increased delivery speeds.18 This understanding of benefits of new techniques is growing rapidly, with housing association SWAN experimenting in bespoke modular units using an interactive website to communicate alternatives to the occupants.19 It also relates to a broader point about how architects can help developers communicate the value of innovative design, to overcome delivery constraints and promote new social opportunities through new scheme configurations.20 The exemplar project Abode at Great Kneighton [Figure 3] reinforces this by demonstrating how innovation arising from site constraints yielded innovation without the architect’s heroic imposition of new residential types. Stephen Proctor described how they inherited a masterplan with irregular plots, prompting an inventive layout with some homes having no private gardens and terraces with communal space to the rear. The solution, a response to density and affordability constraints, resulted from close collaboration with the developer.

The sales team recognised the reason for the innovations but were concerned about market reaction. Nevertheless, these properties were among the first to sell. This raises a point about the unpredictability of marketing new residential forms. A developer explained how referring customers to a completed scheme helped them assess whether a standard house type might meet their needs and aspirations. However, where new forms are proposed, customers may struggle to visualise inhabiting them which is perceived as a potential sales risk. Yet at Great Kneighton the developer benefited from having a variety of typologies, with the innovative types selling at an average of three dwellings a month compared to more conventional layouts nearby selling at eight dwellings per month. This sales rate was attractive, but deployment of new intensive residential forms might be offset by complexity of delivery and increased investment in higher density and related need to improve the quality and quantity of public space.

Metropolitan Workshop’s Homestead [Prospects 01 pp.14-17] scheme served to explore interconnecting concepts underpinning a transformed offer. One striking thing about the Homestead was its subversion of dominant notions of suburbia by prioritising communal, semi-public space. Others noted Homestead’s ability 18

to reconfigure a standard housing product to respond to different lifestyles and the particularities of a given site. This intelligent standardisation meant the Homestead was suitable for traditional construction methods or factory manufacture. By being able to vary density within the same footprint and incorporate a range of communal uses, the Homestead could mediate between different contexts. So Homestead is appropriate for new semi-rural developments, such as Mayfields (pp. 11-15) and suburban locations.

One participant saw potential in Homestead’s adaptable form to offer variety and choice within low-value suburban sites and support altering needs at different life stages through internal reconfiguration and varied degrees of communal living. This would facilitate longterm home ownership and commitment to a community.

Sustaining Shared, Semi-Public Spaces through Community-led Approaches Participants discussed the social value and economic benefits of creating neighbourhoods that encourage the formation of new, resilient communities.

While the social value that communities experience from well designed and maintained places is evident, it requires investment and ongoing stewardship.21 Chris Langdon described Engie’s aspiration in the housing market. As an energy business Engie’s approach to creating communities is through investment in social infrastructure and quality placemaking to encourage consumers to choose to live, become emotionally attached to, and critically, to stay within their new developments.

Affordable tenures and build to rent models are highly compatible with Engie’s approach to investment where energy becomes an inclusive cost of rent and offers a guaranteed running cost. Future development models will factor in obsolescence and depreciation (as happens with offices and shopping centres) to promote conversations about long-term objectives for new neighbourhoods. This is a conversation to be undertaken with communities as primary beneficiaries. Another outcome is community organisations taking responsibility for maintenance of communal spaces or community assets. These could be allocated and managed via digital technologies. Having completed a task, residents would be rewarded by credits toward their service charges, with the development benefiting from reduced service charges.22 As an alternative to established for-profit management companies, these community-focused approaches to service charge negotiation and scheme management provide a means of ensuring all within communities can benefit from generous, well maintained open and semi-public spaces and activities. Without innovative funding approaches (including dowry contributions from developers), unaffordable service charges may rule out communal facilities and landscaped open space to the detriment of inclusivity, health and a sense of belonging.

Any community-led approaches to management and maintenance of suburban places had to be fair, transparent and mediated. For example, Dr. Elanor Warwick explained that housing associations find resident-led approaches mean problems are identified quickly, residents generate potential solutions, and are involved in implementing them. This provides an empowering model in which small issues, e.g. cars on pavements reducing safety, are understood and resolved quickly. However, without mediation there is a danger that resident-led approaches can amplify existing tensions between residents.

One participant cautioned that the extent of contribution residents will make to communal management will vary depending on life circumstances, skills, household resources or employment commitments.

Groups burdened by other responsibilities, e.g. single parents, may be unlikely to earn credits to reduce their communal charges. To avoid amplifying existing social inequality community-led approaches to the management of communal places and activities should be moderated to reflect residents’ varying abilities to contribute in different ways at different times of their life.23

1. Dhruv Sookhoo and Neil Deely ‘Why Suburbia, now?’., in A New Kind of Suburbia by Dhruv Sookhoo, Neil Deely and Gareth Bansor (London: Metropolitan Workshop, 2019), pp.4-7.

2. For a fuller account of the inter-war process of suburbanisation, see: Mark Swenarton (2002) ‘Tudor Walters and Tudorbethan: reassessing Britain’s inter-war suburbs’, in Planning Perspectives, vol. 17, iss. 3, 2002, pp.267-286.

3. Discussions relating to the definition of suburbia reflect existing discussion within academic literature, e.g. Richard Harris and Peter Larkham, ‘Suburban Foundation, Form and Function’, in Changing Suburbs: Foundation, Form and Function, (London: E & FN Spon, 1999), pp. 1-31.

4. J. W. R. Whitehand and C. M. H. Carr, TwentiethCentury Suburbs: A Morphological Approach. (London: Routledge, 2001).

5.The role of the suburb in the construction of public and private spheres associated with perpetuation of masculine and feminism domestic practices particularly based on new forms of consumption is explored more fully within the academic literature concerning suburbanisation in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, e.g. Judy Giles, The Parlour and the Suburb: Domestic Identities, Class, Femininity and Modernity (Oxford: Berg, 2004).

6. The experience of suburban living needs to be understood though the lens of place and participation.

Suburban experiences can vary dramatically determined by the interaction of a particular place with its legacy relationship to the city it surrounds. For the diversity of relations between city and suburbs; from positive interfaces to more marginal existences see Alan Mace City and Suburbs: Placing suburbia in a post-suburban world (London: Routledge) 7. The Smith Institute have identified several factors causing social inequality in suburban places, including poor transport provision, limited access to employment and underinvestment in health and education: Paul Hunter, Urban towards a suburban renaissance: an agenda for our city suburbs (London: Smith Institute, 2016) and Paul Hackett, Housing and Growth in Suburbia (London: Smith Institute, 2009).

8. Practical suggestions for semi-permitted development for suburbs, and how positive design practices might be incentivised are included in Transforming Suburbia: Supurbia Semi-permissive (London: HTA, PTEa Savills, NLP, 2015) 9. Pioneering examples of planning guidance intended to support context specific intensification of suburbia through extension of existing dwellings and addition of new housing include: Croydon Council, Suburban Design Guide: Supplementary Planning Document (Croydon: Croydon Council, 2019). It is anticipated that new Londonwide planning guidance will soon promote similar design code based approaches to suburban intensification and site optimisation in support of the capital’s good growth strategy, i.e. Greater London Authority, Housing Design Supplementary Planning Guidance: Module C: Preparing Design Codes for Small Housing Developments and Assessing Design Quality (London: Greater London Authority, forthcoming).

10. Limited design expertise and design capacity within local planning authorities are associated with barriers to planners proactively developing and implementing policy and decision-making to improve design quality (e.g.

Matthew Carmona and Valentina Giordano, Design Skills in English Local Authorities (London: Place Alliance/ Urban Design Group, 2017)).

11. Public Practice is a not-for-profit company founded by the GLA with the aim for increasing built environment expertise within local government http://www.publicpractice.org.uk/ (accessed: 18 October 2019). Recent Practice Notes cover practical planning approaches from Village Design Guide Supplementary Planning Documents to fostering a more design culture within public sector organisations. Applying these mechanisms to the suburbs would be an obvious positive step.

12. Infrastructure is often perceived in its narrowest ‘civil engineering’ definition, for example Housing as Infrastructure (Fund) see https://lichfields.uk/blog/2019/ may/15/hif-the-story-so-far/ (accessed: 18 October 2019). It

is critical to see infrastructure needed to support housing in broader terms ‘social infrastructure’, not only transport, but wider ‘environmental infrastructure’. The GLAs Housing Zones recognised this breadth providing funding to buy land or create infrastructure of all kinds to unlock development (for example station upgrades, bridges over canals and railways, churches, parks or football pitches). https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/housing-andland/increasing-housing-supply/housing-zones (accessed: 18 October 2019).

13. For details of the community organiser’s role undertaking research with local people, giving them a collaborative voice in the creation of the community at Oakfield see https://metwork.co.uk/work/oakfield-village (accessed: 18 October 2019).

14. The built environment professions have begun speculating about the implications of driverless cars networks for approaches to urban design within suburbanised city contexts, e.g. Riccardo Bobisse and Andrea Pavia, Automatic for the City: Designing for people in the age of the driverless car (Newcastle upon Tyne: RIBA Publishing, 2019).

15. There has been a sustained decline in car use among young adults in Great Britain and other countries since the early 1990s as changes in their living and socioeconomic situations have influenced their travel behaviour, e.g. Kiron Chatterjee, Tim Schwanen, and others Young People’s Travel – What’s Changed and Why? Review and Analysis (UWE Bristol & University of Oxford, 2018) 16. Proctor Matthews Architect. Where do houses live?

(London Festival of Architecture, 2018).

17. Richard MacCormac, Housing and the Dilemma of Style, Architectural Review 163 (April 1978), pp. 203–206.

18. The positionality of architects within the mass housing market in relation to the adoption of prefabrication is explored in detail by: Colin Davies, The Prefabricated Home (London: Reaktion Books, 2005). The following text provides a useful insight into how modernist aesthetics and adoption of modern methods of construction eventually proved unpopular within Milton Keynes: Guy Ortolano.

Thatcher’s Progress: From Social Democracy to Market Liberalism through an English New Town (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2019), pp.108-142.

19. A current experiment to counter these negative perceptions of factory building is SWAN Housing Association’s Nu Build Beechwood scheme. This offers CLT modular homes with bespoke customisation for sale, via an interactive site https://www.beechwood-nuliving. co.uk/ (accessed: 18 October 2019).

20. A useful resource of further research evidence on the health, social, economic and environmental benefits of good urban (and suburban) design including the way that local neighbourhood spaces in residential areas play a vital role in the social life of communities can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/place-value-wiki (accessed: 18 October 2019).

21. A practical measurement framework for assessing the quality of life, community strength and social value created in new housing developments, which is highly relevant to new suburbs and monitoring interventions in existing ones has been devised by Social Life and University of Reading on behalf of the Berkley Group. http://www.social-life.co/ publication/creating-strong-communities/ (accessed: 18 October 2019).

22. Guidance on existing means of negotiating service charges between management companies, developers, local authorities and housing associations can be found at: National Housing Federation, Service Charges: A Guide for Housing Associations (London: National Housing Federation, 2015), and, Association of Residential Management Agents, A Guide to Management of MixedTenure Developments (London: ARMA, 2011).

23. Cohousing models of management and cooperation perhaps provide a productive point of departure for the delivery of resident-led communal services: UK Cohousing. UK Cohousing Network. Available at: https:// cohousing.org.uk/ (accessed: 14 August 2019).

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PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA

CONCLUSIONS

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE PRACTICE (AND RESEARCH) FOR SUBURBAN DEVELOPMENT Words by Dr. Elanor Warwick and Dhruv Sookhoo

Several recurrent themes emerged from the critical discussion that followed the A New Kind of Suburbia Launch. Some problems are more relevant to remaking existing places, some impact the planning of new suburbs and some, common to both, require multiple solutions. We have drawn a series of questions for consideration by practitioners who have spoken to us so thoughtfully and fondly about their suburban experiences and hopes for the future. These may lead to recommendations for further practice orientated research by architects, suggestions for policy formation by planners and ideas for new forms of collaboration between the commissioners and builders of suburbs and those who live there.

The recommendations recognise on the historical drivers that shaped suburbia, and their changing function and context. They address six key areas; how future suburbs might look and feel, what are the most effective ways to move around them, what activities they need to contain, how socially interactive communities might be encouraged and perhaps most importantly, who will engage in the decision-making and delivery of these new places?

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1. SUBURBAN INTENSIFICATION How will future suburbs be shaped?

Much of suburban policy debate is overly focused on identifying where housing is needed and where there might be a mismatch between the housing targets set, the homes required and what is being built. There is less discussion of the processes of intensification and how gradual growth might achieve a more organic transition to desirable suburbs. The London Plan’s replacement of a standardised density matrix with design-led assessments has rendered prescriptive suburban densities irrelevant, allowing nuanced interpretation of localised form (increasing density transepts centred on transportation or activity hubs). The anticipated London-wide adoption of design codes will support locally-based approaches to suburban intensification.

Suburban local authorities who are devising bespoke Special Planning Guidance for the design and infill of existing places, as well as new-build suburban town extensions, should consider how appropriate levels of densification are achieved and the possible alternative consequences (for example poor affordability can lead to either unplanned informal intensification or planned overdevelopment). Positive planning is needed to persuade suburbanites that increasing density of occupation can be a way of enhancing the enduring characteristics of suburbs (spacious homes with gardens and ample green spaces, on quiet streets), while careful design will encourage sufficient people to sustain amenities and need not erode their quality of life.

The Takeaway New Designs should explore how a new suburban model can support incremental intensification and integration of communal facilities. Collaboration with housing associations would provide a valuable means of testing assumptions against development and asset management practice. The ten characteristics for well-designed places described in MHCLG’s recent National Design Guidance1 maps directly across to the ambitions described in this paper. Suburbia isn’t homogeneous, and more explorative work is needed to ensure the guidance and proposed national design code is varied and sensitive to suburban issues.

2. SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT

3. INCLUSIVE NEIGHBOURHOODS

Good suburban transport links once meant a short walk to a good bus service or local station for commuting, shopping or to explore the intensity of the city. Core car-dependency has diluted this advantage, but suburbs will be such enticing, self-contained places that future transport demand will come from moving about, within or between adjacent neighbourhoods. To achieve this, improved transport infrastructure will include integrated cycle ways, local buses, trains and trams, to ensure connectivity and inclusivity of suburban places.

Sharing in all of its forms (the common use of shared spaces, sharing a cup of sugar, lending BBQs or gardening equipment, through to shared responsibility for maintenance of shared space) are all ways of building community. As a society we are growing increasingly comfortable with the idea of the sharing economy but are still a long way from continuously relying on one another. One appealing suburban quality is having private space to retreat into.

Finding better ways of moving in the suburbs.

What you share, and who with?

So, suburbanite sharing and interactive functions along a spectrum from collective co-living to occasionally taking in a neighbour’s parcel, should be carefully considered. Designs and layouts need to respond to this varied scale of social interaction, while considering forms of long-term maintenance, with governance approaches allowing for adjustable community commitment.

The Takeaway

The Takeaway

Designers and development clients should work together to discuss upfront investment in alternative transport infrastructure (where scale permits).

Designers should also collaborate with transport engineers on integrated alternative transport plans, exploring and anticipating expected shifts in transport usages and modes.

There is social potential in the open, semi-public space offered by the Homestead (Prospects #01, pp. 8-27) and built projects such as Abode at Great Kneighton (Prospects #01, pp. 46-47) and Accordia in Cambridge. Yet, discussions revealed the challenges of avoiding prohibitive costs associated with service charges and also the potential for existing mechanisms of community-led volunteering being a burden. Developing a flexible model for community-led management and maintenance of communal land, based on the notional activities offered by the Homestead (a cost per sqm of communal land as approximate capital cost and maintenance fee to be offset by volunteer contributions) would provide an indicative set of principles to be tested. Collaboration with a developing housing association or institutional investor could test these assumptions and refine the model against their practice expertise.

Nevertheless, in regions with poorer public transport networks, car use will remain a reality, so mitigating strategies such as better integration of car parking and charging points into the public realm, or futureproofing conversion of current car parking space for other communal activities will be required.

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PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA

CONCLUSIONS

4. RESPONSIVE TYPOLOGIES

5. CHOICE AND DIVERSITY

Further exploration is required to examine the idea of the suburban home and neighbourhood as a site of production as well as consumption. Layouts and typologies that incorporate flexible homeworking, spaces for self-employment, study or small-scale social enterprise need to be incorporated into new designs. Flexible design proposals should consider new digital technologies and changing patterns of use throughout the day.

A new suburban model should provide opportunities to integrate social functions, such as creches and spaces for social enterprise and consideration.

By considering how to improve the decision-making processes for planning and building suburban places, we have the opportunity to create more inclusive and participatory suburbs. New suburban housing typologies will have to challenge assumptions about gender and how space is used by men and women. By considering ways interior and exterior space, playable landscapes, or furniture layouts may be used differently and complementarily by women and men beyond their assumed gender roles, designs can be adjusted to be more inclusive.

Activities that new suburbs need to cater for.

Who gets a say in how suburbia is developed?

New suburbs must not continue to reinforce other structural or cultural stereotypes but enable differences to coexist. By challenging assumptions that suburbs are homogeneous in class, ethnicity or economically, nuanced design can address inequalities which often overlap and reinforce each other; women, working class, ethnic minority and disabled groups often face multiple disadvantages. Design which is sensitive to this diversity and variety is needed to ensure equality of access and use.

The suburbs should provide diversity and opportunities to blend the whole housing market spectrum; homeowners with part equity or social housing alongside private renters. Policies, funding models and ownership approaches need to be developed to expand variety and choice. Understanding how land value, sales processes and housing market characteristics suppress or enhance consumer choice in suburban housing will be fundamental to successful consumer-led innovation in the housing market.

The Takeaway

The Takeaway

Lower suburban land values used to imply an economic decision or trade off between more space (particularly external space) against longer commutes. But increasing costs and intensification risk reducing this available suburban slack space. Changing expectations for household space will shift the incentive to move further afield for additional rooms and space. Familiar semi-detached, or detached typologies can be designed to accommodate more varied accommodation to suit mixed households, intergenerational living, co-living arrangements and work space.

From the most-to-least planned places, increasing public engagement in design and planning has proven benefits for attractiveness and social sustainability. It is still worth exploring the extent to which the suburbs are designed for or by their inhabitants to a directed vision or are left to organically evolve within a loose framework of agreed rules. These guidelines must extend beyond the aesthetic and range in scale from neighbourhood plans to design codes.

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...

6. THE ROLE OF THE BUILDER

Who will be building suburbia and how?

Suburbs have historically provided the freedom to build how you like, with idiosyncratic DIY and ad hoc extensions individualising and adapting what is often seen as familiar standardised architectural designs. New development models can tap into these traditions and extend their potential beyond small scale adaption of spaces or façades, to deliver widespread transformation though customisation and self-build, and more thoughtful use of modern methods of construction. Emergent models from Urban Splash (Prospects #01, pp.

36-41)2, Engie (Prospects #01, pp. 34-35) and Unboxed3 all offer enhanced occupant choice through modern methods of construction, customisation and digital technologies. This approach is increasingly endorsed by Homes England and the MHCLG (e.g. Heartlands, Trevenson Park)4. Modular construction experience first tested in more urban conditions could now unlock existing tight suburban sites as well as greenfield suburban extensions able to negotiate previous logistical and financial constraints.

Ensuring the simplicity and accessibility of these construction approaches offer commercial benefits and also provide considerable potential to increase consumer choice both at purchase and in use. Custom build empowers occupants and community to actively engage in the design process.

1. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, National Design Guide, (London: October 2019).

2. Urban Splash. Townhouse. https://www. housebyurbansplash.co.uk/configurator/ 3. Unboxed Self Build Homes.https://www.unboxedhomes. com/ 4. Heartlands is in the Cornish village of Pool, part of the Camborne, Pool and Redruth conurbation. The development will include 54 Custom Build house plots. It will offer people from across Cornwall the chance to select a Home Manufacturer and customise their own home.

5. Walter Segal (1907–1985) was an architect who developed a system of self-build housing in the 1980s, the Segal self-build method. Based on traditional timber frame methods modified to use standard modern materials,

his method eliminated the need for wet trades such as bricklaying and plastering, resulting in a light-weight system with minimal foundations, relying on the geometry of their construction.

6. SWAN Housing Associations’ Nu Build project uses CLT modular to a basic layout with bespoke customisation.

Their Beechwood website https://www.beechwoodnuliving.co.uk offers potential customers a range of choices of fittings and façade materials and even between a fourth bedroom or a roof terrace. Yet “More choice for consumers” was located towards the bottom of the list of dozen or so benefits on select committee report on modern methods. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ cm201719/cmselect/cmcomloc/1831/1831.pdf.

7. Paul Hunter Towards an suburban renaissance: an agenda for our city suburbs (Smith Institute, 2016).

A design project exploring enhanced consumer choice across the suburban range of homes might relate to these new suburban models. By reviewing these and other existing models, a set of principles could be devised for integrated design information which facilitates occupant choice (e.g. BIM compatible specifications related to a set of suburban residential typologies). A dynamic model could be devised to consider notional capital costs, life cycles and costs of adaption in use, and propose a consumer pathway for potential adaptions using a range of construction technologies. This pathway could unlock many options from providing an initial pattern book of pre-set alternatives to open-ended Walter Segal-like DIY adaptation.5 But providing more easily customisable homes is seen as a marginal benefit of modern methods, requiring thinking to overcome restrictive constraints and ensure easier extensions and adaptations beyond merely customising within the standard module changing external cladding.6 As much work already exists on how modern methods can be employed to provide this (including providing a limited degree of variation and choice, efficient and low impact construction methods), so design and planning exploration should concentrate on using it to address the particular suburban issues identified in this report.

With support from external collaborators, such as Engie, a targeted suburban model could be elaborated to incorporate energy and other in-use housing costs to provide a total cost to occupy; and perhaps further extended to incorporate local travel, and to assess the low impact advantages of suburban living.

The Takeaway An holistic approach to residential modelling will become more critical in the short term. As house prices rise, affordability tightens, the number of households in the suburbs grow, and negative trends in social mobility, deprivation and poverty are rapidly escalating, all challenging the long-term prospects of outer boroughs. Commentators have been long been calling for a suburban renaissance covering these economic, sustainability and social issues10 and if suburbs are not to become a problem, we need to apply preventative design thinking, including proactive responses to the climate emergency. Anticipating the energy performance and Net Zero emissions construction requirements of the Future Homes Standard, but also suburbia’s potential for low-impact lifestyles, design criteria can be developed for suburbs where it is easy and convenient to make sustainable choices.

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PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA

CONTRIBUTORS

Andy von Bradsky Head of Architecture, MHCLG Andy is Head of Architecture, MHCLG and founder and Director of von Bradsky Enterprises, a consultancy specialising in housing, place and regeneration. Its mission is to support excellence in the design and delivery of more and better homes for all. He has worked professionally in housing and regeneration for the private and public sector, having over thirty years’ experience in a high profile architectural practice including as Chairman of PRP. He is past Chairman of the Housing Forum, a cross housing industry membership organisation and past Chair of the RIBA Housing Group. He participates in design review and provides expertise as a registered Design Council CABE Built Environment Expert, a member of the Design Review panel for Design South East and a member of the NHBC Foundation Expert Panel.

Brian Moran Senior Managing Director, Hines Brian is the Senior Managing Director responsible for developing Hines’ Ireland projects. He is particularly interested in urban regeneration, university campus developments and housing PPP projects.

Brian is a graduate of Architecture from the Dublin Institute of Technology and obtained an MBA at the University of Chicago. He currently serves as a trustee of the ULI European Urban Regeneration Council and a National Council member for the ULI Irish National Council.

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Chris Langdon Development and Investment Director, ENGIE Chris joined ENGIE group in early 2017 to grow the Developments and Investments team. His background in major mixed-use development and construction provides additional support to the capability of the business to deliver integrated energy, services and regeneration solutions designed to improve lives through better living and working environments. Chris’ focus is on ensuring a practical approach is taken to delivering long term and sustainable outcomes.

Prior to joining ENGIE, Chris was Development Director at Byrne Estates and the Ardmore Group where he was responsible for the group’s development projects and property assets as well as leading preconstruction and business development. Chris previously ran the development and disposal property division for Bexley Council and worked at St George Plc, part of Berkeley Homes.

David Birkbeck Chief Executive Officer, Design for Homes David has led Design for Homes since its incorporation in 2000. He serves as director and a judge for the Housing Design Awards, a unique partnership between Government and industry since 1960 to recognise the best in new-build and disseminate their genius.

David wrote the Building for Life toolkit in 2002, and developed a new iteration in 2017 which was adopted by Home England in 2019 to enhance the quality of urban design of publicly funded projects. He is an NHBC councillor, an honorary fellow of RIBA and was a design advisory board member at the Homes and Communities Agency.

Dhruv Adam Sookhoo Head of Research and Practice Innovation, Metropolitan Workshop Dhruv is a chartered architect, chartered town planner and social researcher. At Metropolitan Workshop he leads practicebased research projects to promote innovation and dissemination across the Dublin and London studios. Previously, he was Head of Design, Home Group, a national developing housing association, where he was responsible for establishing the design department and championing better residential design quality across a national housing and regeneration programme. He is currently undertaking ESRC-funded doctoral research at Newcastle University, exploring the interprofessional perspectives and practices of architects and planners working to deliver residential design quality.

Eddie Conroy County Architect, SDCC Eddie is County Architect with South Dublin County Council since 2007. He has worked on a broad range of design projects – Housing, Public Buildings, Civic and Urban Design and is involved in the design of the Adamstown and Clonburris new-towns, Tallaght Town Centre and t Kilcarbery in Clondalkin. He was one of the authors of the Design Manual for Urban Roads and Streets, a new national standard for Ireland.

His current work includes the InnovationQuarter regeneration project and the Heatnet district-heating project both underway in Tallaght town centre.

Dhruv is a Visiting Lecturer within the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University. In 2017, he became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, he is an alumnus of the Future of London’s London Leadership Programme (2012). In 2019, he will become the Chair of the RIBA Housing Group.

Dinah Bornat Co-director of ZCD Architects Dinah is an expert in child friendly cities and urban design. She has published research, contributing to books and journals and advising local authorities and developers.

She has given talks for New London Architecture, Urban Design London, the London Development Conference and Homes England among others.

Dr Elanor Warwick Head of Strategic Policy and Research, Clarion Elanor trained and worked as an architect and urban designer, before focusing on applied built environment research. As Head of Strategic Policy and Research at Clarion Housing Group, she works to embed learning and good practice about housing, placemaking and urban renewal into the housing association’s development, regeneration and asset management programmes. Elanor established the Research Manager role at the Peabody Housing Trust (1999) and is the former Head of Research at CABE. Practice research interests span scales from building design to the creation of sustainable new settlements. Her research projects have included the implementation of Lifetime Neighbourhoods, the success of planning mechanisms used in recent ecotown and garden village programmes, and methods for measuring social value and wellbeing to inform regeneration decisions.

Dinah is a Mayor’s Design Advocate for the Mayor of London. Other roles include; Design Review Panel member for Harrow and Hounslow councils, Wise Friend for Urban Design London, member of the Hackney Regeneration Design Advice Group and an advisor to A New Direction Challenge London.

Elanor holds postgraduate degrees in city design and social science from the LSE, a doctorate from King’s College London exploring the regeneration of post-war housing estates and is an Academician of the Academy of Urbanism. She acts as a postgraduate supervisor at the Bartlett, UCL and Cambridge University.

Graham Cherry Chief Executive, Countryside Graham was appointed Chief Executive of Communities in 2018, having previously been Chief Executive of Partnerships South from 2 May 2017. He joined the Group as a graduate trainee from Reading University in 1980. Previous roles with the Group, include: Group Chief Executive of Copthorn Holdings Limited, a position he held for over 20 years and Chief Executive of the New Homes and Communities division.

Gus Zogolovitch Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Unboxed Homes Gus has been in the building industry for almost twenty years. He started doing small renovations, and then went on to run multi-award winning property developer, Solidspace. He went through the pain of building his own house in North West London where he still lives. Gus holds an Executive MBA from the London Business School, will act as Creative Director, RIBA Guerrilla Tactics in 2019 and has served as an Executive Committee Member of the National Self-Builders Association.

Jo McCafferty Director, Levitt Bernstein Jo has vast experience of designing and delivering innovative housing, she is adept at steering projects through complex planning processes and advising clients on design and quality standards. She sits on Design Review Panels for Lewisham, Hackney, Newham, Croydon, the Design Council and Urban Design London, and is also co-author of the second edition of The Housing Design Handbook, published in 2018. She has most recently been appointed Chair of the NLA’s Expert Panel on Housing.

Joe Brady Adjunct Associate Professor, UCD Joe has been a member of the geography staff since 1988. He is an urban geographer with wide ranging interests. These are currently focused on the theory and application of utopian city planning and on the study of the growth and development of Dublin.

His interest in Dublin has led him, in collaboration with former colleague Anngret Simms, to publish a series of books entitled The Making of Dublin City.

John O’Mahony Director, O’Mahony Pike John co-founded O’Mahony Pike Architects with business partner James Pike. He set up an Urban Design Masterplanning team and heads up the Green Energy Committee ‘Suscom’ which is involved in ensuring the latest technological and legislative issues associated with sustainable design are understood and disseminated throughout the practice. This group is also involved in green research projects and has completed one of the first A-rated housing developments in Ireland.

Karl Deeter Co-founder, Irish Mortgage Brokers Karl Deeter is a mortgage broker, housing market expert, singer-songwriter, and one of the leading consumer finance voices in Ireland. Karl is a native of Los Angeles, he moved to Ireland when he was 11 and has now spent most of his life there.

Keith Brown Community Organiser, Nationwide Keith Brown started getting paid as a community organiser in 2012. He worked in London’s liveaboard boating community where they tackled mooring issues, safety and police relations and the difficulties that arise from not having a fixed address. Keith came to Nationwide in 2017 to ensure the community voice was heard in Nationwide’s Oakfield Development in Swindon.

Joe is a committee member of the Geographical Society of Ireland. He is currently editor of the peer-reviewed and internationally recognised journal, Irish Geography, the only journal to focus exclusively on the geography of Ireland. He is a member of the Academic Council and serves on the Governing Authority of the University and a wide variety of other bodies and committees. He is a member of the Scientific Council of Urban Institute Ireland, an interdisciplinary research institute recently established in the University.

He is a business person and commentator, he helps to run Irish Mortgage Brokers, a business he co-founded and also writes for several national papers (The Sun and the Sunday Business Post).

Mark Latham Regeneration Director, Urban Splash Mark is client lead for Campbell Park North, Milton Keynes and Northstowe, North Cambridgeshire. Mark read Classics at the University of Cambridge, before undertaking a MA in Art in Greek and Roman Art and Architecture at the Courtauld Institute and MSc in Urban Regeneration, Development and Planning at University College London.

He has served as Senior Regional Advisor to the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and a panel member of the Sheffield Sustainable Development and Design Panel.

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PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA

Professor Mark Swenarton Emeritus Professor of Architecture, Liverpool University Mark has dual interests as a historian and a critic of architecture. He originally trained as an architectural historian, focusing on twentieth-century housing, and became an architectural critic as co-editor of Architecture Today (1989-2005), chair of the design review at CABE (2010-2011) and founding member of the Oxford Design Review Panel (2014-present ).

These twin interests, in history and design, have informed his work as an educator, as head of the architecture school at Oxford Brookes (2005-2010) and inaugural James Stirling Chair of Architecture (2011-2015).

Mark recently published Cook’s Camden: The Making of Modern Housing (2017) and Homes fit for Heroes (2018 revision of seminal text from 1981). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Neil Deely Co-Founder and Partner, Metropolitan Workshop Neil is Co-Founder and Partner of Metropolitan Workshop LLP. He established the practice in 2004 with David Prichard (retired). A particular interest is designing and building homes to meet the housing shortage. He leads the practice’s research into suburban housing densities and the evolution of the UK’s private rented sector.

This work produced the winning entry for the 2013 Wates/RIBA Private Rented Sector competition, in collaboration with Sir Richard MacCormac.

Neil is a member of CABE’s National Design Review Panel. He chaired the Greenwich Millennium Village selection panel for the masterplan of phases 3, 4 and 5. He has chaired Newham’s Design Review Panel since June 2012 and reviewed some of the UK’s largest mixed-use urban regeneration projects including ABP, Silvertown Quays and Albert Island. He is Vice-Chair of the LLDC Quality Review Panel and was architectural adviser to the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation. He was appointed Co-Chair of Croydon’s Place Review Panel in 2016 and is Co-Chair of Harrow’s Design Review Panel and a member of Design South East’s design review panel and Design Council CABE’s Greenwich panel.

Michael Pike Principal, GKMP Architects Michael is principal of GKMP Architects and an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy at UCD. The practice is principally concerned with the design of housing and public space.

Michael has taught the design studio in the School of Architecture since 2000. He was also Programme Co-ordinator for the affiliated architecture course at CESUGA, La Coruna between 2010 and 2015. He has recently completed a Research Masters on the housing projects of the Catalan architect José Antonio Coderch.

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Peter Freeman Co-Founder and Non-Executive Director, Argent Peter established Argent in 1981 with his brother, having become a solicitor and read History at Oxford University. He remains actively involved as a non-executive director and investor in various Argent entities and a director of King’s Cross. Peter is also a director and investor in Mayfields Market Towns Limited, which is promoting a new town in Sussex. He has served as a nonexecutive director of Land Securities and MEPC, Chairman of the Investment Property Forum, and a member of the Bank of England Property Forum.

Richard Partington Director, Studio Partington Richard is founder of Studio Partington and has expertise in low-energy design through research projects, urban planning and architecture. Since Studio Partington’s creation, Richard has led a number of exemplar projects, such as the widelypublished and multi-award winning Derwenthorpe in York for the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust and Howden Urban Extension in Yorkshire. Richard is co-editor of RIBA Publishing’s ‘Better Buildings – learning from buildings in use’. He has written a series of NHBC Foundation best practice guides, most recently ‘Futurology: the new home in 2050’.

Richard is expert advisor to the Ministerial Advisory Group in Northern Ireland. He notably co-chaired the Zero Carbon Hub’s ‘Design vs As-Built’ steering group, set up to investigate the performance gap.

Sarah Wigglesworth RIAD MBE Director, Sarah Wigglesworth Architects Sarah is an architect with over thirty years’ experience in practice and founder of SWA which celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary this year. She is widely recognised as a pioneering influence in British architecture having developed extensive expertise in sustainable design across sectors including housing, education and cultural venues.

She has a longstanding relationship with academia and for nineteen years was a Professor of Architecture at the University of Sheffield, where she led the DWELL research project designing exemplary neighbourhoods and housing for older people.

Sarah was recognised with an MBE for services to architecture (2003), served a CABE commissioner (2010) and made a Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts (2012). She serves as a CABE Built Environment Expert, a member of the Oxford and Kingston upon Thames Design Review Panels and as a member of the LLDC Quality Panel.

Professor Stephen Proctor Founding Director, Proctor Matthews Architects Stephen is a leading architect and urban designer, and co-founder of award-winning Proctor Matthew Architects. Past projects include: Horsted Park (Kent), Abode at Great Kneighton (Cambridge), Polnoon (Eaglesham) and the Greenwich Millennium Village. He studied at the University of Sheffield and is currently a Visiting Professor at Sheffield University and Dundee University. Stephen is a member of several prominent design review panels, including Architecture and Design Scotland, and Design South East, Essex Quality Review. He is past Chair of the RIBA Housing Group, an Academician of the Academy of Urbanism, an elected member of the Art Workers Guild and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Vincent Lacovara Head of Planning, Enfield Council Vincent is an architect, urban designer and spatial planner and was previously Placemaking Team Leader within the Spatial Planning Service at the London Borough of Croydon. He completed his professional training as an architect at Cambridge University and the Royal College of Art, London.

Vincent is currently Head of Planning at Enfield Council. He is also on the Mayor’s Project Review Panel and was previously a member of the Southwark Design Review Panel, was a RIBA London Policy Advisor and a member of the Building Futures Advisory Group.

PROSPECTS #02

We would like to thank the members of our studio who have supported this publication and its related programme of events by writing contributions for hardcopy and digital editions, sharing professional and personal insights through case studies, project managing communications and events, and mounting the exhibition. Thanks to: Gareth Bansor, Ewan Cooper, Rebecca Davies, Ivan Dikov, Federica Fillipone, Jack Hughes, Debbie Novak, Nick Phillips, Brandon Matthews, Tom Mitchell, Kruti Patel, Richard Robinson, Nima Sardar, George Wallis and Isabelle Watson.

Thanks to the Dublin office for the corresponding event in Ireland: Orla Ahern, Ozan Balcik, Conor Hyland, Cillian McGarry, Cillian McGrath, Laura Kenny, Cathal Mulry, Moll Linehan, Jonny McKenna, Denise Murray.

We would particularly like to thank David Prichard (Co-Founding Partner of Metropolitan Workshop and MacCormac Jamieson Prichard) for his encouragement and insight in relation to our exploration of the historic development of Milton Keynes.

Metropolitan Workshop would like to thank Sinead Hennessy, doctoral candidate, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University for her support in transcribing speeches made during our launch event and Lee Mallett for his succinct editorial input. Special thanks are due to photographer Taran Wilkhu for capturing our exhibition and launch event.

Thank you to Simon Rhodes, Andy Syson and Jim Hough at Smiling Wolf for helping to develop the distinctive look and feel of our Prospects series. We look forward to adding further contributions from leading practitioners in our second edition.

Metropolitan Workshop

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Look out for Prospects #02 – PEOPLE POWERED PLACES

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PROSPECTS #01 — A NEW KIND OF SUBURBIA