Ricardo Palma Prieto. Community-Led Housing in London, The Case of StART.

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COMMUNITY-LED HOUSING IN LONDON THE CASE OF StART


In memory of Jyothi Pillay


COMMUNITY-LED HOUSING IN LONDON THE CASE OF StART Ricardo Palma Prieto Dissertation May 2018

ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE GRADUATE SCHOOL COVERSHEET FOR SUBMISSION 2016-18 PROGRAMME: MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (Projective Cities) STUDENT NAME(S): SUBMISSION TITLE COURSE TITLE COURSE TUTOR SUBMISSION DATE:

Ricardo Palma Prieto Community-led Housing in London: The Case of StART Projective Cities SamJacoby and Platon Issaias 25.05.2018

DECLARATION: “I certify that this piece of work is entirely my/our own and that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of others is duly acknowledged.”

Signature of Student(s):

Date: 25.08.2017

MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design Architectural Association School of Architecture Projective Cities 2016 - 2018


ABSTRACT Community-led housing projects across the UK are seen as alternative solutions to the housing crisis. As many of these types of projects are new in London, conflicts with established, conventional, institutional frameworks indicate that these initiatives should become more suitable in the development of affordable housing. Social cohesion for sustainable neighbourhoods and ‘communities of care’ are what these projects aim to offer. However, issues of funding and land acquisition are the main problem, for affordable housing. Public expenditure cuts with an increasingly diversified household structure, due to an ageing society, demands new housing models based on intergenerational support and mutual care that could help ease pressure from public services by positively impacting the wellbeing of its residents. This study looks into community-led housing, using StART (St. Ann Redevelopment Trust), an active community group in Haringey, north London, as an example. StART is looking to redevelop the St. Ann’s Hospital Site within the framework of a Community Land Trust (CLT), which aims to produce genuine affordable housing of up to 800 units. The dissertation examines and frames what ‘community-led’ means and the role of CLT’s within the context of the Localism Act (2011), and also looks at the StART project as a starting point to develop a housing model based on their needs and vision. Therefore, the dissertation analyses the household composition across the life cycle of its residents in order to develop a scheme in which people could age in place. Based on this, a design with different housing typologies that are arranged around a life-cycle community are put forth, setting out design principles that aim to contribute to a housing typology that expands upon the ambitions of StART.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE

I am deeply grateful to my parents, José Ines Palma Escamilla and Maria Martha Prieto Chavez, for their immense love and support. I am also thankful for my siblings, Josué and Elizabeth, who have encouraged me along the way.

Out of the pressure for alternative housing solutions due to the housing crisis, community-led housing in London is seen as part of an answer. Learning about the critical period in which affordable housing is positioned and the consequent community-led movement in London, inspired me to take part in the StART project. Being an active member, I have followed and contributed to the activities of the Community Land Trust between 2017 and 2018 with the aim of exploring an alternative housing model that offers forms of living that contrast those being developed conventionally, and to try and find solutions to the question of affordable housing. The ambition is to understand what CLT’s could do for housing design and how these could be implemented in the UK as there are many barriers and limitations that make these developments unviable. I have been involved in their strategy group where we have met biweekly, intertwined with biweekly ‘general’ meetings with other subgroups. My role as an architect and researcher in this community has been to offer StART academic support. Before I joined StART, I knew that 6a Architects along with Maccreanor & Lavington had sketched a masterplan that enabled StART to submit a counterproposal when the hospital site was announced to be sold for private development. After joining StART, I realized that they had not yet explored a housing model that investigated housing typologies. Therefore, I decided to contribute by looking into different living arrangements for a more innovative and inclusive housing concept based on intergenerational living, cooperation and the idea of ageing in place. The academic space has enabled me to study housing models in relation to demographic changes that have been put forward in our meetings. At the same time, involvement has been through collaborative and participatory workshops internationally. Along with two other members of StART, I did a presentation on the main ideas of the StART project and issues around its development at Experiment Days 2017 (European Collaborative Housing Hub) in Berlin. StART was awarded a prize in recognition of the work they have so far done, prior to a built form. I also assisted at other workshops in London where StART participated, such as the Community-Led Housing Regeneration: Between the Formal and the Informal (2017) a research project by Pablo Sendra (UCL), and Daniel Fitzpatrick (UCL) in collaboration with Just Space. In April 2018, I helped organise a two-day event (Future Homes for London: Alternate Models) with the Royal Academy of Art and Projective Cities (AA). The intention was to dismantle issues and discuss potentials around community-led housing in the UK, using international examples to broaden the discussion with local authorities and other parties involved in housing. Such first-hand insights from being involved with StART and witnessing their passionate engagement with housing as they manoeuvre around an ardent political climate for affordable housing, has inspired and informed this dissertation.

My most sincere gratitude to Conacyt and the Architectural Association School of Architecture for assisting with the funding of my studies. A very special recognition goes out to all those involved with St. Ann Redevelopment Trust (StART), it was incredible to have had the fortuity to work with many of you throughout my dissertation. Thank you for your open doors, courage, and hard work. To all my friends who in many ways have contributed to this work. A special mention to Davi Weber, Erik de Haan, José Luis González Trujillo, Jesper Henriksson, Maya Shopova, and Lorenzo Boddi. I am grateful to my tutor Dr. Sam Jacoby, for his guidance and support. I also would like to thank my tutors Dr. Platon Issaias, Dr. Maria Shéhérazade Giudici, and Dr. Mark Campbell, for their critical input. Last but not least, to all my colleagues at Projective Cities for their camaraderie. Thank you.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

COMMUNITY-LED HOUSING IN LONDON: THE CASE OF StART Abstract Acknowledgements Preface

7 8 9

INTRODUCTION 1. THE CASE OF START

15 25

The Land Question The Case of StART Community

25 33 45

2. INTERGENERATIONAL LIVING

53

Changes of Life Cycle and Demographics Mehr Als Wohnen: Case Study in Zurich Design

53 61 67

Cooperative Living Kraftwerk II and Mehr Als Wohnen Design

105 109 113

3. DESIGN AS A DISCURSIVE PRACTICE IN COMMUNITY-LED HOUSING

129

141

Design Manual

CONCLUSION

153

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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INTRODUCTION

Community-led housing can be part of the solution to the housing crisis. Commonly, most consist of small-scale projects. But a few ambitious large-scale projects have confronted with established conventional institutional frameworks. However, the Mayor of London, policy makers, housing bodies, and the public suggest that these schemes should become more applicable in the development of affordable housing. This study assumes a position from an active group who is currently working towards a new housing development that responds to local needs. The research project takes St. Ann Redevelopment Trust (StART) as a case study that challenges a conventional development and proposes an alternative communityled housing redevelopment for the St. Ann’s Hospital Site in Haringey in the north of London. StART is a group of local residents and workers who founded a Community Land Trust (CLT) in 2015 — under the legal framework of a Benefit Community Society — to protect the hospital’s land from private development. It initiated a transparent community-led process that envisions an inclusive mixed-use housing scheme with genuinely affordable housing by maintaining community ownership of the land in perpetuity while giving the local community control to be part of its own management. There are three reasons why StART is a good project to examine for the purposes of research. Firstly, StART is in a procurement process, during which they are currently negotiating with the government to obtain 7.1 hectares of public land currently owned by the NHS. Secondly, it stands as an example for the problems experienced by community-led development projects and illustrates many of the contradictions in the planning system of London. Finally, it represents a challenging scale where the ambition is to make up to 800 housing units. This case serves to question what the role of a community is in the development of housing within the discipline of planning and urban regeneration. Nonetheless, community-led will not be the main focal point. Rather, it will be used to examine a Community Land Trust housing model in the UK through a lens of community governance to investigate design as part of the procurement and negotiation with stakeholders. The project examines what the housing typologies are, and how they respond to the local needs and the visions of StART. It investigates design


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17 INTRODUCTION

Enfield

Barnet Harrow

Haringey Haringey

I

Redbridge Havering

Brent

Hillingdon

Camden

Ealing

G

W ands

A

J

h

Greenwich Bexley Lewisham

h

w o rt

Newham

Southwark

D

t La m b e

w nslo Hou

Barking and Dagenham F

E C

H

Merton B Bromley Sutton

Croydon

A

Richmond upon Thames

F

City of London

B

Kingston upon Thames

G

Islington

C

Hammersmith and Fulham

H

Hackney

D

Kensington and Chelsea

I

Waltham Forest

E

Westminster

J

Tower Hamlets

London borough of Haringey

St. Ann’s Hospital in Haringey, North London


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INTRODUCTION

strategies for building and flat typologies that respond to future challenges in household composition, such as the new family structures because of an ageing population. It also asks, due to its dimension, what kind of urban planning creates community at a neighbourhood scale? The project fundamentally questions how this project can be realized and what and who defines density.

176m2 Istanbul

158m2 Shanghai

129m2 Seoul

94m2 Vienna

139m2 Berlin

58m2 Copenhagen

88m2 Madrid

63m2 Toronto

57m2 Vancouver

50m2 Tokyo

49m2 Los Angeles

56m2 Chicago 42m2 Singapore

33m2 Boston

33m2 Hong Kong

133m2 Beijing 71m2 Barcelona

58m2 Amsterdam

50m2 Sydney

39m2 Stockholm

30m2 Paris

28m2 San Francisco 28m2 London

29m2 Zurich

26m2 Manhattan (NYC)

01

01 Cost of living: Average size of residential property for a monthly rental cost of $1,500 per m2

In the current scenario, the central government as well as local authorities have assumed that the market will provide the necessary housing required, but consequently has failed to accomplish valuable participation in planning and development needed for a sustainable development. It is an issue of who can finance a development. Moreover, incentives of selling off public land to private developers exacerbates the problem. This is the case for many NHS sites that have been sold under the Government’s Public Land for Housing Programme.1 The New Economics Foundation think tank has published a report that highlights how NHS sites that are being sold for homes at market rates which are unaffordable not only to NHS key workers but also to local people.2 Therefore, preceding the housing question is the land question, an often-overlooked resource in modern economics, political thought and housing.3 Land management and the policies around urban regulation are at the heart of the housing conflict. Furthermore, the current policy framework of housing and planning in England embodies the ideological principles that successive governments since 1979 have employed and pushed forward through the latest Housing and Planning Act of 2016. It postulates that housing should continue being delivered by the private sector and encourages ownership against other types of tenure. Correspondingly, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced a housing grant of £3.15 billion for affordable housing.4 Yet, the definition of ‘affordable rent’ has a specific meaning in the UK, which is 80% of market rent, being unaffordable to most households in London. Within this context the Localism Act (2011) passed on power from the central government to local authorities through a legal framework which transfers decision-making and responsibilities over their local resources. This shift towards local governance and planning presents a dilemma in terms of public management at a national level, as each locality has an associated budget that puts them in disadvantages against others. As it intends to promote local democracy through local and transparent referendums giving legal tools for local community groups to shape their neighbourhoods, it has also created a series of conflicts with new planned developments between people, developers and authorities. On the other hand, neighbourhood planning introduced by the Localism Act has valuable propositions that establishes community governance guidelines that enable groups to take action over their locality, such as: the community right to

1 Public Land for Housing programme 2015-20. Annual Report. 2017. Department for Communities and Local Government. Accessed February 20, 2018. https://www.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/ file/592919/170124_PSL_Annual_ Report_FINAL_for_publication. pdf. 2 Hanna Wheatley, and Joe Beswick. “NO HOMES FOR NURSES - neweconomics. org.” Http://neweconomics. org/2018/01/no-homes-fornurses/. January 9, 2018. Accessed February 20, 2018. http://neweconomics.org/ wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ nhs-land-briefing.pdf. 3 John Ryan-Collins et al in their recent book ‘Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing’ (2017) put land in relation to housing as the main factor for wealth inequality. It also shows the disappearance of land from economic theory in the 20th century. 4 The Mayor of London’s Capital Spending Plan 2018-19. 2018. Greater London Authority. Accessed February 20, 2018. https://www.london.gov.uk/ sites/default/files/201819mayorscapitalspendingplan. pdf


5 “2010 to 2015 Government Policy: Localism.” GOV.UK. Accessed Feb 19, 2018. https:// www.gov.uk/government/ publications/2010-to2015-government-policylocalism/2010-to-2015government-policy-localism.

6 International Independence Institute, and Robert S. Swann. The community land trust; a guide to a new model for land tenure in America. (Cambridge, Mass: Center for Community Economic Development, 1972), 2

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neighbourhood planning, the community right to bid on assets of community value (ACV), and the community right to build.5

achieve. Accessibility to land and funding is one of the main challenges, as it relies on the highly demanding professional competency of a community group who has decided to initiate a CLT. But, why would local authorities engage economically and pass on responsibility to a community group in high risk developments? Moreover, there are not fully successful working examples in the UK, its technical framework is often seen as very complicated even by experts which attest to the unwillingness often found by the same authorities who praise such models. Nevertheless, the current housing conditions demand the need to understand and find alternative functioning mechanisms, and although the financial risk is high — it could be mitigated — the social and economic advantages outweighs these risks.

Grassroots community governance is seen as a workable alternative to central governance and private sector housing provision. As such, community-led approaches seek to offer a third way in developing housing and neighbourhoods. In recent years, an increasing number of new Community Land Trusts (CLT) have appeared in the UK, and have been recognized and supported by the government to a certain extent. A CLT is a land tenure model that offers an alternative to other forms of ownership that allows stabilisation of lower rent by disarticulating the communal ownership of land to that of the properties on it. This model originated in the U.S. by founders Ralph Borsodi and Robert Swann with the agenda for farmers to have access to agricultural land, but in the 1980’s this model started to shift to respond to the problems of affordable housing. Today these non-profit CLT organisations intend to play a role in supporting the long-term affordability of housing, while at the same time allowing the broad participation of the community.6 The CLT model not only has the potential of creating affordable housing, it offers the opportunity to respond to different typologies and aesthetic qualities of prevailing social housing and private developments. Hence, beyond the affordable housing supply crisis, social housing must be readdressed through the evolving change in demographics. Data highlights the demand for different and integrated homes for an ageing population within existing neighbourhoods, which suggest that the housing crisis does not only lie in its provision and accessibility, but on typology, a different model of housing based on intergenerational exchange. Demographic changes reflect an unprecedented case known as the ‘verticalisation’ of the family caused by longevity and the decrease in birth rates. It means that more social relationships will be made between generations, i.e. intergenerational cooperation, and less intragenerational interaction. Consequently, there will be more elderly living alone with no primal support networks. This poses a design challenge on how these new support networks will be created in a housing scheme that enables mobility throughout the life cycle. Families that fit this vertical paradigm will require substituting kinship ties. To consider the elderly is to redefine family arrangements that have spatial consequences for daily care assistance and support through vertical solidarity. It becomes a challenge for planning and design as it requires special attention to an environment supported by certain services and activities that encourage community life, while maintaining people’s independence. Local government sees CLT’s as vehicles to provide affordable housing through partnerships schemes, therefore the Housing Minister granted £60 million a year for community-led projects through the Community Housing Fund. However, conflicts of interest and little support make these kind of developments hard to

Thus, this research aims to rethink social affordable housing through the project of StART that envisions a mix-use of houses for all ages. As such the study explores the idea of independent living, assisted living facility, and retirement community, to be integrated into a holistic approach of intergenerational living. Its design frames how the local economy and services allow the whole cluster to address social needs through the community, rather than public institutions. Therefore, the research questions: Disciplinary question: What is the role of a community in housing development? What does community-led mean? Typological question: What are the housing typologies that reflect a community-led housing scheme? What are the living arrangements for an ageing population? Urban question: What urban form engenders community? What are the public services that integrate the wider community of the neighbourhood into the quarter? Part of the methodology included participation with StART, as well as involvement and organization of events that brought together successful projects and professionals involved in the process of community-led housing developments. This is supported by research of relevant literature on the subject. The thesis is split into three chapters. The first chapter reviews a theoretical perspective on land, framing how CLT’s were formed, and why their role is relevant today in the UK. It also presents the context of StART and the role of community in housing development. Chapter two presents an analysis in the changing demographics, life cycle, ageing in place, and cooperative housing, giving a study of flat typologies that respond to the objectives of the community-led group. Chapter three outlines what the role of design is as a discursive practice for negotiation. It presents the previous design studies to frame a design manual for StART.



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THE CASE OF StART

“…Is faded all – a hope that blossomed free, And hath been once, no more shall ever be Inclosure came and trampled on the grave Of labour’s rights and left the poor a slave…” John Clare, The Mores, circa 1820

THE LAND QUESTION Preceding the housing question is the land question, an often-overlooked asset linked to inequality and housing affordability. In the book Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing (2017) the authors introduce the contemporary debate of the housing crisis tied to the land economy, they reconsider the underlying paradox “…that lies at the heart of landed property: that ownership is both a form of freedom and, because of its exclusionary nature, theft.”1 The ongoing public land sell-off for housing development feeds into the new accumulation or new enclosures2 that excludes the average income earner. The process of hoarding land was theorized by Karl Marx as primitive accumulation, which he describes as the development that created the wage-labourer and consequently transformed feudal exploitation into capitalist exploitation.3 Men and women were dissolved into competing individuals that gradually eroded the social relations that had previously existed, yet the struggles and the cyclical crisis of capitalism brought with it different perspectives of community and collaboration. Under the enclosure movement or primitive accumulation, new economic discourses started to emerge with a focus on land reforms. In his pamphlet Property in Land Every One’s Right (1775), Thomas Spence (1750-1814), the mastermind behind the Parish Land Trust in England, argued for the eradication of landowners and the implementation of the communalization of land where all land was meant to be publicly owned by the parishes and the rents on the land would be shared equally by the community. The idea of the mutualisation of the land as a social benefit also had effects on the mutual organization of housing complexes and its assets. The visions of the Phalanstère (1820) by Charles Fourier and Robert Owen’s utopian housing schemes, constitute the nineteenth century communitarian endeavours that look for forms of cooperation, communality and a self-sustained economy against the capitalist system.

1 Josh Ryan-Collins, Toby Lloyd, and Laurie Macfarlane. Rethinking the economics of land and housing. (London: Zed Books, 2017), 16

2 An anticipated book on this topic to be published in November 2018 is Brett Christophers. The New Enclosure: the Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain. Verso, 2018.

3 Karl Marx, Samuel Moore, Edward B. Aveling, and Ernest Untermann. Capital: a critical analysis of Capitalist production. (Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2013), 503


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4 John Emmeus Davis. The community land trust reader. (Cambridge: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. 2010), 5

One of the most influential economists on land reform was Henry George (18391897). Following David Ricardo’s idea of unearned income from land, George radicalized the concept of taxing land values similarly to what Spence had proposed earlier, although George was unaware of Spence at that time. He wrote his most influential book, Progress and Poverty (1887), where he noted his view on poverty because of the monetary values that a collective society creates over real estate, in which a small group of landowners can extract the increased value of land overtime.4 To this, his solution was the single tax on all land values. In his book he stated the following:

5 Henry George. Progress and poverty. (New York, NY: Cosimo Inc., 2005), 299

The tax upon land values is, therefore, the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive. It is the taking by the community, for the use of the community, of that value which is the creation of the community.5

6 Joseph Stiglitz at minute 2:09:00 gives insight into the importance of land and housing in relation to capital and wealth “Thomas Piketty and Joseph Stiglitz on Inequality,” YouTube video, 2:33:34, from a lectured performed by various thinkers organized by the Institute for New Economic Thinking streamed live on Apr 8, 2015, posted by “New Economic Thinking,” July 8, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Fg6UwAQJUVo

7 John Emmeus Davis. The community land trust reader, 8

As such, Land Value Taxation (LVT) is the repossession of commonly created capital by making land owners pay such tax without imposing an added fee to the rental tenants. George’s contemporary, Karl Marx, questioned the tax on land as it did not tackle the surplus value of labour production and the exploitation of the worker. Through a Marxist lens, many socialist policy makers favoured taxes on capital income and labour rather than land. Today, following George’s idea, LVT is being pushed forward by the Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who critiqued Thomas Piketty for not taking into account land and housing values in the creation of wealth inequality.6 The idea of a single source of taxation influenced many to find alternative ideas for self-contained cities and communities. Ebenezer Howard’s ‘Garden Cities’ are a clear example of this. Just as the garden cities spread throughout England, in America many single tax communities as well as other forms of communities appeared during the Great Depression as attempts to reinstitute security to poor families. One of the key figures of the Community Land Trusts (CLT) as we know them today was Ralph Borsodi (1886-1977), who put into practice many lease land ventures and eventually called them ‘Land Trusts’.7 His visions were in parallel to those decentralization manifestos at the time, such as Broadacre City (1932) by Frank Lloyd Wright, and Ludwig’s Hillberseimer’s Decentralized City (1944).

THE BIRTH OF THE COMMUNITY LAND TRUST The classic CLT was formalized by Robert Swann (1918-2003) another Georgist, who witnessed the injustices of African-Americans in the South who could not easily access land to work and live on it. He met Salter King (1927-1969), a real estate broker, and C.B King (1923-1988), an attorney, who both were leaders of the Albany Movement as part of the Civil Rights Movement. Swann and both Kings gave form to the CLT with the agenda for farmers to have access to agricultural land. Due to the financial and organizational difficulties to make CLT’s function, Swan helped his colleagues to write a protocol explaining how the ‘new model for land tenure’ works, which became a book called The Community Land Trust (1972).8 After this book CLT handbooks were created, updating and enhancing its technicalities as well as its social intent. Leading CLT American activist John Emmeus Davis described it: “…reforming the relationship between individual and community – finding an equitable and sustainable balance between private interests and public interests that regularly collide in the ownership and use of real property.”9 By definition, Community Land Trusts are non-profit organizations that aim to acquire land to use for affordable housing and community development. Its main objective is to pull a parcel of land out of the market permanently; the CLT then disarticulates ownership of the land from the buildings on it, creating a lease on the land to the residents or a cooperative housing corporation at an affordable rate.10 The trust sells a long-term lease on the land where the property sits, but retains ownership of the land.

Properties are built by non-profit developers.

The Land is either bought or donated to the trust .

The trust is made up by local people who live in the area.

The lease is a long-term, renewable and can be passed on by owner in their will. A formula contained in the leashold agreement is used to determined the price at which the community land trust can buy back the property and how to divide any increase in its value between the leaseholder and the trust.

if a resident who ownes a property decides to move out, they can sell the property to someone else or back to the trust and sell the lease to another person in the same way.

01 Community land trust concept

The property, not the land, is owned or rented by a resident.

8 Ibid., 17 9 Ibid, 18 10 “Community Land Trusts (CLTs).” Community-Wealth. org. January 21, 2015. Accessed February 17, 2018. https:// community-wealth.org/ strategies/panel/clts/index.html.


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OWNED WITH MORTGAGE OWNED OUTRIGHT SOCIAL RENTERS PRIVATE RENTERS

CLT MODEL IMPORT IN THE UK

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02 Tenure change in England, 1971-2015 (%) 03 Real land and house price indices UK 1945-2008 (1945=100)

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Margaret Thatcher’s Right-To-Buy marked a period where economic growth suffered from supply of housing. Since 2010, there are two trends in tenure that cut across each other (Fig 02). First, outright ownership has overtaken mortgaged homeownership. Second, private renting has overtaken social renting for the first time since the 1960’s.11 This means that in the near future most people will be renting from a few rich individuals, which attests to that while the 18th and 19th century shows an importance on land in economic and political thought, the 20th century economic theory and policy-making abandoned the crucial role of land and shifted its focus to urban production and manufacture. Neoclassical economy had capital and labour as the basis for their model systems, but not land.12 Today’s housing situation leads us to rethink past theories of land economy as a method in which to alleviate the disparities in housing inequality through policies and architecture. Therefore, reconsidering land, the 21st century converges with the 19th century in terms of the communal ownership of land tenures as the basis for social solidarity through voluntary association that seeks to find affordable ways of living. This déjà vu is informed by housing prices going up five times since the Second World War while land values have increased fifteen times in real terms13 (Fig 03). The fast rise of inequality has led to grassroots participation as a workable alternative that has reached political reform, such as the Localism Act of 2011. A metanoia of sorts has given rise to the proliferation of CLT’s across the country, where an increasing number of people are uniting their efforts for the benefit of the community through permanently and genuinely affordable homes. The prehistory of the Community Land Trust in fact started in the UK. Thomas Spence writings were inspired by a legal dispute in 1771 between a Corporation — who wanted to rent land to builders — and the freeman of Newcastle, the latter won the power over the land, and through the land lease managed to build and subsidise almshouses.14 A dispute over land is precisely where StART is, and to build affordable homes and take care of vulnerable people such as the ill, the homeless and the elderly is what StART aims to do. The CLT’s history shows that it is a model that can combat social injustice, and thus it is a highly relevant model today as the economic discourse is shifting back to the land as a community asset rather than speculative private developments. It is a traditional alternative within a contemporary context.

11 Ryan-Collins, Rethinking the economics of land and housing, 107

12 Joseph Stiglitz at minute 2:09:00 explains the focus on land between the 19th Century and the 20th Century. “Thomas Piketty and Joseph Stiglitz on Inequality,” YouTube video, 2:33:34, from a lectured performed by various thinkers organized by the Institute for New Economic Thinking streamed live on Apr 8, 2015, posted by “New Economic Thinking,” July 8, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Fg6UwAQJUVo 13 Ryan-Collins, Rethinking the economics of land and housing, 8. 14 Thompson, R. H. “The Dies of Thomas Spence,” The British Numismatic Journal 38 (1969-1970), 127


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HARINGEY

ST. ANN

SEVEN SISTERS

Wards Boundary

Haringey Borough Boundary

0

0.5

1km

Haringey Council, London

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500m

St. Ann Site (1.4Km radius)


Health Services at the New St Ann’s

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Latest plan of how the St Ann’s site might COMMUNITY-LED HOUSING IN LONDON look in the future

THE CASE OF StART

All of the existing health services on the St Ann’s site will continue to be provided for local people, in improved, modern facilities, with improved landscaping and signage which will make it much easier to find your way around. The current mental health inpatient services will remain, in brand new facilities, replacing the current poor quality wards.

THE CASE OF StART

Mental Health Services The Mental Health Trust will continue to provide: • Outpatient services • Adult inpatient services

The case of St. Ann Hospital in Haringey north of London concerns NHS, GLA (Greater London Authority), the economy of land, and housing. Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust has been experiencing a shortfall in their services and maintenance. Some of the buildings are in a state of decay, and part of the hospital is now a surplus for NHS management. In the Haringey Local Plan 2013, their policy SP1 (Managing Growth) assigns the site (11.24 hectares) for potential redevelopment. This is indicative of a continued leitmotif programme that seeks to reduce pressure on health services through reforms and redesign of hospitals in local areas due to a growing ageing population that is stretching the resources of the NHS. The Next Steps on the NHS Five Year Forward View (2017) report, gives insight into the administrative adjustments and the need to form partnerships to integrate services outside their properties.15 To acquire funds to make changes, the NHS has been bound to sell part of their properties and land. Such is the complexity of the issue, that the current way to develop is to sell off without benefiting the NHS beyond the transfer.

• Community mental health services • Eating disorder services • Drug and alcohol advisory services • Dementia services including memory assessment and Admiral Nursing

Other Health Services Whittington Health is expected to continue to provide community health services for children and adults on the site, including: • Audiology • Foot Health • Sexual Health • Child development • Community dentistry • Community physiotherapy • Seating and mobility service (wheelchair clinic) • Improving access to psychological therapies (Talking Therapies) North Middlesex Hospital is expected to continue to provide: • X-ray services • Sickle cell services Moorfields Eye Hospital is expected to continue to provide: • Day surgery hospital services • Outpatient services North London Breast Screening Service is expected to continue to provide screening services on the site London Ambulance Service will continue to have its Tottenham base in the North West corner of the site

4

04 470 units 14% Affordable (80% market rate)

05 800 units 75% Genuinely Affordable

04 By Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust 05 By 6a and Maccreanor Lavington with StART

5

Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust require selling part of the site to capitalize and invest on the remaining part. In 2014, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust received planning approval to develop two thirds of the site (7.1 hectares) through a mixed use residential scheme called ‘The New St Ann’s’, with the intention to benefit the wider and local community of Haringey. It proposes 470 housing units, of which 14% would be affordable, classified as 80% of market rate (Policy 3.10 of London Plan). In opposition, a group of local residents formed Haringey Needs St Ann’s Hospital campaigning against the development, until local Mary Ann Johnson Housing Co-operative (MAJ) joined them as a way to protect the site by registering it as an asset of community value. Under the Localism Act (2011) a clause gives any local group the right to reclaim land and buildings for the use and management of the community. The statutory provision is specified as Community Right to Bid for Assets of Community Value (ACV). It is used by local authorities to list a building or land as an asset of community value by those who are selling or simply to enlist a nominated property by a community who identifies it as important. Once on the list, a six-week ‘interim moratorium’ is granted for those who wish to show interest in bidding for the asset. In this period, St. Ann Redevelopment Trust (StART) was formed as a Community Land Trust recognized legally in the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, but its legal structure, not the name, is a Community Benefit Society. Any profits made through an asset lock are put back into the infrastructure for the benefit of the local community.16

15 National Health Service. “Next Steps On the Five Year Forward View”. (2017), 31 Accessed March 20, 2018. https://www. england.nhs.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2017/03/NEXT-STEPSON-THE-NHS-FIVE-YEARFORWARD-VIEW.pdf

16 “Jargon Buster”. Accessed May 13, 2018. http://www. communitylandtrusts.org. uk/funding-and-resources/ jargon-buster.


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StART successfully enlisted the St. Ann’s site and received a six-month moratorium in which they developed a counter proposal with a thorough community-led plan based on local needs. StART raised £25,000 to pay architects for a masterplan. This required different methods of inclusion through extensive workshops with residents in the neighbourhood — who will remain neighbours, but do not expect to move into the housing — by creating favourable circumstances for a successful community-led development. Their plan proposes major differences to the original developer plan in terms of increasing density and reconsidering open spaces. The location and urban form of the site is unique. It can only be accessed by St. Ann Road, having Chest Nut Park across the street. This enunciates a peculiar urban ‘pocket’ condition as it is flanked on the other three sides: neighbouring row houses on the west, the remaining part of the hospital on the east, and an ecological corridor running in parallel with the railway line on the south that plays an important role for the Biodiversity Action Plan (2009) by Haringey Council. StART project envisions to keep the health heritage of the site through a diverse inclusive community with open green spaces and the preservation of six key buildings (below). Due to the high density, the conservation of all existing buildings becomes unattainable.

Existing buildings to demoslish

Existing buildings to preserve


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COMMUNITY-LED HOUSING IN LONDON

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1 Water Tower

2 Admin Building

3 Peace Garden’s Building

1 Main entrance

2 East boundary (Water tower)

3 West boundary (Hospital)

4 Works Building

5 Gate house and Mayfield house

6 Mulberry House

4 South boundary (Ecological corridor)

5 Peace garden

5 Peace garden

1

3 5 1 6

2

5

2

3 4

Existing buildings to preserve

4

Urban “pocket” enclave Site boundary conditions


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COMMUNITY-LED HOUSING IN LONDON

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Allocations policy Tenancy Management Accounts CLT Grants Donations Investors Financial reports Feasibility

Presentation GLA negotiation NHS negotiation Haringey Council relationship

HOUSING FINANCE

Website Twitter Facebook Leaflets

STRATEGY

StART PUBLICITY

ENVIRONMENT

One Planet Living Principles (OPL) Sustainability policies Zero Carbon Energy Zero waste Gardens and Landscape Local and organic food

INCLUSION

Workshops Stalls Events

HEALTH

Sustainability and Transformation plan Mental Health NHS Health New Towns programme

StART non-hierarchical organizational structure

Eight-hundred units of which 75% are meant to be genuine affordable homes is their main goal. One of the major challenges facing StART is the lack of funding to purchase the land. It has made them dependent on GLA who might buy the land valued at £50 million and give it to the trust. Its feasibility depends on the land plus another £18 million to cover £403,245,224 of total costs, while the rest to be expected from a developer. Its financial viability reviewed by Altair (housing consultants) shows that the total amount can be guaranteed with £28 million return from sales and commercial income. The profit margin falls short of that expected by a conventional developer, which would be double. Every action of StART is directed towards funding, and part of the process had to be done through a masterplan of the site. Part of my collaboration with StART has been fundraising and widening the exposure of this project in order to raise the sufficient capital. The aptitude of the group relies on interdisciplinary collaboration. The multidisciplinary aspect is clear in the way StART is organized (left). Its managerial structure looks at specific issues in relation to its field of analysis through seven main subgroups: strategy, housing, environment, health, publicity, finance and inclusion. This framework forms a body of knowledge that outsources expertise to an assembled team of consultants around them in order to carry on with the project and prove their validity to the authorities and other institutions. Some collaborators have included: Igloo (project management), New Economic Foundation, CLT Network, Confederation of Cooperative Housing, Altair, Just Space, Maccreanor/Lavington and 6a architects. The negotiation process with the GLA is highly political, it is a matter of persuasion and trust. Having a well thought out powerful scheme increases the chances of bringing in the sufficient capital. Here, design plays a crucial role through which my association aims to translate and project the intentions of StART. Of all the planning and housing strategies that the government and the London Plan have put forth, StART represents an example of many of the contradictions that the planning system produces. The London Plan acknowledges and encourages community-led housing, yet it does not specify how such projects would be enabled. While local authorities as well as councils validate and empower community’s initiatives through grants and policies, this responsiveness is often found with barriers, i.e. conflicts of interest, a condition of London’s contemporary urban planning. For example, alongside the St. Ann’s redevelopment, Haringey Council is looking for ways to increase the housing stock as well as jobs through the Opportunity and Intensification Area framework, which identifies areas for large scale developments in the London Plan 2016. To achieve this, Haringey Council set out its own plan known as the Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV), in which through Public Private Partnerships (PPP), public land is offered to a


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skilled private sector with financial means to develop.17 Such is the case of the Haringey Heartlands urban regeneration (1,697 homes) by developers Berkley Group and National Grid with no affordable housing. However, this stands in opposition to the London Plan’s own recognition that social infrastructure is fundamental for cohesive communities, yet Section 106, which are agreements between private developers and local authorities incentivises, to do the opposite. The alternative proposal that StART has initiated, with an ambivalent support from GLA, opens the question of what the methods are to solve conflicts between urban planning politics and governance. Some of these disputes between different political voices must be resolved by matter of conflictual consensus according to Chantal Mouffe’s Agonistics theory. Mouffe proclaims that the recognition of the ‘adversary’ and its interpretation of the matter at hand should be confronted to advance alternative projects. In democratic societies, she argues, it is not only the confrontation that seeks to find a common ground, it is sustaining the conflict itself. She states that conflict “…should not be eradicated, since the specificity of pluralist democracy is precisely the recognition and the legitimation of conflict”18. In theory, the Localism Act has opened participatory spaces for agonistic practice against hegemonic projects. If legal tools such as Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDP) have provided room to contest the often-contradictory planning regulations under neo-liberal junctures19, then design as a discursive device becomes key. The question is no longer about who is suitable to deliver and control housing, such as the state or the private sector. The fundamental question through Mouffe’s agonism would be what the objective is. What is the added value of the alternative project? Community-led housing comes out of the failure of the market, and policies around housing. It is a third sector that intends to fill the gap. Finding alternatives for rent control is what constitutes and legitimizes a CLT whose goal is to put land back for the benefit of a local community to pursue genuine affordable housing and other forms of living together. Emmeus Davis states, “…many emerging CLTs in other cities, viewed affordable housing as only one component of community development, a subset of the CLT’s overall mission of transforming the physical, economic, and political life of its place-based community”.20 One such feature is the legal framework of a CLT that sets it apart from other collective housing schemes such as co-housing or some cooperative (coop) models, where the action group are future residents, something that a CLT group is not. CLT’s in the UK context have their own legal format which is Community Benefit Society (Bencom). As for service aims and objectives, both a bencom and a coop share affordability as the main goal. But there are two main differences between

06 StART General Meeting, 2018

17 “Haringey Development Vehicle.” Haringey Development Vehicle | Haringey Council. Accessed March 01, 2018. http://www.haringey.gov. uk/regeneration/haringeydevelopment-vehicle#what.

18 Chantal Mouffe. Agonistics: thinking the world politically. (London: Verso, 2013), 7

19 Gaving Parker, Tessa Lynn, and Matthew Wargent. “Contestation and Conservatism in Neighbourhood Planning in England: Reconciling Agonism and Collaboration?” Planning Theory & Practice 18, no. 3 (July 3, 2017): 446–65. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/14649357.2017.1316514.

20 John Emmeus Davis. Origins and Evolution of the Community Land Trust in the United States (2014), 39. Accessed April 17, 2018. http:// berkshirecommunitylandtrust. org/wp-content/ uploads/2015/02/OriginsEvolution-CLT-byJohnDavis.pdf


21 Kirby White. The CLT Technical Manual. Accessed April 17, 2018. (2011), http://cltnetwork.org/ wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ MASTER-CLT-MANUAL.pdf 22 “About Cooperative and Community Benefit Societies.” Community Shares. March 31, 2018. Accessed April 17, 2018. https://communityshares.org. uk/about-cooperative-andcommunity-benefit-societies.

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a bencom model and a coop model as housing enterprises. A coop functions as a democratic decision-making based on one-member-one-vote, like the bencom, but the coop is exclusive to its residents (shareholders) only. Moreover, a coop is seen as a business model where one owns shares that could generate profit, and its surpluses then are divided between its members. Although cooperatives in the housing market offer an alternative for affordable housing, some still depends on market-rates that correlate to its location where shares are sold in correlation to the market.21 Coops that are social-value oriented tend to be formed as limited-equity coops. In other words, the main difference is that a coop is operated by the interests of their members only, while a bencom is to serve the wider interest of the community at large.22 This is very clear in the way they are structured. A CLT is formed by thirds: one third encompasses members from the neighbourhood, one third is formed by residents, and one third is composed by the board members. This already has spatial implications at a neighbourhood scale as to provide public spaces for non-residents. It poses a question: What kind of services can a CLT offer beyond its resident’s needs, and how are these inserted into the scheme and site?

conventional discourse based on a quantitative approach to housing, which for many is where the problem lies. That is one aspect of the issue, I would argue, that the problem lies on housing design rather than numbers. He does stress the importance of building different types of homes for different households, but his vision is to make larger family sized houses. His assertion also fails to question why the nuclear family has ceased to make up the majority of the population while new family structures are more prevalent largely because of ageing.25 His arguments fall short of actually demanding new post-familial housing. The changing dynamics produced by an ageing population challenges the conceived notions of collective living or communal living as radical anti-capitalist social political models, today is the norm. Just as the nuclear family house became the model in the 19th century to improve sanitary conditions for the working-class, the apartment has been expanded to accommodate different age groups as part of the same family to improve other health concerns. The independent family house for the old age has become a dangerous machine for living, which will be discussed later. The counter-tendency in this context comes from the people not the government nor the market. This is one of the main roles of a community who are disposed to address these questions that neither the government nor the market are capable of implementing yet. A community-led housing project permits the testing ground needed for innovation through the design of new typologies. In doing so, the negotiation process between stakeholders could sway in different ways. This considers that these projects with the community should be undertaken from new contents, in which the community becomes subject of its own entity and denotation.

BEYOND DEMAND

23 Duncan Bowie. Radical solutions to the housing supply crisis. (Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2017), 27

24 Ibid., 27

All things considered, it becomes essential to ask what the role of the community would be in the housing development? Community governance at a grassroot level first starts by exerting political instruments in which authorities and other organizations would like to collaborate on the alternate model being proposed. This depends on an innovative project and its suitability. The role of a community goes beyond demand. At first glance, it stands in parallel to the concept of urban governance known as the ‘right to the city’. The concept proposed by Henri Lefebvre (1968) and later popularized by David Harvey, states that everyone should be allowed to access urban utilities such as housing. It’s an idea that represents a collective consensus on such issues, an outdated demand that most would agree on, and one that does not go further of being a mere request.23 That is what Duncan Bowie in his latest book Radical Solutions to The Housing Supply Crisis (2017) points out. It is useless in the context of the UK Duncan proclaims, that such a slogan, as inspirational as it may be, lacks a program that could offer alternatives as it does not demonstrate how affordable housing will be funded and delivered.24 Although that is true, Bowie’s solution to the housing supply emphasizes policy changes that would make the government, once again, responsible for providing social housing. Although he does not mention community-led as part of the solution, his book is a good example of a

25 Harper, Sarah. Future of An Ageing Population. London: Government Office for Science, 2016. Accessed March 08, 2018. https://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/ files/Future_of_Ageing_Report. pdf


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COMMUNITY To define what it means to lead, develop and live in a community, it is first important to define and frame the word itself in a bi-dimensional way. Community is a widely used word by political leaders, policy makers and architects. While it is a simple word, it denotes a complex variety of interpretations and associations. The notion of being part of a ‘community’ today is often seen in the mainstream media as “This civic engagement, that many feel is lacking in wider society, helps build a common sense of belonging”26, wrote Melissa Fernández. An early German conception of the term as ideal types, is the dichotomy between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft theorized by German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies. The former interpreted community as a communal society, in which individuals in rural areas joined together through shared interests and structured relationships according to traditional social norms.27 These communities were intentional, shaped by a common aim, to “establish and conduct a model community or colony, free from all forms of private monopoly”28, wrote Robert P. Stutton. Moreover, these colonies sought to separate themselves from the alienating capitalist way of living. Contrary to Gemeinschaft, is the term Gesellschaft, it represents the idea of ‘society’ rather than ‘community’, and it is associated with the urban. It is characterized by rational convergences where people come together out of convenience and out of economic and political considerations, rather than a common interest. A more radical interpretation of the latter is the idea of ‘whatever singularity’ in which Giorgio Agamaben rethinks community in his book, The Coming Community (1993). One key point is that communities are a convergence of multiple singularities which ‘co-belong,’ rather than conceived from a common interest or identity.29 So understood, community for Agamben is not a project, but on the contrary, community is always in a process which is to come, and that is what makes up a network of people away from any notion of identity, nationality or locality. Conceding that it is crucial to sustain the idea of an inoperative community at large scale, i.e. without a unified collective as Agamben proposes, nonetheless it is important to contrast that what constitutes a community is their collective agency over space and place at a smaller scale.30 This idea of community describes the actions of StART or any other community-led group who argue for the development and control of a fragment in the city as shown previously. The struggles of the market forces bring with them new attitudes to collaborate and form community, and as a response the Localism Act intends to allow for a community to procure space. However, spending reductions on public services and passing on responsibilities to voluntary communities seem to be part of the rhetoric of ‘localism’ under the neoliberal agenda. It is within this antagonistic context that communities as developers are formed. Here, a

07 StART’s community consultation, 2016

26 Melissa Fernández Arrigoitia, and LSE Research Officer. “A sense of belonging: the case for more communal living in the UK.” The Guardian. June 30, 2016. Accessed July 01, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/ housing-network/2016/jun/30/ communal-living-uk-cohousingsociety. 27 The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.” Encyclopædia Britannica. February 26, 2016. Accessed June 26, 2017. https:// www.britannica.com/topic/ Gemeinschaft-and-Gesellschaft. 28 Sutton, Robert P. Communal utopias and the American experience: secular communities, 1824-2000. ( Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004), 99

29 Giorgio Agamben. The coming community. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 85

30 Brian Elliot. Constructing Community: Configurations of the Social in Contemporary Philosophy and Urbanism. (s.l.: lexington books, 2017), 37


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key term which causes confusion with local authorities is community-led, which is seen as a collaborative work between different bodies and local people for the betterment of a place through the developer’s lead such as Community-Led Developments (CLD). However, many of these are depicted as ‘inclusive acts’ in the decision-making process without any impact in the final product. The difference between a cosmetic participatory process and community-led is the control that the community group has on the outcome of the development. That is what Community-Led Housing means. The National CLT Network defines community-led by three main principles agreed by bodies of the housing sector as the following: 1. A requirement that meaningful community engagement and consent occurs throughout the process. The community does not necessarily have to initiate and manage the development process, or build the homes themselves, though some may do. 2. The local community group or organisation owns, manages or stewards the homes and in a manner of their choosing. 3. A requirement that the benefits of the scheme to the local area and/ or specified community group are clearly defined and legally protected in perpetuity e.g. through an asset lock. 31 All the above are functions that StART has taken on to achieve. Accordingly, it is important to note that community-led is a hollowed-out term when there is no funding. These conceptions of community help to illuminate the ways in which contemporary urban ways of life represent a heterogeneous commonality, where living together does not always mean sharing the same beliefs or spaces. Communities are defined by a diversity of complex societal norms that often define a territory, and in instances, reflect architectural expressions at multiple scales. O.M. Ungers’ thesis about the city defines concisely this point of view. He stated the following: The urban concept of the city in the city, pluralistic in this respect, is the antithesis of current planning theory, which stems from a definition of the city as a single whole. It corresponds to the contemporary structure of society, which develops more and more as a society of individuals with different demands, desires, and conceptions. The concept also involves an individualization of the city and therefore a moving away from typecasting and standardization. It is in this sense that its openness, on one hand, and its variety, on the other, must be understood.32

08 StART’s AGM, 2017

31 “What Is Community-Led Housing?” Accessed April 17, 2018. http://www. communitylandtrusts.org.uk/ news-and-events/communityled-housing-conference/whatis-community-led-housing.

32 Oswald Mathias Ungers. “Thesis 5, The Concept of the City in the City”, In The city in the city: Berlin: a green archipelago. ed. Florian Hertweck and Sébastien Marot. (Baden: Lars Müller, 2013.), 94


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49 THE CASE OF StART

As such, these individual communities or enclaves within the city, become a unifying force at an urban scale that in return offer the possibility of creating different ways of conviviality. The collective actions of StART produce a community through its process but does not intend to create an intentional community with a specific goal. However, they do look for a housing model that reproduces collective practices in its management and engenders inclusion, social interaction and mutual support through a variety of flat typologies, shared informal spaces and natural environments. StART’s core principles on community for housing detailed in their brief as follows: Neighbours who know and care about each other. Shared, generous facilities that are a delight to use and are managed collectively. Sense of collective being bigger than the sum of its parts; generosity of spirit. Valuing and supporting the ‘social economy’. Intergenerational neighbourhoods. Create better physical connections between existing neighbourhoods. Residents have an active role in democratic management of neighbourhood facilities. Land owned for the benefit of the whole community.33 These different notions, in fact, relate back to the name Community Benefit Society which clearly suggests this dichotomy as a single entity. It recognizes ‘community’ as those being benefited while at the same time suggest ‘society’ seen as an official institution that co-belongs as Agamben suggests. It is this interlace of a double possibility that defines community within this context.

09 StART’s AGM, 2017

33 StART Architect’s Brief. “Masterplan Vision for the St Ann’s Hospital site” August 2016.



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INTERGENERATIONAL LIVING

CHANGES OF LIFE CYCLE AND DEMOGRAPHICS With ageing demographics, multigenerationality in housing is something that needs curation, where the house layout, as well as the building in relation to the neighbourhood, plays a role to prescribe relations for mutual support between generations. One of the key visions of StART is the inclusive social mix of the residential population, which aims to incorporate a wide range of living typologies. Their vision reflects the estimated size requirement for affordable housing based on waiting lists, and the Strategic Housing Market Assessment in Haringey report (Fig. 01 & 02). However, the report shows that by 2026, 67% of households would require 1 and 2-bedroom apartments and 17% 3 and 4+ bedrooms. It also states that the manifestation of trends of old people living in single person households in smaller family units is not coherent nor precise, and that there is a considerable amount of HMO’s, house shares, and large families in Haringey.1 This is symptomatic of wider trends in the shrinking family structure, yet the current housing provision insists on the nuclear family as the main typology. The housing being built today, will no longer satisfy the needs of those families who are growing or shrinking in their lives and who will have to scale up or down to a different type of home in the near future. As such, the housing that will be left behind will be left to be used by new generations. If housing is positioned in parallel to the conventional life-cycle which is based on the traditional family structure that clashes with current demographic trends, it imposes challenges to an ageing population. This model’s framework assumes a linear trajectory, where marriage is seen as the primordial condition throughout a couple’s life, and it does not account for the disunion of the family or simply co-habiting. It presupposes that young single professionals will eventually start a family and move into a family apartment while their children eventually leave. This condition known as the ‘empty nester’ results in redundant space. The parents might look to downsize to a smaller apartment with other added values such as security and care, leaving larger properties and their communities behind, and generating

1 Haringey Council, London Bourough of Haringey Strategic Housing Market Assessment. (London. 2014), 124 Accessed March 05, 2018. http:// www.haringey.gov.uk/sites/ haringeygovuk/files/strategic_ housing_market_assessment.pdf


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INTERGENERATIONAL LIVING

1 Bedroom

2 Bedrooms

3 Bedrrooms

4+ Bedrooms

Waiting list (general need)

40%

34%

21%

6%

Preference Waiting List

21%

37%

33%

10%

an offer of this type to those households who are growing (Fig. 03). However, one major problem is the underoccupancy of many homes that were built for traditional nuclear families, where one third of the housing stock represents the ‘empty nesters’ inhabiting those spaces. Old people, who either live alone or as a couple in family houses of up to three bedrooms that they own, are not ready to leave their neighbourhood nor can they find suitable homes that meet their needs. This is despite data suggesting that 58% of all people aged over 60 in the UK would be interested in moving, and downsizing to a home that fits their needs.2

01

2011

1 person household

Married/Cohabiting couples only

Single Parent Family

Families with dependent children

Students

Retirement age

England London Haringey

30% 32% 32%

43% 37% 34%

11% 13% 15%

29% 31% 31%

0.6% 0.7% 0.5%

21% 14% 11%

02

YOUNG COUPLES MAY HAVE CHILDREN AND BECOME YOUNG FAMILIES

YOUNG COUPLE HOUSEHOLD

YOUNG PEOPLE EITHER FORM COUPLES, JOIN A GROUP HOUSEHOLD OR REMAIN AS LONE PERSONS.

YOUNG LONE PERSON HOUSEHOLD

TWO PARENT FAMILY

GROUP HOUSEHOLD OTHER YOUNG ADULTS/ COUPLES

YOUNG ADULT LEAVES HOME LEAVIG BEHIND 'EMPTY NESTER' HOUSEHOLDS

MATURE FAMILIES

ONE PARENT FAMILIES

'EMPTY NESTER' HOUSEHOLD

LONE PERSON HOUSEHOLD 'EMPTY NESTER' HOUSEHOLD

03

01 Estimated size requirement for affordable housing in Haringey 02 Household composition percentages 2011 03 Traditional Life Cycle

It is necessary to emphasize that external social, legal, and market forces often control the life stage in which a certain individual is placed. Therefore, the size and composition of the household does not necessarily reflect what stage of life they are in. The phenomenon of young people entering the housing market who are commonly required to flat share in family houses is indicative that there is a lack of an appropriate cross-generational housing model. The question is: Where and how will this young generation live in the future as they age? Research on demographics trends accentuate the matter. The baby boomers have been ageing in good economic conditions sitting on valuable property, yet isolation and the wellbeing of the elderly has been the subject of concern by the authorities and NHS. In many cases, the value of the property is set against the value of a healthy life. In recent years, new technologies have introduced ways to match empty nesters with younger professionals or students. The new app Nesterly, launched in Boston in 2017 by two MIT urban planners, sets out to pair families or elderly people living alone with students who look for affordability in exchange for small household chores.3 The Mayors’ Design Advisory Group has published a key report Ageing London (2015) emphasising the importance of London’s ageing population and its implications in the development of housing and the city. In London, the number of people over 60 is expected to grow to two million by 2035. That represents 48% against an anticipated 12% growth of all other ages below 60 while 70% growth will represent people over 80.4 Other reports such as The Future of An Ageing Population (2016) have underlined a trend in new family structures and an ageing population that demand a change in the home and the neighbourhood’s planning strategy. Statistics show that by 2037 people of 85 or over will rise faster, to 1.42 million households in England, a growth of 161%5 (Fig. 06). One key point of the latter report is the ‘verticalisation’ of family structures that correlate with an ageing population, which is requiring changes in housing that are all associated with reinforcing intergenerational mutual aid.

2 Wood, Claudia. The Top of the Ladder. London: Demos. 2013 Accessed March 08, 2018. https://www.demos.co.uk/files/ TopoftheLadder-web.pdf

3 Linda Poon. “Why Boomers in College Towns Are Seeking Out Millennial Roommates.” CityLab. July 01, 2017. Accessed February 14, 2018. https://www.citylab. com/life/2017/07/nesterlyboomer-millennial-roommatescollege-towns/531687/. 4 Hank Dittmar, Stephen Witherford, June Barnes, David Levitt Ageing London. London: Mayor’s Design Advisory Group, 2015. Accessed March 08, 2018. http://www. newlondonarchitecture.org/ docs/mdag_ageing_london_ interactive.pdf 5 Sarah Harper. Future of An Ageing Population. (London: Government Office for Science, 2016), 51 Accessed March 08, 2018. https://www.ageing.ox.ac. uk/files/Future_of_Ageing_ Report.pdf


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INTERGENERATIONAL LIVING

ONE PARENT PATH

TWO PARENT PATH

YOUNG ADULT PATH

YOUNG ADULT LEAVES HOME

ONE PARENT FAMILIES

GROUP HOUSEHOLD OTHER YOUNG ADULTS/ COUPLES

TWO PARENT FAMILY

DIVORCE

YOUNG ADULT LEAVES HOME

ONE PARENT FAMILIES

'EMPTY NESTER' HOUSEHOLD

LONE PERSON HOUSEHOLD

LONE PERSON HOUSEHOLD 'EMPTY NESTER' HOUSEHOLD

(WIDOW) ONE PERSON HOUSEHOLD

YOUNG COUPLE HOUSEHOLD

NURSING, RETIREMENT HOME

NURSING, RETIREMENT HOME

NURSING, RETIREMENT HOME

04

TWO PARENT FAMILY

YOUNG LONE PERSON HOUSEHOLD

"EMPTY NESTER' HOUSEHOLD

YOUNG COUPLE HOUSEHOLD

ONE PARENT FAMILIES

This representation of an evolving heterogeneous group contrasts with a much more homogeneous housing reality found in the market. Therefore, an intergenerational scheme not only assumes diverse household compositions, but also encompasses the possibility for housing mobility. This is what ‘verticalisation’ demonstrates: more extended interactions between generations establish new intergenerational social relations, while intragenerational relationships would reduce, i.e. less members of the same family and same generation interact with one another. Housing mobility must be rethought and acknowledged in largescale social housing projects as a recycling mechanism for a local community that can swap apartments within this new social condition. Such mobility can enable the idea of ageing in place. An idea that promotes a sense of community and belonging to a place that relates to independence, self-sufficiency and wellbeing. Within this framework, the National Health Service (NHS) has recognized this shift, and the role that housing plays in minimising costs from their services. A report by the National Housing Federation makes evident that housing must help unlock the delay of transfer of care from The National Health Service (NHS), which costs around £820 million a year to take care of older patients who no longer need hospitalization.6 The elderly, the homeless, and people with mental health issues, make up the dominant part of this group.7 To alleviate this issue, a few apartments or rooms could be placed within St. Ann’s hospital site to temporarily serve these patients who still cannot return to their homes. Seen as an outsourcing method, here the hospital and housing become one.8 This is an opportunity for the design to be part of the discursive negotiation concerning stakeholders, since it will still function as a mental health clinic, and across the street is Laurels Healthy Living Centre. The recognition of these changes becomes a design problem, raising the following questions: How to develop new ways of forming relationships of younger generations with the elderly? How to integrate the elderly within the socio-economical life of a community and the house that they may be a part of, such as co-habiting with other non-family members? What kind of assisted living services are required? This juncture creates the challenge to design housing in relation to the life cycle and elderly care on site. It becomes the chance to attain the ‘lifetime neighbourhood’ objectives of the London Plan while at the same time integrating the challenges imposed by the NHS, which aim to endorse intergenerational living.

(WIDOW) ONE PERSON HOUSEHOLD

MID-AGE PERSON HOUSEHOLD

NURSING, RETIREMENT HOME

05

04 Households life course (verticalisation) 05 Intergenerational network

For this reason, a more integrated concept demands new housing typologies that offer the grouping of different types of households, including the elderly and other vulnerable groups. The mix of different apartment sizes and types allows for

6 Ian Copeman, Margaret Edwards and Jeremy Porteus. Home From Hospital. (London: National Housing Federation, 2017.), 3 Accessed March 20, 2018. http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws. com/pub.housing.org.uk/ Home_from_hospital.pdf 7 Ibid., 3 8 Sven-Olov Wallenstein critiques this paradigm as how modern society has continue to be controlled over a new contemporary biopolitical diagram. In his last part of the essay “Docile and resistant bodies” it leaves an open question in which architecture is used to order new forms of control while at the same time liberating individuals to counterproduce. Sven-Olov Wallenstein. Biopolitics and the Emergence of Modern Architecture. (New York: Buell Center, FORuM Project, 2013.), 36-42


58

59

COMMUNITY-LED HOUSING IN LONDON

INTERGENERATIONAL LIVING

Number of households (millions)

5 4 3 2 1

0 Under 25

25-34

35-44

45-54

55-64

65-74

75-84

85+

Age group (years) Year:

2012

2037

06 Head of household in England by age, estimations for 2012 and projections for 2037

mobility within the community. This raises the question of tenures, and as such, it fits with rental CLT schemes, such as StART’s alternative to ownership based on leasing. To respond to new compositions, means to respond to both collective and individual needs. Shared activities and services have spatial consequences at the scale of the apartment, the building and the urban space. The apartment has been transformed into a smaller unit, with its own bathroom and kitchenette that co-belongs to another larger apartment. Or it becomes a cluster of several of these small units around a sizeable shared living space, creating a more expansive apartment. This sustains the independence of an individual or a couple, while being part of a group of people regardless of family ties. Standards such as Lifetime Homes, or the Nationally Described Space Standards, are questionable as they deal with technicalities of inclusive design and minimum space sizes that are not related to the social configuration. By freeing up space in the domestic realm, these singular or cluster apartments can be supported by shared domestic facilities within the building for the use of the inhabitants, such as a laundry room, storage rooms, communal kitchen, work spaces, or a common multipurpose room. Policy H18 in the London Plan acknowledges this living arrangement. Similarly, at an urban scale is the provision of public services that integrate the wider community of the neighbourhood into the quarter. Spaces such as public parks, communal gardens, retail space, offices, restaurants/cafes, and day care, are programmes that contribute to the social and economic exchange of the place.


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COMMUNITY-LED HOUSING IN LONDON

INTERGENERATIONAL LIVING

MEHR ALS WOHNEN: CASE STUDY IN ZURICH A good contemporary example of urban design within the framework of community-led participation and collaboration, between active citizens and public administrations, is Mehr Als Wohnen (More Than Housing, 2015) in Switzerland. This case study not only helps to illustrate an alternative way of developing housing, it is also an exemplar for its design intention and spatial qualities, as it is laid out as a housing model for a community based on cooperation. It is a cooperative where there is a balance of people with different incomes, and diverse age groups where the household composition is reflected in its architecture, and expects ageing and housing mobility within the scheme. Another motive to look at this urban development is it is characteristic of many of the contemporary town planning in Europe, which is the reutilization of underused industrial sites or enclaves of wasteland. In this respect, parallels can be observed on the St. Ann’s site, seen as small islands embedded in a neighbourhood which have been catalogued as potential sites for regeneration. Mehr Als Wohnen is located at the Hunziker Aereal site in Zurich, Switzerland. This master plan directed by Duplex Architekten and Futurafrosch, and supported by fifty small co-operatives, is a mixed-use housing scheme composed of a mix of apartments, retail, along with shared community spaces. Three-hundred-seventy units for 1,200 people are distributed in thirteen buildings. Various architectural firms were involved in the design process for the different buildings, embracing the variation in design to create a family of diverse buildings that connect to one another by their form.

se

olzstras

Hagenh

G e n o s s e n s c h a fts s tra s s e

weg

Dialog

Its single building typology is a mutation of the urban villa type proposed by O.M. Ungers in 1977 for the city of Berlin. In Ungers’ proposal, the urban villa represented a low-medium density type for multiple apartments to be allocated in a maximum of four floors. Mehr Als Wohnen shows a higher density allowing the urban villa to have seven floors. In the plan, every building obeys the rules of a trapezoid, so when grouped, it creates a multiplicity of different open spaces at the urban scale, framing squares that relate to their public programme on the ground floor. The proximity between several of them is around 10 meters, which in instances, can create streetlike conditions. Being an urban villa type, some apartments have better conditions of light than others due to their orientation. Nevertheless, the scale of the site and its density allows the urban villa to be employed as the main unit that makes up the composition of the urban plan. It also allows for the different living arrangements within each building due to its deep floor-plan that characterizes every building, which is reflected in the assortment of their facades.

0

50

100m

07 Mehr Als Wohnen (2015), Groundfloor

1

x


1

62

63

L

K M

F E

1

x

D J G

C 1

H A

B

I

0

Housing Commons Commercial Commercial School

0

50

08 Ground Floor - Program

100m

0

50

50

09 Level 2

100m

100m


65

COMMUNITY-LED HOUSING IN LONDON

INTERGENERATIONAL LIVING

House A, Standard Level Duplex Architekten

House C, Level 0 Miroslav Šik,

House C, Standard Level Miroslav Šik,

House A,House Standard A, Standard Level Level Duplex Architekten Duplex Architekten

House C, House Level 0C, Level 0 Miroslav Šik, Miroslav Šik,

House C, House Standard C, Standard Level Level Miroslav Šik, Miroslav Šik,

A

A

d Level kten

A

1 Bedroom 2 Bedrooms 3 Bedrooms 4 Bedrooms 5 Bedroomos More than 6 Bedrooms

C

A

C

C

C

C

C

House C, LevelHouse 0 C, Level 0 Miroslav Šik, Miroslav Šik,

House C, Standard House Level C, Standard Level Miroslav Šik, Miroslav Šik,

House C, Level 0 E, Level 2 House Miroslav Šik,Sigrist Architekten Müller

House C, Standard Level House I, Level 3 and Level 4 Miroslav Futurafrosch Šik,

House L, Standard Level pool Architekten

House E, House Level 2E, Level 2 Müller Sigrist Müller Architekten Sigrist Architekten

House I, Level House3 I,and Level Level 3 and 4 Level 4 Futurafrosch Futurafrosch

House L, House Standard L, Standard Level Level pool Architekten pool Architekten

C

vel 2 chitekten

E

64

C

C

E

E

E

C

C

C

I

I

I

L

House I, Level House 3 and Level I, Level 4 3 and Level 4 Futurafrosch Futurafrosch

House L, Standard House Level L, Standard Level pool Architekten pool Architekten

House I, Level 3 and Level 4 Futurafrosch

House L, Standard Level pool Architekten

I I

I

L

10 Flat typologies

L

L

L

L

0

0

5

10m

5 0 10m 5

10m

Intergenerational integration is produced through a diverse set of flat typologies that correlate to different household composition and degrees of sharing. It encompasses flats for different size families of 2 to 8 bedrooms, plus satellite studios for singles or seniors, and cluster apartments (Fig. 10) The latter works for single people or a small family who would like to share a flat and still have the possibility of enjoying an independent life. The depth of the building dictates its circulation to be in the centre to allow the most favourable living conditions in every apartment. Hence, the central core with stairs and elevators, in some cases becomes an atrium where staircases and corridors are used to produce spontaneous interactions between the neighbours. Undeniably, it devises a rich mix in its distribution. Many large apartments of up to 7 rooms are provided for those who are looking to share. This was only viable due to the adjacency of a university, relying on students who look for affordability by sharing an apartment. As much as there is variation in the ways of coexisting due to the arrangement of spaces throughout the complex, there is also a wide range of people that live there, from low-income tenants to working professionals, and people from different backgrounds cohabiting in different forms. Be it living together with shared common spaces, or more independent conditions in some cases. The flexibility of the shared areas could potentially provide a care facility for the elderly in the future. Thus, in many ways, diversity becomes the norm in this sustainable cohabitation, while cooperation makes it more than just a living place, but also a community. The diversity of apartment layouts establishes the preconditions for social interaction across many generations and enables the opportunity to switch apartments that best fits their current needs within the cooperative.9 To find the right mix of population an online software was used to screen applicant’s backgrounds. This is of great importance in enabling a controlled intergenerational mix, based on the demographics of the area in real time as Corinna Heye and Sarah Fuchs stated: In the further development of the cooperative, the online leasing tool can continue to play an important role as a steering instrument in the context of residents’ changing apartments. The tool reflects the sociodemographic mix of the population and can generate criteria for re-leasing. Once the first More than Housing generation has aged and reached the postfamily phase, it will become evident whether the combination of apartment types offers enough options for change and reorientation.10 The social mix among the inhabitants underpins the possibility for social cohesion and solidarity under the rubric of cooperativism and community. Various types, from small studios to family and large shared apartments enables different models of living together that anticipates a future of a more intergenerational society. Under a similar premise, the design for StART takes form.

0

5

10m 0

0

5

10m

5

10m

9 Corinna Heye and Sarah Fuchs. “Apartment Types, Occupants and Applicants In The Hunziker Areal”. In More than Housing: Cooperative Planning, a Case Study in Zürich, ed. Margrit Hugentobler, Andreas Hofer, and Pia Simmendinger. (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2016.), 131

10 Ibid., 131


67

DESIGN OF StART


68

69

COMMUNITY-LED HOUSING IN LONDON

INTERGENERATIONAL LIVING

The design takes into account the future trends in demographics of the area. As a housing model of up to 800 units, it aims to accommodate an intergenerational community through differences and variations of flat types with different grades of sharing that allows housing mobility within the quarter as well as provide room for temporary NHS patients, or people recovering inside its buildings. The project has a focus on alterability and typological design that allows adaptation to the changing needs throughout different life cycles of the dwellers, enabling various forms of living in structures that accommodate change.

A second building typology with a deeper floorplan and eight floors is introduced as another architectural type (D) to accommodate a cluster living arrangement. I develop a closer reading on this typology in11 ‘Cooperative Living’.

Generic slabs are the most economical way to form new typologies from the individual to the most communal way of living. A typical building for atypical lifestyles, the typological transformation happens within the home in a gradual way. The family apartment becomes one shade of the spectrum. The urban development is of serried dashed rows of gardens and buildings that intersect at times with the existing buildings. This striped configuration forms a clear urban condition where different heights and aesthetics provide the necessary typological variance for an inclusive community. At the same time, it creates several points of references between the old, the new and the open gardens framed by distinct facades while connecting pathways and streets to the existing hospital. The buildings are kept as low as possible to fit within its context and make it legible for pedestrians. The design takes the ubiquitous linear building typology as the basic element to compose the development. This typology was chosen for two reasons: first, the dual aspect condition for every apartment is crucial to achieve a desirable orientation as a passive strategy for environmental and health reasons, a double-sided slab building enables every apartment to have views, natural light and ventilation towards both sides. Second, the row-flat arrangement is the most cost-efficient for a high-density scheme allowing for densification by adding floors without compromising its settlement principle. The row-flat type also extends or wraps the building to form another urban condition. To create enough variation needed for different living arrangements and to provide a diverse architectural language, out of this typology three types of architecture (A, B, C) (Fig. 12) produce different sets of single story flats that vary in size for different households and for different levels of sharing to occur. The schemes avoid two story flats to make it age-friendly. Two variations in overall height relate to the buildings length for each type. The longer slab is three floors while the shorter slab is five.

The preservation of the park in the centre and the six existing buildings clearly demarcate three more or less equal areas (1, 2, 3) (Fig. 11). Two perpendicular axes connect all existing buildings and the hospital. In each area, a mix of all the housing types aims to create a diverse community broken into smaller scales as to control the social cohesion. As a rule of thumb in co-housing communities, it is known that 50 households is the maximum number for a close-knit community to emerge. Across all buildings types, shared and collective spaces are provided on ground floor that aims to foster relationships with neighbours while sustaining an independent life. For StART, being a CLT, the open spaces and gardens are to be managed and maintained in perpetuity. Part of the programming is the use of communal gardens for the therapeutic benefits gardening has on health across the course of life. Patients with dementia from the hospital are to be encouraged to wander through. As such, alternate strips of open spaces and buildings from north to south are the precepts that organize the project. This arrangement makes a visual and physical connection from Chestnut Park to the biodiversity preservation area on the south while giving each flat an east-west day lighting condition. As the site is already contained on three sides, it is unnecesary to create enclosed blocks. Moreover, the ‘pocket’ condition permits the blurring of the boundaries between public and private, creating ambiguous semi-public gardens that allows free movement around the buildings with the aim to engender community through a more active ground floor. Finally, a crucial aspect is the financial nature of the scheme, and the ability to satisfy the requirement of carrying out the construction in stages, which is why singular slabs are deployed. The three-story buildings are paired against each other along the east and west boundaries of the site to relate in height to neighbouring Haringey buildings. In the centre, the five and eight storeys buildings are placed. This hierarchy in height also relates to the scale of the open space in which the buildings are situated.

11 Typology D as a cluster apartment is discussed further in the following sub-chapter entitled “Cooperative Living”


70

71

1

2

1

1

2

2

1

2

1

2

1

1

2

2

1

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

11

D

A

A A

A

D

A

CD

B

A

C

B A

D

A

D

C

C

A

A B

A

C

12

D

B

CD

B

B

C

B

C

C B

C

B C

B A

D

A

D

C

C

C

A

B D A

B D

A B B

A

C

C B

C

D

A

B

D B A

B

B

B D A

B D

A B A

13

D B

A

C

B

A

C

C

14

Gardens Core Housing Elderly housing Guest rooms Community Centre/Admin Common Kitchen/Living Common Laundry Commercial Kindergarten/Day care Workshop


73


3

3

74

75

D

A

B D

C

A A

B

B B

C

D

A

D A

C

B

C B

A

C

TYPOLOGY A

3.60

2.80

3.60

5.40

Its access is through a gallery (2.5m) that faces a garden. It is designed to be detached from the faรงade at intervals to keep privacy of the flat and create terrace conditions for leisure where people can meet. The attached corridor serves as the main access for the flats offering a view all around the open spaces and gardens, framed by the buildings. The typical flat is 5.2 x 10m. The threezone open-ended flat creates two equal rooms on both sides, framing views towards the gardens. Kitchen and bathroom in the centre open towards both spaces with sliding doors creating a single continuous space where the uses of the rooms can be interchangeable. This layout creates various adaptable options, which can accommodate up to five different typologies for singles, couples, families, flat-shares, and the elderly. When two or three of these are combined, a large common area is created facing the garden maintaining the small or big rooms on the other side. This arrangement is useful for co-living in a live-work environment.

0

5

1 Typology A

A1

A1

A1

CORE

A2

A1

A4

A1

A2

A3

A4

1 Bedroom 52 A1m2

3 Bedroom 106 A2m2

4 Bedroom 106 A1m2

1 Bedroom / Elderly 52A4 m2

4 Bedroom 106m2

1 Bedroom / Elderly 52m2

1 Bedroom 52m2

0

5

1

3 Bedroom 106m2

0

Typology A

5

1 Typology A

Rooms Shared area Services

0

5m

Typology A

0

5m

Typology A


3

3

76

77

D

A

B D

C

A A

B

B B

C

D

A

D A

C

B

C B

A

C

TYPOLOGY B 3.60

4.00

2.00

4.00

Its access has the same qualities as typology A. Its main configuration is of five rooms where a large open-ended living is at the centre of the other four equal size rooms. This configuration makes it possible to split the centre space in two if desired. The smaller rooms are arranged as a three-zone where the bathrooms are at the centre. These rooms can be living rooms, bedrooms, studios or kitchens. As such, it enables up to six different flat typologies, from a small studio to a four-bedroom apartment. In this configuration, a cluster living apartment of two independent units is possible where the central large area is shared by both smaller units. It can also be arranged as a grannyannex or kangaroo apartment. Where either a young adult or and elder lives independently while forming part of a family in the apartment attached to it. In this situation, an intergenerational layout is provided as an option for mutual support.

0

5

1 Typology B

B1

B3

B6

0

B1

5

1

B1

B5

B1

B2

B3

B4

B5

B6

1 Bedroom 33.6 B1m2

2 Bedrooms 69B2 m2

3 Bedrooms 104.94 B3m2

4 Bedroom 104.94 B4 m2

2 - 1 Bedroom - Shared living area 52.47B5 m2 each

2 Bedrom + 1 Bedroom 104.94 B6 m2

1 Bedroom 34m2

2 Bedroom 69m2

3 Bedrooms 105m2

3 Bedrooms 105m2

2-1 Bedroom + Shared living area 105m2

2 Bedroom + 1 Bedroom 105m2

0

5

1 Typology B

Typology B

Rooms Shared area Services

0

5m

Typology B

0

5m

Typology B


78

79


81

Interior typology B Building A and B


3

3

82

83

D

A

B D

C

A A

B

B B

C

D

A

D A

C

B

C B

A

C

TYPOLOGY C 4.00

6.00

2.80

3.20

Up to four flats share an internal core. This typology specifically tackles the annex apartment. Four distinct attached apartments are created through five different independent units. It assists elder apartments and studios with family apartments. Young and old can live independently, if preferred, having their own access from the core. Their units are single aspect yet they have the support from the larger apartment, with large shared common areas and an open-ended configuration with views to opposite sides of the flat. This living arrangement makes life possible for extended families who want to live under the same roof. It also offers the possibility to couples, young professionals, students, or elder couples who live together in the larger apartment.

0

5

1 Typology C

5 Units per core 4 Kangaroo apartments 2 small units 175m2

0

5

1

C1

C2

C3

C4

1 Bedroom + 1 small unit (25m) C199 m2

2 Bedroom + 1 small unit (45m2) 127 m2 C2

2 Bedroom + 1 small unit (45m) 127 C3m2

1 Bedroom + 1 small unit (25m2) 99 m2C4

1 Bedroom + 1 small unit (25m2) 99m2

2 Bedroom + 1 small unit (45m2) 127m2

2 Bedroom + 1 small unit (45m2) 127m2

0

Typology C

5

1 Typology C

Unit Unit Living area Services

0

5m

Typology C

0

5m

Typology C

1 Bedroom + 1 small unit (25m2) 99m2


84

Building C


3

3

86

87

D

A

B D

C

A A

B

B B

C

C B

TYPOLOGY D

D

A

D A

C

B

A

C

4.00

6.80

1.40

6.80

This is a cohousing typology arranged as a one large apartment of up to eight fully equipped units with their own bathrooms and kitchenettes. The circulation is through an internal core. The units are meant to be smaller than the UK space standards as to free space and relocate in the common shared areas. It’s a scheme where cooperation between the inhabitants is required. In this scheme a wide range of age groups can live together. This is the most intensely collaborative form of intergenerational living possible within the domain of one apartment. This type of living is discussed in the following subsection of this chapter

0

5

1 Typology D

D1-A 1 Bedroom D1 -A 32 m2 1 Bedroom 32m2

8 Units per core

D2-A 1 Bedroom D2 -A 20 m2 1 Bedroom 20m2

D3-A 1 Bedroom D3 -A 25 m2 1 Bedroom 25m2

D4-B

D5-B

1 Bedroom D4 -B 25 m2 1 Bedroom 25m2

D51 Bedroom -B 40 m2 1 Bedroom 40m2

1 Cluster apartment 421m2

0

5

1

0

Typology D

5

1 Typology D

Private units cluster living Shared areas Core

0

5m

Typology D

0

5m

Typology D

D5-B 2 Bedroom D5 -B 55 m2 2 Bedroom 55m2

D6-B 2 Bedroom D6 -B 40 m2 2 Bedroom 40m2


88

89

Top to bottom typologies A, B, and C - Five floors

Top to bottom typologies A, B, and C - Three floors


90

91

Typology D

Typology D


92

0

50

Ground floor

93

100m

0

50

Level 2

100m


94

95

AREA 1 By incorporating all these living formats in each area (typologies A-D), an intergenerational community is created at both scales, from the quarter to the apartment. The shared amenities and services are essential to sustaining the economy of the settlement at all scales. The main existing building in the centre (B1), functions as the administration and community centre where educational programs, workshops and other activities can occur. Building (B2) is a day care and kindergarten. Similarly, the new buildings adjacent to the park accommodate commercial spaces for shops, restaurants and office space. The existing building on the south (B3) is to be transformed into a workshop to manufacture goods.

1

2

2

Shelter housing, including nursing homes or elderly care homes are not seen as separate typologies that are free standing on site. On the contrary, all housing is integrated to accommodate different generations that can live communally and support each other. In each of the areas where the longer three-storey slabs are situated in parallel, guest rooms, communal kitchen and laundry are placed on the ground floor next to the vertical circulation for the use of the residents in each area. These spaces look out to the gardens as places for contemplation and of interaction between neighbours. The faรงade of each building is articulated by a balcony condition that aims to relate the upper floors with the ground and to create spontaneous connections with the neighbours.

3

To preserve the social exclusivity, young families may enjoy ground-floor levels to allow their children access and supervision while in the garden. At the same time, the elder can down-size to a smaller apartments on ground floor of typology A if required, creating a smooth mobility transition where ageing in place becomes possible and the interaction between the old and the young is produced. The elderly maintain an autonomous way of living and it only requires special care from an external caretaker sporadically or by the same members of the community. This is one of the most vital aspects of the project. Concurrently, the guest rooms located on ground-floor in each of the areas can house NHS patients temporarily from the hospitals nearby. The apartments on ground floor have the quality of having a porch-like scenario where neighbours can sit outside by the gardens. This small-scale quality produces a more intimate scenario where a friendly convivence can happen across generations. Any life-cycle trajectory can be accommodated on site.

B2

D

C B

C

B

A

D

B1

Core Housing Elderly housing Guest rooms Community Centre/Admin Common Kitchen/Living Common Laundry Commercial Kindergarten/Day care Workshop

0

20

Ground floor

40m


96

97

1

1

2

3

3

D

A

B D

C

A A

B

B B

C

B

A

D A

D

C B

0

2

A

C

20

Level 2

40m

C


98

99

Common room in typology B

Axo


D

A

B D

C

A A

B

B B

C

B

A

D A

C B

A

C

D

C


103

Building A


104

105

COMMUNITY-LED HOUSING IN LONDON

INTERGENERATIONAL LIVING

COOPERATIVE LIVING

0

5

HENRY ROBERTS 1851 0

5m

Plan of Model House for Four Families,1851 Henry Roberts

Henry Roberts (1803-1876), whose work is known for the dwellings of the labouring classes, paid keen attention to the essential conditions of healthy housing against crowded slums. He proposed for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London the Model House for Four Families. This house became the norm as it established the ‘typical’ layout for the nuclear family. Its main characteristic is the separation of families into apartments and within the house hold the separation of its members into different size rooms. Apartments organized around communal kitchens and living areas. The comfort of this housing is related to the reformist thought of an economy of individual behaviour which would become the means for social stabilization. It became the most dominant typology in Britain. However, according to the Marxist view, the family was not simply a group united by kinship, it was a political and ideological form that the liberal programme used to stabilise the social economic system of capitalism.12 Robert’s model represented the domestic program appropriate for family life and the creation of a domestic manager who would be the housewife. This condition resulted in an assault on women rights and initiated an ideological imperative on gender equality. As a reaction, the theoretical work by Melusina Fay Pierce, Cooperative Housekeeping (1884) propelled the campaign against women’s restraint to domestic life and started to change what we think the house should do. One of the main assets in the domestic realm is shared productive and reproductive labour. In this regard, attitudes towards cooperative housing arise from the alienating form of living that the capitalist system had imposed. The research project entitled The Grand Domestic Revolution Goes On (2010) by Dutch art institute Casco is an example of the many Marxists views on cooperative living.13 These attitudes, in part, are met with ideological barriers that have created a bias against communal ways of living as evidence in the reluctance to provide housing models for cooperative living by housing providers. It is seen as substandard. At the same time, similar attempts have been made in mainstream collective living to appeal to the millennial generation by entrepreneurs.14 However, another kind of cooperativism is developing, inclusive of many generations, leaving behind reactionary notions of collectivity for other existential, financial and biological reasons such as companionship and longevity, seen under the term ‘cohousing’. Cooperative living and cohousing overlap as both are cohabitation models for both individual and family life. The modern idea of the family at the same time introduced another concept, ‘oldness’, a new perception that had implications in policy making and housing in Europe that spread around the world. In 1881, Otto Von Bismarck (Minister

12 See Eli Zaretsky‘s Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life. New York: Perennial Library, 1986.

13 Binna Choi and Maiko Tanaka. The Grand Domestic Revolution Goes on. Utrecht: Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, 2010. 14 The most exemplary projects are found in the most cosmopolitan cities such as New York and London. WeLive (NYC) by Adam Neumann Miguel Mckelvey and The Collective Old Oak (London) by Reza Merchant.


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President of Prussia) came up with the idea of retirement at 70 years old, which was the average lifespan back then. For the greater part of the 20th century, this concept had consequences once an adult reached an ‘old age’. The average age of 65 years-old in many European countries are considered the last stages of life for many, and lived apart in isolation. Simone de Beauvoir articulated pointedly what it means to grow old and the consequences of retirement in her book The Coming of Age (1970). In the early 70’s she stated: “the paradox of our time is that the aged enjoy better health than they used to and that they remain “young” longer: this makes their idleness all the harder for them to bear… Those who live on must be given some reason for living: mere survival is worse than death.”15 Fifty years later, it still is of great relevance as ageism and isolated retirement living starts to be challenged within the home. As pensions, retirement funds, and healthcare systems struggle to keep up with an ageing population, the nuclear family apartment that Roberts proposed over 150 years ago is seen as a harmful setup for the old age. Projected as a house model for conviviality and wellbeing, the cluster apartment instead, is simply another choice of living in family association without kinship ties. This overturn in favour for the contemporary cooperative living is seen here under the umbrella of an intergenerational agency. The young can benefit from the relationship with other age groups who can provide child care, guidance, advice, friendship and support. Growing old in companionship with younger or older individuals sustains an active life as it requires cooperation and consensus on all decisions that affect the small community or family of the larger apartment. Cooperative housing is a form of living in which the tenants manage their collective apartment in its entirety. To live in harmony, it requires some effort in negotiating and this is one of the main reasons that it does not suit everyone. Depending on the number of people or personalities, these groups often form protocols and organisational structures within their domestic domain. This is the case of cluster apartments in the cooperative of Spreefeld Berlin (Bauund Wohngenossenschaft). Michel LeFond, one of the tenants and founder of the cooperative, states that apart from having a board of directors and advisory board in the organizational structure of the cooperative as an enterprise, the subgroups who live in cluster apartments have their own legal organisational structure.16 By doing a comprehensive analysis of the two main contemporary cases in cluster living such as Kraftewerk II and the previously described Mehr Als Wohnen (house A), we find how these new social diagrams are giving form to the contemporary home.

‘Col tempo’ (With time) 15 Giorgione, Old Woman, 1508

15 Simone De Beauvoir and Patrick OBrian. The Coming of Age. (New York: Norton, 1996), 407

16 Yuma Shinohara and Michael LaFond. “Democratising Housing, A Conversation Between Yuma Shinohara and Michael LaFond, Spreefeld Berlin” in Together!: the new architecture of the collective. ed. Mateo Kries, Mathias Müller, Daniel Niggli, Andreas Ruby, and Ilka Ruby. (Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Museum, 2017), 340-341


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KRAFTWERK II & MEHR ALS WOHNEN (HOUSE A)

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An analysis of the parallels between two different projects that recognize the coexistence of diverse kinds of living presents how a contemporary family coexists under a sustainable framework for the challenges that demographic changes bring. This is the case of two Swiss projects: Kraftwerk II Residential Development, and House A from Mehr Als Wohnen. Both involve living among several generations, which in turn, generates an economic, physical, and emotional support for the inhabitants; a scheme that enables the possibility of living together, beyond the boundaries of the traditional nuclear family. They are examples of how different types of living —characterized by a variety of layers of privacy and community— can function in the same settlement.

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16 Kraftwerk II, Adrian Streich Architekten, Zurich, 2011 17 Mehr Als Wohnen - House A, Duplex Architekten, Zurich, 2015

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Firstly, common terraces are at the heart of Kraftwerk II, a residential development located in Zürich-Höngg by Adrian Streich Architekten. This cluster living is composed of two existing buildings bridged by a new extension. This new extension consists of a cicruclation core of exterior terraces that complement each storey of the standing structures. In the Kraftwerk II development, its communal space begins in the ground floor with a community room. Looking at the floor plan (Left), there exists a difference in size and composition between the various apartments. It contains three different types of apartments: cluster apartment, co-living, and the single bedroom apartment. At the very left, one cluster apartment with five units coexist in the same space, each one with their own bathroom and kitchenette. This cluster living also contains an extra room and a common bathroom, which can be used for guests. These units share a communal space that generates cohabitation between the dwellers, which in turn strengthens their ties. The inhabitants experience different levels of privacy and shared activities by transitioning from their private space to the communal area, and out to the common terrace that connects the whole. The general floor plan results from the particularity of the site. Its form is derived from the juncture of the existing and the new, which because of its program to accommodate different ways of living, makes its irregular form apparent. The outline in plan is translation of how the units and rooms are arranged in the interior. Second, within the mixed-use development of Mehr Als Wohnen located at the Hunziker site in Zürich, the case of cluster housing at House A, designed by Duplex Architekten, is a reference for how communal life is sustained —with varying degrees of retreat and autonomy— by the disposition of different units among two separate cluster apartments. This six-storey building is part of a


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Private units cluster living Private units cluster living Private units / rooms Private units / rooms Common area Common area Private rooms Private rooms Shared Corridor Shared Corridor

development of several detached buildings, better previously explained in the analysis of this project in the above pages. One of the two cluster apartments contains six units, and the other one five. These units vary from a single room to two rooms. Each of the units are private and contain their own services, with some of them also including private shared areas. They share a common atrium, which connects the two houses. The general shared space of each cluster apartment, in this case, is a segmented one. This shared space is a continuation of the private common areas of each unit, which engages the inhabitants in communal activities, as in the central kitchen and living room. In each project, shared areas produce different scenarios in the cluster apartments. Kraftewerk II concentrates one big open space at its centre while in House A we see detached units and fragmented shared areas with varying isolated qualities (left). The floor plans of both projects are clear examples of the current demographic changes translated into a social diagram. The political dimension of these arrangements is clearly stated in their form. Both cases dissolve the modernist formula of arranging and separating spaces throughout the hallway. In addition, the design principle that subdivides the space of the cluster apartment into ‘public and private’ realms, and the criteria that makes the living space a node of ‘functions’, the hallway, has seen a typological transformation where such space is no longer a mechanism for privacy but it has become the common shared areas. This foments a dynamic network among residents that produces strong and intense relations outside the traditional family bonds, with positive improvements in the function of the domestic duties, and the possibility to disperse the work among the inhabitants. The situation that this creates is ideal for the elderly who can attain a better life through being taken care of on occasion or providing care for others. These two examples deal with either a pre-existing structure or a predetermined layout, within which the architect had to compose and integrate a social structure. This typology is for StART a great format, in which issues of affordability and intergenerational living are manifested, projecting a present market demand.

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For the StART project a simple system allows both scenarios shown in previous pages. Out of these variations, seven chosen layouts were chosen based on the number and size of common areas created to enable greater flexibility on each floor. The first floor has one big common area, the intermediate floor two and three and the last floors have four.

Private units cluster living Shared areas Core

Cluster Apartment Typological variation diagram

DESIGN In the case of StART, the form of the cluster living structure is predetermined by simple columnar structural grid system. It brings the flexibility that grants an open-ended orientation for the apartment; a simple grid sustains a new spatial organization based on a room enfilade, which combines the possibilities of cohabitation epitomized in the two previous case studies: inhabitants live together with a gradient of social interactions to reinforce the community while maintaining a private life. As such, common areas can be concentrated as one big open space or they can be fragmented creating a distinct social dynamic for the dwellers (left). Access to the apartment is through a core with a set of stairs and an elevator that is placed at the centre of the plan above. On the left and right, the independent units follow in accordance to the structural grid and below the units shift half way to create a staggered plan. This allows for greater variety in unit sizes, while providing diverse communal arrangements on every floor. Every unit contains a bathroom and a kitchenette for two or one bedrooms. A balcony encircles the building providing an exterior space that connects all units and common areas. Six possible solutions make up the common unit types which can house new family structures together, such as families with one or two children, young and old single households as well as young and old couples. In every floor there are eight independent units seen as one apartment, it can also be divided into two apartments with four units each. This singular universal approach produces a multiplicity of different scenarios for conviviality in each floor. The faรงade accentuates the simplicity of the approach by translating a comprehensible gridiron where the openings are at the centre of each column bay. This creates a distinction between front and back in the interior, where a wall or a column divides the opening on one of its sides. A communal multipurpose room with a kitchen and laundry is located on the ground floor that serves the whole building as a complementary service to sustain social cohesion between all residents. The contemporary home is a house within a house that creates communities within a community.


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The collaborative efforts of StART have made it possible to continue in the process of negotiation between GLA, NHS and other stakeholders involved. In the field of architecture and planning, design is without a doubt one of the most potent discursive tools contributing to different forms of negotiation. It is through design that the most crucial issues for a large-scale housing development are represented in tangible ways. In other words, the role of design helps to problematise and make visible what the crucial aspects and challenges of housing are and their implication on the site. The Localism Act has provided a space of entry for communities to become active agents of urban renewal, yet there is not an established platform where these can could find the appropriate expertise from professionals in the field of urban planning and architecture. What exactly is the role of the architect in community-led development? How can academic research be used to support these types of projects? What is the role of design as part of negotiation processes? These questions are not new, but nevertheless they cannot be overlooked in this topical movement of community-led housing. This has created an array of new content and meanings for the neighbourhood and its implications in urban development fort the city of London. The problems surrounding affordable housing at a large scale cannot be understood independently, but rather they require a multidisciplinary, highly informed and specialised approach. This new way of developing might require new institutional models where the set-up of a team or a network of professionals and a community can be implemented more efficiently. This leads me to question my role as an architect and researcher who has been involved in the activities of StART. My contribution was set to advance questions of design regarding a housing model suitable for StART under the fluctuating political landscape in which the project is positioned.


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The actual process of my design was based on attending conferences and visiting sites to see first-hand what works in community housing. Experiment Days 17, an annual event that takes place in Berlin involved discussions around sustainable and collaborative neighbourhoods, as well as StART receiving a valuable award for their work thus far1 (Fig. 01 & 02). Organizer and co-founder of Spreefeld Berlin (Bau- und Wohngenossenschaft) (Fig. 03 & 04) Michael LaFond toured us through his project where many contemporary forms of living are possible, including cluster apartments. LaFond explained how families who are expanding and shrinking have swapped apartments within the complex in order to avoid moving to another place. Its conception was through participatory design among all members of the cooperative whereas StART involves members of the community not anticipating moving into the development. My engagement in this event was to provide and introduction to the concept of CLT’s and the objectives of StART’s housing vision. More importantly for the design, community meetings with StART led me to understand their needs helped me figure out the priorities and where certain issues had to be thought through drawing.

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01-02 Experiment Days 17, Berlin, 2017 03-04 Common Kitchen and common terraces at Spreefeld Berlin (Bau- und Wohngenossenschaft)

Simply, how do we want to live and age? It served as the starting question to direct the conversation around what it means to live in a community with an ageing society and how this translates into what we typically think of what the home is and what housing should do. In one of the general meetings I presented the design intention, and together we revisited StART’s principles and definition of community. This meant underpinning that community-led housing should be able to substitute care centres, sheltered housing or other forms of institutionalized living while letting go the idea of the isolated family house with its private garden.2 Consequently, the conversation turned to discussing how the barrier-free design of different flat typologies must be mixed within the building and juxtaposed with other building types making it sympathetic for children and seniors. Floor plans, diagrams and images were shown to demonstrate how family conventional flats are radically transformed into atypical layouts by making minimum moves to accommodate other household structures that anticipate demographic changes. StART disassociated the cluster apartment or group living from other forms of institutionalized homes since in the architectural design they were treated as any other flat type embedded into the whole grammar of the scheme. Those living arrangements were not understood as ‘alternative’, but due to its scale, a reasonable argument to broaden living options. This individualised attention and new association that they gave to an alternative for the family apartment was necessary to imagine how different lifestyles in

1 For more information on the event see “Project Award.” EXDAYS17 European Collaborative Housing Hub. Accessed May 14, 2018. https:// experimentdays.de/2017-echh/ project-award/.

2 See Michael LaFond and Larisa Tsvetkova. Cohousing Inclusive.: Self-organized, Community-led Housing for All. Berlin: Jovis Verlag GmbH, 2017.


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each apartment contributes to the broader scheme. To link these parts, they are bound by gradations of shared gardens throughout. Semi-public gardens as open courtyards, rather than private enclosed courtyards from their current scheme, created a heated debate. It became evident how these open gardens could instigate social cohesion amongst neighbours within the quarter, creating a close-knit community given the physical constraints of the site. The disposition of open spaces manifests a physical representation of the social dynamics that this housing model embodies. These discussions have led them to rethink their vision of what housing should do and how design plays a bigger role than what they have expected.

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05-08 Future Homes for London: Alternate Models, RCA 2018

The academic space has enabled me to study these relationships that have been put forward in the meetings with StART and led to the organization of a two-day event, (\Future Homes for London: Alternate Models, April 20183, in collaboration with the RCA School of Architecture (Fig. 05-08). Academia offers a platform to broaden the discussion, interest and support by expanding the audience beyond Haringey and by collaborating with a range of professionals from London and other parts of the world. In this event, we highlighted two crucial themes framed around StART for community-led housing: “Community Control: What Could It Look Like?” And “How Do We Fund Affordable Housing?”. To rethink what we mean by community and how to fund, the series of conversations involved global precedents who experienced related issues around community-led projects. These two interrogations marked the relevance that design has in negotiation processes. For example, architect Paul Karakusevic chairing the panel on the second day asked Stephen Hill (Director, C20 future planners), “What would you advise community groups do to get funding?”, to which Hill responded that “... having a compelling proposition is what gets you the money”. Also in support of the role of design. Central to the presentations was how the global exemplars used design and drawings as a participatory process to negotiate between different stakeholders. It showed how collaborative design creates a bond between different interest groups and residents by communicating their visions and ideas, allowing for all those taking part to be more proactive rather than reactive. The architects’ drawings serve as a mediator between official departments and investors on one hand and residents on the other, where the visions of all are translated into spatial arrangements. The examples of R50 (Berlin), La Borda (Barcelona) and Mehr Als Wohnen (Zurich) presented by Christoph Schmidt, Cristina Gamboa and Claudia Thiesen respectively are lessons of design as arbitration between residents. Jeremy McLeod, Nightingale’s (Australia) director, explicitly stated the crucial role that drawing has in presenting visions. Through the example of an existing parking lot he aims to transform to a green park, he identified

3 “Future Homes for London: Alternate Models.” Royal College of Art. Accessed April 18, 2018. https://www.rca.ac.uk/newsand-events/news/future-homeslondon-alternate-models/.


4 Robert Venturi. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2011), 16

5 Angelus Eisenger. “Building Onto The City” in More than Housing: Cooperative Planning, a Case Study in Zurich. ed. Margrit Hugentobler, Andreas Hofer, and Pia Simmendinger. (Basel: Birkhauser, 2016.), 33

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that it is not until you draw it that people start believing in the vision being proposed. Design is discourse. It is a rhetorical tool that deploys drawings to articulate what we mean when we talk about shared spaces, community spaces and community living. These are vague words that become tangible once they are illustrated or drawn. A drawing may even be more eloquent than words and it can either persuade or deter. For this reason, the design must follow the different stages of procurement. Proper models of housing supply and NHS properties and services are irrevocably linked and cannot be simply omitted. Here design plays a pivotal role in the debate. This holistic approach can be seen here as ‘the difficult whole’ that Robert Venturi theorized as a design strategy. How should we bring in all social-political and economic questions into the formal? For Venturi, the difficult whole in an architecture of ‘complexity and contradiction’ attest to “the difficult unity through inclusion rather than the easy unity of exclusion”4 wrote Venturi. It is the architect’s role to pick up on the conflicting economic and socio-political notions and give form to architecture. One key aspect of Mehr Als Wohnen is the way it was developed in relation to experts, citizens and its context. Angelus Eisenger, urban historian, gives insight on how this new ‘third way’ of developing needs design and experts who are able to “…generate and provoke ideas and discussion, because it is professionals in these fields who understand how to overcome the contradictions of development in the urban-spatial concretion… they react not only as translators and mediators but as catalysts of something new.”5 Social value in the context of community-led is created through the design process with local people who project a long-term benefit for the community and the architect’s role is to give direction to the design process.

800 units to be genuinely affordable. However, decisions about density happen outside debates about urban principles, quite too often, density it is not a planning nor a design decision but about external agents such as funding, developers, local authorities, the community and the physical aspects of the site.6 All these in return have design consequences that define the urban form and the building typology of the architecture.

MASTERPLAN VS HOUSING MODEL The scarcity of land in the city of London makes any site available for development very expensive. Generally, the value of the land dictates the urban form of the city. To cover the land costs more units are needed. A PTAL (Public Transport Accessibility Level) assessment suggests ranges of density that should be allowed on sites depending on how well connected they are with the public transport. According to the London Plan, it is measured through walk time to the transport system without any relation to where this service goes. In this regard, St. Ann’s site has a rating of 1b, which is the lowest, it positions the site as suburban with a maximum development of 35-55 u/ha (units per hectare). StART, along with 6a and Maccreanor Lavington and with the support of the public have made a substantial case to increase the density of the site by offering 75% of the

Masterplans serve as representations of a vision being put forth by an interest group who aims to gain local and political support. However, some masterplans are more comprehensive than others. Two issues with 6a and Mcreanor Lavington’s masterplan include one of strategy and the other of design principles. On one hand, a housing masterplan without a concept for a housing model prevents engagement with more substantial conversations that are of concern to people, the authorities and public service entities. The vision of StART comes from a detailed masterplan brief written by members of the community. It touches on some key aspects surrounding how we should dwell today, yet the architects simply responded to StART’s brief without any intention to problematize, add or respond to the main issues that housing faces today. They missed the opportunity to address concerns such as other forms of living for an ageing mobile society — and enhance StART’s vision. On the other hand, the scale of the buildings and the courtyards could be revisited. Through comparative drawings and explanation, I detailed why (page 136). It becomes evident that a massing study for 800 units on site is still not enough. Here, the response to deliver a large number of homes is only one part of the negotiation. Within the community-led groups, it is believed that having a well thought out powerful scheme increases the chances of acquiring funding. Unfortunately, this is where 6a Architects and Mccreanor Lavington overlooked the possibility of designing a model for housing, rather than a masterplan, that could have led them to other conversations with stakeholders early in the design process. The aim of the following design manual is to lay out certain principles to advance StART’s design, and demonstrate to the GLA and the NHS how a holistic housing model could tackle many challenges on site.

6 Mozas, Javier, Álex S. Ollero, and Aurora Per Fernández. Why Density?: Debunking the Myth of the Cubic Watermelon = Desmontando El Mito De La Sandía Cúbica. Vitoria-Gasteiz: A+T Architecture Publishers, 2015.


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SITE PLANS COMPARISON The urban form of 6a Architects and Mccreanor Lavington is composed of courtyard buildings, slabs, urban villas, and a tower. The masterplan recognises good ground circulation and points of reference. Although, its large courtyard building forms dominate visually, and abruptly breaks the skyline of the area by having the longest sides of the courtyards five and seven stories high. It creates large private open spaces that become difficult to control. Due to its height, it also overshadows courtyard space. Furthermore, the courtyards separate rather than connect, and it produces a single hierarchy by having a tall tower on the centre, next to the Peace Garden. The large courtyards reiterate the conditions of the site, creating enclosed spaces within an enclosed site. The increase in density does not automatically create a compact neighbourhood. The conditions of the site offer the possibility to do the exact opposite and connect rather than separate, giving an urban form that starts from the inside out, breaking down the scale and consequently heighten the notion of community where neighbours interact. It is through a close reading of a floor plan that communicates the essential ideas of intergenerational living that relates back to type as its most common structure and the form of the building. As the site is already contained on three sides, the site in my proposal is treated as an open field. The ‘pocket’ condition allows bluring the boundaries of public and private, creating semi-public gardens that allow one to move freely around the buildings that aim to engender community through a more active ground floor. Links are created through the different gardens which vary in its landscape and programming. Mehr Als Wohnen deals with a similar condition having a train line on the south clear borders on its sides with the main access road at the top. The free-standing objects make a porous scheme bringing in the city. In contrast to Mehr Als Wohnen in which every trapezoid building obeys to its geometry to create different sizes of alleys and squares, the StART proposal creates legible and precise open spaces that relate back to its heritage of gardens in between buildings (photo below).

09 South-east existing buildings on site

10 Site plans comparison, Mehr Als Wohnen, 6a & Mccreanor Lavington, Proposal


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DESIGN MANUAL: KEY PRINCIPLES The compositional rules for design are meant to set objectives and intentions for housing by rethinking certain assumptions discussed previously. Through concrete examples (in gray) it aims to contribute to the ongoing housing dialogues around the StART project. It does not expect to resolve all the issues related to mass housing. There are a plethora of housing design catalogues and pattern books that aim to contain all aspects of housing. In this case, the manual serves as a conditional project based on the given site and adding to its density. The manual serves to provide cohesion amongst and within the three areas of the site demarcated in the design part of chapter two. 1.

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1. MASSING To achieve a coherent urban fabric for a compact sustainable neighbourhood, the overall massing should be split into smaller building forms. Through an efficient use of land with more ground floor coverage and lower height buildings the design foments community. Twenty-one buildings relate in height of existing neighbouring properties, providing a more human scale in its overall composition. The density required makes the makes efficiency of a linear building (slab) appropriate in this context as it offers well-lit apartments laid out as dual aspect. Each slab is oriented along the north-south axis to have an east-west light condition in every apartment and have a better permeability into the site from St. Ann’s Road. The buildings are coherent and legible and firmly define the streets and spaces. 2. HEIGHTS Differences in height should form different hierarchies within specific areas of the site. It should avoid overshadowing surrounding properties. Taller buildings are offset towards the centre. Length relates to height: achieving a gradual transition from the neighbouring buildings along the periphery. Longer slabs are three stories, shorter slabs are five and the most narrow buildings are eight stories. Differences in height create a richer mix visually and programmatically.


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3. GARDENS, CORRIDORS AND STREETS To prioritise the existing health heritage, landscape and preserved buildings, the disposition of open spaces, gardens, pathways and streets should enable to construct legibility and connectivity to the rest of the hospital and instruct the overall layout of the site. A hierarchy of streets and corridors should allow for a well connected circulatory system from the access of buildings to the main access into the quarter and minimise the use of cars. A linked network of gardens allows permeability by providing pedestrian pathways and passive surveillance by orienting all windows of the buildings to face the gardens, corridors and streets. The gardens diverse programming with different opportunities for rest and contemplation across the site, it creates visual links and clear routes between the existing and new buildings, as well as connect to ecological corridor on the south with Chestnut Park. A one way vehicular and cycle circulation road goes through all the different areas demarcated on site, reducing the impact of vehicles on the built environment. Car parking spaces along the single street are provided. Cycle parking is place beside the buildings throughout the whole quarter. The scheme took into account underground car parking.

Vehicular circulation Gardens Core - vertical ciruclation

4. BUILDING’S CIRCULATION Entrances and circulation cores in the buildings should be clearly visible as are traversed the site, creating repetition and contributing to the overall cohesion and ordering of the site. Due to maintenance costs and management, the minimum amount of lifts and cores is desired. Two conditions were considered as they are related to density and affordability. In buildings type A and B, access to flats are provided from an external gallery with strategic light wells and niches demarcating the transition from public to private, within the semi-public niches people are encouraged to utilize the area for socializing. In buildings type C and D, the apartments are grouped around the core. According to The Housing Design Handbook (2010), to make lifts viable for affordable rent, the number of units per core is between 15 and 25 depending on the floor, 5 units per floor commonly create the lift lobby into a corridor. Vertical cores align across the site, creating a balanced circulation system dispersed throughout.


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5. APARTMENT TYPES AND STRUCTURE To accommodate the new ageing society, a wide range of typologies must be created while providing accessibility, a system of different sizes and types should enable residents to make rooms adaptable for different uses and switch apartments whether downsizing or vice versa. The rich mix of types should allow for multigenerational cohabitation. The structural system should ensure that future modifications to the apartments could be done easily and without much cost to facilitate flexibility of use. The project as a housing model of up to 800 units accommodates an intergenerational community through flat types with different grades of sharing. Furthermore, they allow housing mobility within the quarter, reinforcing the idea of ageing in place. Private apartments, attached units to family apartments, cluster apartments and group living are the basis for the scheme. Every building’s structure is of a grid of columns and slabs partitioned by soundproofed cross-laminated panels that make their installation and disassemble rapid and simple. The slab typology enables dual aspect orientation in every apartment.

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6. FACADES AND MATERIALITY Elevations should express diversity in architectural design to enrich the streetscape while sustaining rhythm and uniformity. While creating different compositions in each building, a coherent language should be kept to create siblings that belong to the same family, while also maintaining a relationship with the existing buildings. Each building facade relates to its interior layout, thus creating visible differences on the exterior. On each elevation there is a clear pattern of windows against horizontal and vertical elements, creating a comprehensible rhythm. The juxtaposition of each building type against others changes in every area, creating the diversity necessary to create unique conditions. Horizontal elements and materials unify their differences in composition and go hand in hand with the materiality of the preserved buildings. 7. SUSTAINTABLE DESIGN In considering future generations a sustainable development should be achieved through passive and active design strategies. The right orientation for natural ventilation and light should be sought for all apartments to enhance the health quality of the spaces. Use of sustainable construction methods with materials from renewable resources must also be considered. The east-west light condition of every flat makes well-lit flats that help to reduce energy costs. Concurrently, the dual aspect condition enables cross ventilation. The use of Cross Laminated Timber for the facades and interior walls is proposed as it is a renewable material that possesses durability as well as acoustic and thermal qualities.


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8. COMPLEMENTARY SERVICES A range of local amenities should be built on the ground floor for the economy of the quarter and the neighbourhood. Commercial spaces should be placed near open public spaces and congruent with the surrounding environment and overall circulation. In addition, common rooms across the site must be implemented for them to serve residents. The existing buildings are reused to provide functions to the community at large offering the neighbours in Haringey educational programmes, workshops, and the possibility for other activities to emerge. One of the buildings is proposed to be a daycare and kindergarten. The new buildings adjacent to the park accommodate commercial spaces for shops, restaurants, and offices. In addition, guest rooms, a communal kitchen and laundry are placed on the ground floor for the use of the residents in each area. These common rooms are grouped together to form bonds between more residents.


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CONCLUSION

As I conclude this dissertation, the actions of StART made the headlines on May 14 2018. GLA has bought the St. Ann Hospital site with a new fund of £250 million, and with the intent to build 800 homes of which half would be genuinely affordable.1 However, it will go to tender to a list of developers who are on the London Development Panel (LDP). Nevertheless, StART will be on the advisory group creating an opportunity to influence and impact the tender process where StART can form a relationship with developers and advocate for a suitable housing model based on community needs. Many of the ideas presented here are meant to help further the ambitions of StART in this next phase. The main challenges will be the integration of different living arrangements and inclusion in its housing that could counteract marginalization and create a truly diverse community. For many, this is a hopeful event for community-led projects, for others, it represents a political act. Nevertheless, this measure helps to demonstrate that communityled development can be a practical solution to change the way in which housing is produced and it also demonstrates that there is a future in promoting and participating in these kinds of developments that positively counterbalance topdown approaches. As land and house prices will continue to rise and the Localism Act puts communities to work, more radical approaches to the housing situation will keep appearing and more cooperation will be needed to bring in political and financial assistance. The nature in which housing is developed, may see a transformation where community land trusts will keep playing a crucial role as discourses around the urban economy is returning to the land question. The challenges CLT’s face undoubtedly will take time, but there is enough pressure to make long-term investments for environmental and social reasons to expedite their benefits. The intergenerational paradigm that is unfolding, keeps adding pressure to create new housing models where mutual support can help reduce reliance on from public services, lessening costs by, sharing resources and enhancing the physical, mental, and emotional health across generations. We must widen living options beyond the nuclear family house and provide housing that is balanced for

1 Rhiannon Curry. “Sadiq Khan’s £250m fund battles luxury developers for first time.” The Telegraph, May 14, 2018. Accessed May 14, 2018. https://www.telegraph. co.uk/business/2018/05/14/ sadiq-khans-250mfund-battlesluxury-developers-first-time/


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any household composition where individuals can live independently or together. Neither less nor more. This means to respond through the design of housing types that can do both: accommodate any possible household structure and offer new forms of interaction that can sustain communities through the life course. The cluster apartment as peculiar as it seems would become more normal. It is not enough to masterplan a site without a concept or intentions for what housing should do. Through StART’s current design, they run the risk of ending up with 800 units of only different family sized homes, which will fall short to answer the real needs of the population. This movement is questioning the architect’s role. A different kind of professional with more interdisciplinary experience must advance his/her obligation and liability towards altering the way in which we develop. It demands for an active and progressive participation with the community. Here, the architect is responsible for questioning and leading the conversations during the different stages of procurement, with the aim to offer better designed solutions based on the interests of different groups needs and their shared ideals. Their direct cooperation feeds back into an investigation that could inform improved conceptions of how we want to live. As such, academia informed by the community plays an important role. The events and workshops are important to change attitudes or reinforce values by exchanging experiences from different successful or failed projects. They also offer the platform to broaden awareness on housing as a political issue. The right to decent housing implies also recognition of the community’s right to have a political voice, which not only contributes to the renewal of a neighbourhood but also to the political culture of the city such as London and its local government. Those rights serve as declarations of a collective need that arises and is most strongly visible in urban areas. StART as a group is fighting for housing justice. The number of hours that have gone into this effort is both remarkable and inspiring. Finding alternatives to a broken system is what justifies a community to take control of their own city and become actors in the development of housing. The vital component is that the community has the right to influence some of the most essential decisions in the realization of a project.

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Haringey Council, London Bourough of Haringey Strategic Housing Market Assessment. (London. 2014), 124 Accessed March 05, 2018. http://www.haringey.gov.uk/sites/haringeygovuk/files/ strategic_housing_market_assessment.pdf Harper, Sarah. Future of An Ageing Population. London: Government Office for Science, 2016. Accessed March 08, 2018. https://www.ageing.ox.ac.uk/files/Future_of_Ageing_Report.pdf National Health Service. “Next Steps On the Five Year Forward View”. (2017). Accessed March 20, 2018. https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/NEXT-STEPS-ON-THE-NHSFIVE-YEAR-FORWARD-VIEW.pdf Public Land for Housing programme 2015-20. Annual Report. 2017. Department for Communities and Local Government. Accessed February 20, 2018. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/file/592919/170124_PSL_Annual_Report_FINAL_for_ publication.pdf. The Mayor of London’s Capital Spending Plan 2018-19. 2018. Greater London Authority. Accessed February 20, 2018. https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/201819mayorscapitalspendingplan.pdf White, Kirby. The CLT Technical Manual (2011), Accessed April 17, 2018. http://cltnetwork.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/01/MASTER-CLT-MANUAL.pdf Wood, Claudia. The Top of the Ladder. London: Demos. 2013 Accessed March 08, 2018. https:// www.demos.co.uk/files/TopoftheLadder-web.pdf

ARTICLES Arrigoitia, Melissa Fernández, and LSE Research Officer. “A sense of belonging: the case for more communal living in the UK.” The Guardian. June 30, 2016. Accessed July 01, 2017. https://www. theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/jun/30/communal-living-uk-cohousing-society. Curry, Rhiannon. “Sadiq Khan’s £250m fund battles luxury developers for first time.” The Telegraph, May 14, 2018. Accessed May 14, 2018. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/05/14/sadiqkhans-250mfund-battles-luxury-developers-first-time/ Poon, Linda. “Why Boomers in College Towns Are Seeking Out Millennial Roommates.” CityLab. July 01, 2017. Accessed February 14, 2018. https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/07/nesterly-boomermillennial-roommates-college-towns/531687/. Wheatley, Hanna, and Joe Beswick. “NO HOMES FOR NURSES - neweconomics.org.” Http:// neweconomics.org/2018/01/no-homes-for-nurses/. January 9, 2018. Accessed February 20, 2018. http://neweconomics.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/nhs-land-briefing.pdf. ONLINE SOURCES “2010 To 2015 Government Policy: Localism.” GOV.UK, GOV.UK. Accessed Feb 19, 2018 www.gov.uk/government/publications/2010-to-2015-government-policy-localism/2010-to-2015government-policy-localism. “About Cooperative and Community Benefit Societies.” Community Shares. March 31, 2018. Accessed April 17, 2018. https://communityshares.org.uk/about-cooperative-and-communitybenefit-societies. “Community Land Trusts (CLTs).” Community-Wealth.org. January 21, 2015. Accessed February 17, 2018. https://community-wealth.org/strategies/panel/clts/index.html. “EXDAYS17 European Collaborative Housing Hub”. Accessed May 14, 2018. https://experimentdays. de/2017-echh/project-award/.


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IMAGE SOURCES “Future Homes for London: Alternate Models.” Royal College of Art. Accessed April 18, 2018. https:// www.rca.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/future-homes-london-alternate-models/. “Haringey Development Vehicle.” Haringey Development Vehicle | Haringey Council. Accessed March 01, 2018. http://www.haringey.gov.uk/regeneration/haringey-development-vehicle#what. “Jargon Buster”. Accessed May 13, 2018. http://www.communitylandtrusts.org.uk/funding-andresources/jargon-buster. “Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.” Encyclopædia Britannica. February 26, 2016. Accessed June 26, 2017. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gemeinschaft-and-Gesellschaft. “What Is Community-Led Housing?” Accessed April 17, 2018. http://www.communitylandtrusts.org. uk/news-and-events/community-led-housing-conference/what-is-community-led-housing.

OTHER StART Architect’s Brief. “Masterplan Vision for the St Ann’s Hospital site” August 2016. 6a architects & Maccreanor Lavington StART’s Masterplan, “St. Ann’s Haringey Masterplan Vision” December 2016.

INTRODUCTION Fig. 01. Redrawn by author, data by RENTCafé. Armstrong, Martin, and Felix Richter. “Infographic: Where Renters Get the Most and Least Space.” Statista. October 12, 2017. Accessed May 21, 2018. https://www.statista.com/chart/11451/where-renters-get-the-most-and-least-space/.

THE CASE OF StART Fig. 01 Redrawn by author from Lulupinney. “Community Land Trust.” Flickr. May 27, 2010. Accessed May 21, 2018. https://www.flickr.com/photos/lulupinney/5119720303/. Fig. 02 Redrawn by author as seen in Ryan-Collins, Josh, Toby Lloyd, Laurie MacFarlane, and John Muellbauer. Rethinking the economics of land and housing. (London: Zed Books Ltd, 2017.),107 Fig. 03 Redawn by author as seen in Ryan-Collins, Josh, Toby Lloyd, Laurie MacFarlane, and John Muellbauer. Rethinking the economics of land and housing. (London: Zed Books Ltd, 2017.),8 Fig. 04 Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust “The New St Ann’s LATEST PLANS”. June 2013. NHS Choices. Accessed May 21, 2018. http://www.beh-mht.nhs.uk/downloads.htm. Fig. 05 From StART’s masterplan booklet, Courtesy of StART. Fig. 07-09 Courtesy of StART.

INTERGENERATIONAL LIVING Fig. 01 Haringey Council, London Bourough of Haringey Strategic Housing Market Assessment. (London. 2014), 162 Accessed March 05, 2018. http://www.haringey.gov.uk/sites/haringeygovuk/ files/strategic_housing_market_assessment.pdf Fig. 02 Ibid., 63 Fig. 03-04 Redrawn by author from “Household and Suburb Life Cycles.” Population & Age Structure | Bay of Island Rural | Forecast.id. Accessed May 21, 2018. https://forecast.idnz.co.nz/wellington/ household-suburb-life-cycles. Fig. 06 Redrawn by author from Sarah Harper. Future of An Ageing Population. (London: Government Office for Science, 2016.), 51 Accessed March 08, 2018. https://www.ageing.ox.ac. uk/files/Future_of_Ageing_Report.pdf Fig. 07-9 Edited by author from “Presseinformation Duplex Architekten, Mehr als Wohnen, Zürich” www.duplex-architekten.ch Fig. 10 Edited by author from “Mehr als Wohnen, Zürich – Von der Genossenschaft zur Gemeinschaft Mehr als Wohnen, Zurich – From cooperative to community”. Accessed October 08, 2017. http://www.muellersigrist.ch/assets/Uploads/publications/061/061-Architektur-AktuellJuliAugust2015.pdf Fig. 15 “Giorgione, Old Woman.” Web Gallery of Art. Accessed May 21, 2018. https://www.wga.hu/ frames-e.html?/html/g/giorgion/portrait/03woman.html. Fig. 16 Edited by author from “Wohnüberbauung Kraftwerk 2 Zürich-Höngg”. Accessed October 08, 2017. http://www.adrianstreich.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/doku_Kraftwerk2.pdf Fig. 17 Edited by author from “Presseinformation Duplex Architekten, Mehr als Wohnen, Zürich” www.duplex-architekten.ch



COMMUNITY-LED HOUSING IN LONDON THE CASE OF StART

Ricardo Palma Prieto MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design Architectural Association School of Architecture Projective Cities 2016 - 2018


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