Apartment design (AJ01.03.12) D by The Architects' Journal

01.03.12

Flat design London living with Amin Taha, Davy Smith Architects and David Kohn plus The future of UK housing £4.95 THE ARCHITECTS’ JOURNAL THEAJ.CO.UK

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The Architects’ Journal

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COVER phOtOgRaphy: ChaRlEs hOsEa, and faR Right phOtO

09 Front page ARB email leak prompts resignations 12 News feature DC CABE to ‘refresh’ design panels 18 Competitions & wins Hugh Broughton scoops £5m art gallery 20 People & practice Charles Walker: ‘I won’t dismantle the RCA’ 22 International Wang Shu wins 2012 Pritzker Prize 30 Building study Amin Taha Architects’ Ada Street development 38 Building study David Kohn Architects’ boat hotel 42 Technical study Davy Smith Architects’ Digby Road 48 Culture James Pallister reviews the RIBA housing exhibition This week online Read the AJ as a digital edition, available to subscribers from Thursdays at 8.30am. TheAJ.co.uk/AJdigital 01.03.12

A ÂŁ10,000 prize for the design of A one-off house

The private house occupies a unique position both in the history of architecture and the human imagination. Beyond its core function of shelter, it is an object of fantasy, a source of delight, a talisman and a testing ground. From Le Corbusier to Rem Koolhaas, the progress of modern architecture can be traced through a succession of pioneering houses. Regardless of scale, site or budget, the house offers the potential for genuine innovation and is critical to the ferment of architectural ideas. AR House celebrates this wellspring of creativity with

a major award of ÂŁ10,000 for the design of the best one-off house. All projects must be built. There is no age limit. Entries will be judged by an international jury, including Sofia von Ellrichshausen (Chile) and Peter Salter (UK), chaired by Catherine Slessor, AR Editor. Entry deadline is 27 April. For more information email melissa.mcchesney@emap.com or call 020 7728 5511 For sponsorship opportunities email nick.roberts@emap.com or call 020 7728 4608

architectural-review.com/arhouse2012 priority code: ARH12

From the editor

After 30 years, this page has returned to its home at the front of the magazine, writes Christine Murray

01.03.12

James Stirling A review of the Tate Britain retrospective by John Allan of Avanti Architects

14.04.11 Product design Allgood’s ‘flow handle’ from concept to delivery

6 houses by 6 practices

THE ARCHITECTS’ JOURNAL WWW.ARCHITECTSJOURNAL.CO.UK

One thing I like about the current AJ editorial team is that we share with our readership a particular nostalgia for back issues of this magazine, and distaste for unnecessary changes to the AJ’s design and content. Art editor Brad Yendle is not an architect, but is known for buying up old copies of the AJ on eBay, including the edition published on the day he was born – which inspired the cover of our 6 houses by 6 practices issue, AJ 14.04.11. For the past two years, Brad has played caretaker to the AJ’s graphic identity, evolving the design in keeping with the tradition of this title. This week, we introduce a few more subtle interventions. Most notably, after more than 30 years, we’ve restored this page to its home at the front of the magazine. The spring clean is in response to the pages we’ve added into the magazine this year – a bigger AJ is another tradition we’re bringing back. As for our typeface, Brad has preserved the use of Caslon, the historic English serif font dated to 1722, designed by gunsmith and typeface craftsman William Caslon (1692-1766). In the news section, we have augmented the use of Akzidenz-Grotesk, a typeface released within a year of the establishment of the AJ in 1895. This German font was the first sans-serif typeface to be widely used, and is the precursor to the modern-day Helvetica – the architect’s favourite. We’ve also rationalised the page structure, using a four-column grid for news, as well as for comment pieces such as Paul Finch’s Letter from London, and Rory Olcayto’s new column Black box, on architectural design culture. Last year we introduced a seven-column page layout for the features section, which includes a seventh column for annotations. The test of a good design is whether it interferes with your enjoyment of the magazine. Brad would welcome your feedback on the AJ’s design – please send comments or questions to brad.yendle@emap.com

Top tips for MIPIM It’s that time of year again: next week, the AJ is off to MIPIM, the international property fair in Cannes where cities, investors, developers and architects network the old-fashioned way, holding up the bars on the various city stands. For those of you about to embark on your first MIPIM, here are some top tips. Firstly, set up meetings with key clients – at least one a day. If you can’t get any meetings, attend the right breakfast, lunch and speaking events based on the people you want to meet – it is easy to approach them on their descent from the podium. Evening drinks on the London stand is a great networking opportunity, as most people congregate there in the late afternoon. Practice selling your business in 20 seconds, so that you know exactly what to say when you find yourself standing next to a potential client. Don’t trap anyone in a long conversation: impress them quickly with a single scheme on your iPad, then hand them a business card, all the better if it includes a project image. If they indicate they’d be willing to meet with you back in the UK, follow up a week later. Hopefully, you’ll leave MIPIM with a few meetings in the diary, a revitalised contacts book and invaluable market knowledge. I’ll see you there. christine.murray@emap.com 05

Week in pictures

2 Proposed Amenity Space & Courtyard Flats

Brady Mallalieu Architects

Apex Court, Sheperd's Bush London W12

london RIBA president Angela Brady’s practice Brady Mallalieu has won planning permission to convert a 1960s office block in Shepherd’s Bush into 30 new flats. The Apex Court scheme for developer Pocket Living is aimed at young homebuyers and features ‘grow your own’ allotments 1

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dublin NBBJ’s proposed 445-bed Childrens’ Hospital of Ireland has been refused planning by An Bord Pleanála. Irish Trust, An Taisce called the 16-storey scheme ‘seriously over-scaled’, while the country’s health minister called for ‘plans to deal with the scale and height problems as a matter of urgency’ 2

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PictuRe cReDitS: 01 BRaDy Mallalieu 02 NBBJ 03 PhiliP DuRRaNt 04 getty iMageS 05 MauRice ShaPeRo/BRaDShaw gaSS & hoPe

london Scott Brownrigg has completed the new £16 million home for the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery in Woolwich. The mounted unit moved into the stable complex, which will run on its own bio-fuel made from horse manure and bedding, earlier this month from St John’s Wood 3

london Riot police have evicted Occupy London protesters, who had been camped in front of St Paul’s Cathedral since last October. Police reported that 20 people had been arrested in the ‘largely peaceful’ operation to remove the activists who had been protesting against corporate greed and economic inequality 4

manchester Maurice Shapero, with Bolton-based Bradshaw Gass & Hope, has completed the new headquarters for mental health charity, 42nd Street. The 600m2, £750,000 scheme on Great Ancoats Street, features a wall of interlocking steel-plate screens that can open up when the building is in use 5

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RiBA liBRARy photogRAphS collection

Front page

Skylon to be reborn as half-size replica

ARB email leak prompts resignations George Oldham and Ruth Brennan resign from the ARB board after leaked emails revealed an attack on RIBA president Angela Brady arb elections The ARB board has accepted the resignations of members George Oldham and Ruth Brennan, who mistakenly sent private emails to the AJ that included an attack on RIBA president Angela Brady. The two ARB Reform Group members stood down last Friday at a board meeting in the wake of the embarrassing email blunder, which also saw Oldham refer to Stephen Lawrence Trust-backed candidates in the ARB elections as ‘the ethnics’. The ARB distanced itself from the leaked emails in a press release sent to all members, saying they were ‘not sent on the ARB’s behalf or as part of any of its activities’. Chair Beatrice Fraenkel told the

01.03.12

AJ: ‘George Oldham and Ruth the views of the group, which it Brennan were right to resign. It is maintained was ‘committed to very important that there should supporting and assisting the RIBA be no doubt as to the principles in benefiting the profession’. by which ARB operates.’ In a letter to the AJ (see page 28), At the time of going to press, Oldham hit back at ‘extraordinary the ARB had not received allegations’, saying: ‘I abhor formal notification from discrimination and it Brennan, who should be clear in is standing for the context of my re-election, email that, ironically, Candidates in the concerning it was the RIBA’s ARB elections withdrawal from the endorsement process election before the polls that was the cause of close at midday today (1 my complaint.’ March). However if she were to Oldham, an original member quit, any votes cast in her favour of the group set up in 2006, said would be disregarded. in his email: ‘Brady’s support for The ARB Reform Group also the “ethnics” is as inappropriate distanced itself from the leaked and irrelevant as is to be expected emails, saying they did not reflect from her.

‘I had been looking forward to returning to the civilisation of the RIBA Council from the bureaucratic inanities of the ARB. Now I’m profoundly depressed, and am simply feeling “a plague on both your houses”.’ In reply to this email, also sent to the AJ, Brennan called Brady ‘a prat’ and possibly ‘the worst ever RIBA president’. She said: ‘Is Ms Brady the worst ever RIBA president? I think she might be. What a prat. A plague on the RIBA indeed – at least us at the ARB are acting in a professional manner.’ Brennan was one of five ARB Reform Group members who petitioned Brady to back their candidacy. Last month, Brady came out in support of candidates endorsed by the Stephen Lawrence Trust. Elected board members will be announced next week. Merlin Fulcher TheAJ.co.uk/ARB2012

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RRA ARchitectS

Plans to erect a 50-metre, half-size Skylon replica near Hereford designed by RRA Architects have been announced. The sculpture would sit at the entrance to the city’s proposed ‘Skylon Park’ enterprise zone, for which a masterplanning competition has been launched. Powell & Moya’s original cigar-shaped Skylon was built in Hereford by engineering firm Painter Brothers, and was installed on London’s South Bank as part of the Festival of Britain in 1951.

UK news

Paradise Circus plans revealed

GLENN HOWELLS

birmingham Glenn Howells Architects has revealed its latest vision for a replacement of John Madin’s soon-to-bedemolished Brutalist 1974 central library in Birmingham. The Paradise Circus scheme includes new streets, squares, 160,000m2 of commercial space housed in 12 new buildings, as well as a new 450-seat home for the Birmingham Conservatoire, whose Adrian Boult Hall will also be relocated as part of the 15-year plan. Council leader Mike Whitby said: ‘This is one of the most strategically and historically important sites, not just for Birmingham, but for the UK.’

RIbA LIbRARY & PHOTOGRAPHS COLLECTION

Glenn Howells Architects’ vision for Birmingham includes new streets, squares, and commercial space spread over 12 new buildings and will replace John Madin’s Brutalist central library in the city centre

AJ hosts design day in Peckham london Six architecture firms and six lighting designers joined forces last week to ‘make Peckham even better’ during a day-long design event at Will Alsop’s Stirling Prize-winning Peckham Library (below). The AJ/Philips Peckham Charette saw architects Duggan

2.5m

bEN bLOSSOm

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“making it happen”.’ Morris,Pie Robin Lee Projects were reviewed by a crit Architecture, BDP, Konishi panel led by DC CABE chairman Gaffney, and Lee Marsden with Paul Finch, and included Duggan Ben Adams develop schemes for Morris’ scheme to transform the six key sites around Rye Lane. The Aylesham shopping centre brief, drawn up by AJ deputy into a food distribution editor Rory Olcayto, was and restaurant area; based on Southwark BDP’s plans for Eagle Council’s Peckham Wharf as a cultural and Nunhead Area People who use and residential Action Plan and Peckham Rye station quarter; and Pie’s also called for a each year vision for Rye Lane lighting strategy to station. link the projects. Robin Lee Architecture Kicking off the event was proposed a gateway live/work Southwark cabinet member for block at the south end of Rye regeneration, councillor Fiona Lane, while Konishi Gaffney Colley. She said: ‘I hope the work designed a cultural district around you do today will contribute to

‘Plans for Paradise Circus are at the forefront of Birmingham’s new enterprise zone and our Big City Plan. They have the capacity to create a high-quality commercial, retail and leisure development that will encourage visitors, open up other parts of our city and return our historic buildings to a more suitable setting.’ The development team, headed by Argent in collaboration with Altitude Real Estate, hopes to submit an outline planning application this summer after a series of consultation events, the second phase of which was held last week. Richard Waite

the Hannah Barry Gallery. Lee Marsden with Ben Adams suggested a cultural development and top floor spa with panoramic views for a multi-storey car park. Crit panel judge Pankaj Patel of Patel Taylor said he was ‘really impressed by the sensitivity from micro to macro-scale’. Southwark Council’s design and conservation manager Michael Tsoukaris, also judging, said: ‘The challenge for the council is to take these ideas, run with them and see how far we get.’ Fellow judge Olcayto added: ‘It’s great to see how each team approached the task, with individual building proposals and long-term design strategies tailored to suit each site.’ An exhibition of the projects will open at the end of March. Merlin Fulcher

01.03.12

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19.01.12 10:15:33 Uhr

CABE

MERLIN FULCHER

News feature

DC CABE to ‘refresh’ design panels Regeneration expert Nahid Majid has been tasked with revitalising the now-independent design body, adding ‘faith and community advisors’ to its 450-strong network of architects, designers and academics Design Council CABE (DC CABE) is ‘refreshing’ its network of design review panellists and enablers as part of a wide-ranging overhaul of its business and operating model. The former government design watchdog has appointed regeneration expert Nahid Majid to carry out a reappraisal of its activities, following the end of its role as the ‘government voice’ on design. Majid, who replaced architect and former design review chief

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Diane Haigh, said DC CABE was creating a ‘self-sustaining enterprise’ and considering a range of potential new products including ‘design visioning’ and ‘design procurement’. ‘We’re looking at creating a self-sustaining enterprise and one of the things we are really keen on is getting the right sort of people involved,’ she said. Majid’s last job was programme development director at the Mayor’s Fund for London and her CV includes appointments

at Turner & Townsends, the Princes Foundation and the Department for Work and Pensions. The new direction comes after Peter Bishop’s DC CABE review recommended greater devolution, more design support, and services aimed at both private and public sectors. Architects and designers will remain ‘crucial’ to design review but, Majid argued, flesh blood was needed to demonstrate DC CABE’s ‘broad commitment’.

‘The fact that we are independent and not just the government voice anymore, we want to develop that by refreshing our family and getting more skills,’ she said. Architects, planners, landscape architects and academics traditionally made up the bulk of DC CABE’s 450-strong network of enablers and design review panel members. That make-up could be revised to make way for DC CABE’s new, ‘more flexible and diverse’ network of Built Environment Experts (BEEs) which, according to Majid, would include ‘faith and community experts, not just designers and architects’. ‘Architects are not just architects anymore,’ she said. ‘When we are developing spaces we need to understand the cultural issues, particularly if we are designing for communities.’ Recruitment starts today and closes on 30 March. The BEEs would be at the forefront of DC CABE’s work on communicating policy and building trends to local authorities, developers and communities, but they would also operate in a new world where the organisation has to charge for design review. Majid was unable to say how many design reviews DC CABE would need to carry out each year and how much it would have to charge in order to survive. By

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January this year it had completed 189 design reviews since the Design Council and CABE were combined. Majid also dismissed the threat of competition from organisations such as the Princes Foundation, which underwent a communitiesfocused rebrand earlier this year and was chosen to roll out the government’s Localism agenda. ‘It’s great that lots of organisations are doing this work,’ said Hajid. ‘We’re working very closely with the Princes Foundation. The more people that buy into this agenda [the better] It’s fantastic.’ Last summer’s riots in the capital also boosted demand for design services at Design for London, which started hiring new staff as a result. But Hajid was cautious about linking design problems to London’s social and economic divides. ‘There are numerous factors that contribute to riots. Design is one element of that and it can be a process that can reconcile social and economic problems. I don’t think it was the main reason for what happened.’ Merlin Fulcher

the new built environment experts network Recruitment to DC CABE’s new Built Environment Experts network opens today (Thursday 1 March) and will close on Friday 30 March at 5:30pm. DC CABE is holding an introduction event for those who want to find out more on Monday 19 March from 6pm to 8pm at the Design Council offices in Covent Garden, London WC2. Visit designcouncil.org.uk/cabe to apply.

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the future of design review Anna ScottMarshall, head of public affairs at the RIBA It’s clear that with fewer in-house resources in local authority planning departments, extra support for design quality such as design review will continue to be incredibly important.

In the future, there is likely to be much more flexibility as to how local authorities access design review, whether that is via their own panel, a shared panel with other local authorities or via a national service. It may well be that design review will start to be a service that is paid for. If developers, architects and local authorities are clear what service

they are receiving and the benefits of doing so – including, ideally a smoother passage to planning if the panel outcome is positive – then there is likely to be little resistance to this. The problem will be if it is seen as an extra hurdle without any gain. We’re hopeful that the national planning policy framework may provide some of that certainty.

Matt Brook, director of global architecture, urbanism and design at Broadway Malyan There are two potential paying audiences for design review: local authorities and private developers. Paying for external design reviews would be a very

cost-effective way for resourcestrapped local authorities to bolster their in-house design advice. For developers, paying for a design review service would help ensure that their product is the best possible in a very competitive market, while also helping fasttrack the planning process. To become a more effective tool for clients, potential failings

needs to be addressed. Review teams must remain consistent for repeat reviews and have good local knowledge. However, the key aspect of design review that needs to change in the UK is its planning status. Design review needs to at least become a material consideration. It also needs to happen at an early stage, before applications are made.

Chris Brown, chief executive of Igloo Most people welcome development when it is well designed. As all good developers know, planning is easier when developers design with communities. However, when there are differences of opinion

independent processes like design review can be helpful. The question is who should pay and how much? Much design review today occurs through the pro bono time of design professionals. Such time is scarce, so we should only design review where there is a dispute or potential dispute. Design review does require administration and

that needs paying for. It shouldn’t be a significant burden though. A few hundred pounds for a simple design review at most. Should developers pay? My view is, absolutely. On the whole, only the bad developers in dispute with communities (or those seeking outstanding design sign off ) will need to pay, the costs will be small and a ‘design OK’ valuable.

Bob Ghosh, director of K4 Architects I can only speak from my own experience. When we took the Birmingham Central Fire Station to DC CABE design review, I felt the panel demonstrated an extraordinary lack of appreciation of the site, its context and its

complexity. Some of them had clearly never even been to Birmingham. They also dismissed the economic and enabling arguments that underpin the scheme, choosing to look at pure design issues in isolation. I have great respect for the professionals that make up the DC CABE design review panel, but I think some of them

are detached from reality. I find a structural engineer expressing negative opinions about the fenestration of our building bizarre. Call me old fashioned, but surely it would be more appropriate for another architect to peer review this aspect of design. DC CABE could learn a lot from some of the regional panels.

First look

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all iMageS: edMund SuMner

Studio Meda’s £350k dip shropshire Emerging practice Studio Meda has completed this 165m2 timber-framed swimming pool and gym for a retired couple in the Shropshire Hills. The ‘distinctly contemporary’ £350,000 scheme in the historic village of Cardington, Church Stretton, is built on a sandstone base and features untreated timber cladding and oak window frames. Studio founder Martin Ebert, a former associate director at David Chipperfield Architects, said: ‘The predominant building 14 theaj.co.uk

forms in the village, which dates back to the 11th century, are simple cottages built from local gritstone and barns clad in rough-sawn oak or larch board.’ ‘The pool includes ideas from the local barn structures and strikes a balance between the local vernacular and creating a distinctly contemporary and independent structure.’ He added: ‘The simple timber framework provides a flexible structure opening up views to the surrounding hills’. Richard Waite 01.03.12

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News on TheAJ.co.uk

Peel Group may ‘walk away’ from Liverpool this week online Developer says it won’t ‘spend any more money’ on city’s £5.5bn waterfront redevelopment if scheme goes to public inquiry

that’s it. I’m not spending any more money on it.’ Critics of the project believe the scheme is too big and does not respect the history of the docklands, which sits partly within the city’s World Heritage Site. Last month, DC CABE called the scheme ‘weak’. English Heritage has also formally objected to the

project on the basis that it ‘fails to harness and celebrate what is special about this historic site and to create the type of much-needed development that will enhance and underpin this significant part of the city’s heritage.’ The watchdog’s objection means that, regardless of next Tuesday’s committee vote, the scheme will be referred to communities secretary Eric Pickles who will decide if there should be a public inquiry. Wayne Colquhoun, of the Liverpool Preservation Trust said: ‘Call my Bluff is a game the Peel Group is used to playing. Only this time, they are playing it with a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the city council.’ Richard Waite TheAJ.co.uk/Peel

British practices vie for Danish stadium

City turns out to vote on Union Terrace Gardens

DC CABE to move to AHMM’s Angel Building

copenhagen A number of aberdeen Half of Aberdeen’s high-profile British practices are population has voted in the among the teams shortlisted in referendum on controversial plans the competition to design a by US practice Diller Scofidio £120 million indoor arena + Renfro (DS+R) to transform in Copenhagen. The five Union Terrace Gardens. finalists are teams lead At the time of going by Foster + Partners, to press, independent Hopkins Architects officers said 50 per and Populous, as cent of residents had Public turn out for well as collaborations turned out to decide Aberdeen vote between Grimshaw if the scheme, backed and CF Møller, and by millionaire Ian 3XN and HKS. The Wood, should go ahead. winner will be announced A victory could see the firm, in May and the 15,000-seat venue with Scottish practice Keppie will be run by entertainment firm Design, build its first permanent Live Nation, which operates building in Europe. The result Dublin’s O2 and Wembley of the vote is due tomorrow Arena. TheAJ.co.uk/LiveNation (2 March). TheAJ.co.uk/UTG

50%

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TiM soAr

liverpool The Peel Group has said it is not afraid to ‘walk away’ from its £5.5 billion development (right) of Liverpool’s waterfront, should the Chapman Taylordesigned project go to public inquiry. Last week the Peel Group released its latest images of the scheme showing how Liverpool’s skyline could change over the next 30 years. Set to go before the council’s planning committee 6 March, the project features 9,000 apartments, hundreds of offices, hotels, bars and a cruise terminal, as well as the 55-storey, so-called Shanghai Tower. However, speaking to The Business Desk, Peel developments director Lindsey Ashworth said: ‘If there is [a public enquiry], then

london Design Council CABE is leaving its Covent Garden base for the 2011 Stirling Prizeshortlisted Angel Building in north London (above). Design Council and DC CABE will move into Allford Hall Monaghan Morris’ 1,000m² BREEAM Excellent-rated retrofit this summer. TheAJ.co.uk/CABEAngel

Experience the thrill and 1 champagne spills of the annual MIPIM property show courtesy of the AJ MIPIM blog. Our spies in Cannes include former RIBA president Jack Pringle, Cany Ash of Ash Sakula and Richard Scott of Surface Architects TheAJ.co.uk/MipimBlog Exclusive images, 2 drawings and details of Templewood Avenue by MJP, the house that Thierry Henry wants to tear down AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk Follow architectural 3 developments from around the world including PRP’s massive Russian theatre project and finalists for the Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen TheAJ.co.uk/international Browse the shortlist for the 4 Saint-Gobain Isover 2012 Student Architectural Design Competition, which aims to design a sustainable community for Nottingham’s Trent Basin TheAJ.co.uk/Isover Join @ArchitectsJrnal’s 5 30,000 Twitter followers to debate the news as it breaks. Tweet your thoughts directly to AJ editor Christine Murray, @tcmurray and news editor Richard Waite, @waitey Twitter.com/ArchitectsJrnal 01.03.12

Competitions & wins

Hugh Broughton’s Welbeck design wins COMPETITIONS FILE Practice came top of shortlist featuring Caruso St John, Dow Jones and Gianni Botsford for £5m gallery on historic estate

The University of Edinburgh is on the hunt for an architect with conservation accreditation to manage the £3.2 million redevelopment of concert venue St Cecilia’s Hall, Edinburgh. The contract covers interior and exterior refurbishment, with improved seating, sound insulation and wheelchair access. [PQQs must be returned by 16 March]

gianni botsford architects

haworth tompkins architects

nottinghamshire Hugh Broughton Architects has won the contest to design a new £5 million gallery on the historic 15,000-acre Welbeck Estate in Nottinghamshire. The practice beat runner up Caruso St John Architects, as well as finalists Dow Jones Architects, Gianni Botsford Architects, Haworth Tompkins Architects and Tony Fretton Architects in the invited competition organised by Malcolm Reading Consultants. The new building for the Harley Foundation, a charitable trust set up to improve public access to the arts, will house Welbeck’s

Portland collection of paintings and decorative arts. The victorious scheme will ‘knit together’ a collection of buildings already on the site of the estate’s Victorian gasworks, next to the existing Harley Galley and 386 metre-long Tan Gallop equestrian exercise area, café and farm shop. Malcolm Reading said: ‘The winning concept draws from the eclectic surroundings, bringing a sense of order and connectivity.’ A planning application is due to be submitted later this year. The gallery is scheduled to open in early 2015. Richard Waite

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caruso st john architects

dow jones architects

tony fretton architects

THe AJ does noT orgAnise, endorse or TAke responsiBiliTy for compeTiTions

hugh broughton architects

Imperial College London is calling for architectural design services as part of an eight-year framework agreement. Experience of scientific research projects is necessary, as the job covers the design of laboratory and teaching facilities. Up to 40 projects a year will be included, with budgets ranging from £100,000 to £15 million. [Expressions of interest must be received by 2 April] Camden Council is seeking multidisciplinary teams for the design and construction of its Centre for Learning. Fee bids are currently being sought for the project, which could have a budget of between £1.9 and £4.3 million and covers RIBA Stages C to L. [Requests to participate must be received by 19 March] Sean Kitchen TheAJ.co.uk/competitions 01.03.12

Statistics

a pre-let tenant can be found. However, its major Acmedesigned Eastgate Quarters scheme in Leeds will move ahead. TheAJ.co.uk/Hammerson

Hammerson to sell off office portfolio

Hammerson’s profits before tax in 2010 and 2011 £620.2m

£346.3m

hammerson

offices Commercial property giant Hammerson is to sell off its office portfolio to concentrate on shopping developments. The group announced a drop in its profit before tax from £620.2 million in 2010 to £346.3 million for the year ending 31 December 2011. Hammerson confirmed it would be selling its existing offices ‘in the medium term’, but said it had a small number of London office projects and mixed-use sites generating high returns where it would continue to invest. Make’s contentious high-rise 46,450m² London Wall Place project will remain on hold until

2010

2011

33,456

Commercial work drops by a third in Scotland

Total number of UK registered architects at the end of 2011, up by 391 or 1.2% last year

scotland New figures released this week show that commercial development and refurbishment work in Scotland has fallen by a third since 2007. According to property consultants GVA, the drop is equivalent to £2 billion lost to the wider Scottish economy. The Scottish Property Federation said that and around 28,000 jobs had been shed in the commercial sector over the last five years. At the federation’s annual conference this week, it called for reform of the planning system and ‘pragmatic’ climate change regulations ‘in light of continuing economic fragility’.

1,244

New admissions to the ARB register in 2011, down from 1,261 the year before

20.8%

Industrial is on the up UK industrial sector planning approvals increased by 28% last year. There was a 59% increase in the underlying value of contracts awarded in the six months to November 2011 compared to 2010 The value of industrial sector planning approvals and contracts awarded January 2010 to December 2011 Source: Glenigan

Percentage of registered women architects at the end of 2011, up by 8.5% 10 years ago

Contracts awarded Planning approvals

£1,000m 976

967

£800m

60%

£600m

516

386

462

457

453 411

403 366 301

£200m 169

383 323

344

170

£0 Jan - Mar 2010

01.03.12

Apr -Jun 2010

Jul - Sep 2010

Oct - Dec 2010

Jan - Mar 2011

Apr -Jun 2011

Jul - Sep 2011

Oct - Dec 2011

all figures: arb

£400m

Overall pass rate for ARB-prescribed examinations in 2010. The ratio remained static last year but was 63% the previous year 19

People & practice

‘I won’t dismantle the RCa’ NEW PRACTICES After a lukewarm reception from students, new head Charles Walker explains his plans for the RCA’s School of Architecture

Your presentation with RCA dean Alex de Rijke received negative feedback from students. Did it go how you planned? To be honest, it could have gone better; it came across as if we wanted to dismantle the school, which isn’t the case. We both think that due to major global cultural paradigm shifts, architectural education is undergoing serious selfexamination, which the RCA needs to be part of. The RCA has a great legacy that we hope to build on – expand, not replace. Many prospective students are worried about the new direction of the school. How would you define its key characteristics? Before I do that, it’s really important to stress that change will be incremental. Now that the senior team is in place, we can begin a consultative process with staff and students. The idea is to enhance and evolve the school, not impose immediate wholesale change. We want to retain the RCA’s best characteristics while adding a new layer of the ‘culture of construction’: what you propose

20 theaj.co.uk

to build with and why, not just how. There will be an added emphasis on collaborative working, and a holistic approach to the process of making architecture. How many of the existing staff are you hoping to replace? That’s a mischievous question. I have no plans to replace staff. You said that ‘you hadn’t read a good book in 15-20 years’. What did you mean by that? That was a quip – a provocation. There is a reciprocal relationship between practice and theory. However in the past 15 years, developments and experimentation in avant-garde design practice have led the way. There have been many great texts written in this period, but in my view practice has developed in advance of the critical theory. This may shift. Some students may be worried that you are mainly an engineer. Do you have a record designing buildings? Which ones? As both architect and engineer, my ability is to help distil and crystallise ideas within a team environment, and enable complex, challenging projects to come to fruition. While at Atelier One I was project director designing the dome roofs at the Singapore Arts Centre. Later, after founding the Advanced Geometry Unit at Arup with Cecil Balmond, we were consultant architect/engineer for the Battersea Power Station masterplan with Parkview International. TheAJ.co.uk/Walker

east west

london The Royal College of Art’s incoming head of architecture Charles Walker has been criticised for a proposed shake-up of the School of Architecture. The AJ speaks to the Canadian-born engineering whizz, who starts his role in September, about his plans.

East West Architecture Studio main people Dean Smith based Hackney, London founded Summer 2011 contact www.ew-as.com

Where have you come from? I made film sets before studying architecture, then worked on urban refurbishment and new-build housing at Prime Meridian Architects for five years. What work do you have? I am building my portfolio across a range of building types through competitions and by approaching clients, and have recently been appointed by a large developer for a project in Chinatown, London. I’ve also collaborated on different competitions and am shortlisted for a small project in New York below the High Line (pictured above). What are your ambitions? I operate from a desk space, so have low overheads. It’s made me realise that you can do an awful

lot with limited means. My intention is to grow the practice, focusing on international and housing work. Having live projects allows me to think about what area of the practice I want to develop next, but I have to be careful where I put my energy. How optimistic are you? I’ve found it useful to mould my business model to clients, rather than take a one-size-fits-all approach. I put myself into as many diverse situations as possible to network. Having an established network within academia gives opportunities to discuss, design and develop research material. There are many benefits for clients working with smaller firms, one of them being that they get to work closely with the architect. 01.03.12

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International

Wang Shu wins 2012 Pritzker Prize

Lv Hengzhong

Architecture’s highest honour is awarded to Chinese architect Wang Shu for his ‘sensitive and meticulously constructed’ projects. He will be presented with the prize in May in Beijing, along with a $100,000 cheque

Delays to Doha project Major construction work on the final phase of the £3.5 billion Qatari Musheireb development is on hold. The masterplan for the development in the Qatari city of Doha features more than 100 buildings for a range of uses over 31 hectares. Several UK-based firms have won work on the huge scheme, including Davis Langdon, Arup, Allies and Morrison, Mossessian & Partners, Adjaye Associates, John McAslan + Partners, Squire and Partners. Demolition works have been completed for phase 4, which has been designed by HOK, Ramboll and Mossessian & Partners, and includes retail, commercial, leisure and health facilities, as well as further residential apartments. But enabling works, utility

22 theaj.co.uk

diversion jobs and main building works are on hold, according to an update circulated this month. Enabling works began in 2009, and are now complete on phase 1A, as well as more than 90 per cent complete on phases 1B and 1C. The scheme, similar in size to the King’s Cross regeneration project, will house nearly 25,000 people and was scheduled to complete in 2016. Musheireb is described as ‘bridging the gap between the historic Doha of the past, and the leading, global metropolis it is today’. A spokesman for developer Musheireb Properties said: ‘We are working in phases, beginning with phase 1A, then B, and so on. The project is on schedule.’ Greg Pitcher TheAJ.co.uk/MDoha

awards Chinese architect Wang Shu has been awarded the 2012 Pritzker Prize. The architect joins IM Pei, Rem Koolhaas and Oscar Niemeyer in receiving what has been described as the ‘the Nobel Prize of Architecture’. Wang Shu, who is director of Amateur Architecture Studio with partner Lu Wenyu, has designed a number of buildings known for their sensitivity to site and meticulous construction. Among his most famous projects is the Ceramic House, which involved salvaging more than two million

tiles from demolished traditional houses. The 49-year-old architect, whose practice was founded in 1998, is best known for the Wenzheng Library at Suzhou University, the Historic Museum in Ningbo (pictured) and the Xiangshan campus of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. The formal ceremony will be held in May in Beijing, and Wang Shu will be presented with a $100,000 prize and a medallion. The Pritzker Prize – generally recognised as architecture’s highest honour – is presented annually to a living architect whose built work demonstrates a ‘combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture’. Sophia Kelleher TheAJ.co.uk/Shu

Signs of recovery in US US architects have reported a third Baker said: ‘This recent showing is encouraging because it is being consecutive month of improved reflected across most regions of demand, giving further impetus to the country and across the major belief of a recovery in the country. construction sectors.’ The American Institute of However he warned architects Architects (AIA) recorded a score not to get carried away. of 50.9 on its Architecture ‘Because we still Billings Index for continue to hear about January 2012. struggling firms and It was the third some continued month in a row to AIA Architecture uncertainty in the see a score above 50, Billings Index score market, we expect which reflects a for Jan 2012 overall economic growth in trade for improvements in the design practices from the design and construction previous month. sector to be modest in the It follows The Associated coming months.’ General Contractors of America The Midwest had the greatest reporting earlier this month that improvement, but the west of the construction employment rose at country saw demand tumble with its quickest rate for four years in an average of 45.6. Greg Pitcher December 2011. TheAJ.co.uk/USboost AIA chief economist Kermit

50.9

01.03.12

Astragal

Pride of Peckham competition ‘Delighted that Architects’ Journal and Philips have chosen Peckham for their Liveable Cities design contest, hoping for some creative ideas.’ That was architecture-loving Southwark councillor Fiona Colley on Twitter just moments before she introduced the day-long event, giving vital background information on the south-east London hot spot to the architects and lighting designers gathered in Peckham Library for the charrette. The evening before, Colley attended the launch of Elephant and Castle’s £1.5 billion masterplan, and bemoaned the Standard’s cliched coverage:

‘Not a fan of the headline: Makeover of “muggers’ paradise” Heygate estate’. That was still on her mind when she addressed the charrette design teams the following morning. ‘Peckham is not broken,’ she said. ‘It has a reputation that is not deserved. We are passionate about changing that perception.’ Colley went on to talk about the sites selected for the charrette. ‘For me, the sites around the station are the most interesting. Peckham Station Square, for example, is going to happen. There’s £10.5 million attached to that project – but no architect yet.’ Cue audible gasps from the assembled architects: ‘This is an opportunity to show us your ideas.’ Indeed.

Rocky foundations

Stamp of approval

archeology What will Ai Weiwei and Herzog & de Meuron find when they excavate the foundations of the former Serpentine Pavilions? According to Thore Garbers of Garbers & James, who was project architect on Daniel Libeskind’s metal spiral in 2001, there are around 10 steel ‘torpedoes’ buried five-metres deep around the site. Attached to hemp ropes, the projectile missiles were shot like harpoons into Kensington Gardens when an engineer feared the pavilion touched the ground so lightly, it just might take off given the right wind conditions. Happy hunting!

philately Stamp collectors and fans of Basil Spence behold: the Scottish Brutalist architect has been commemorated on a special Royal Mail postage stamp. His 1962 Coventry Cathedral (below) is featured as part of the Britons of Distinction series, which also includes the work of Gothic Revivalist Augustus Pugin. Six years ago, buildings by Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Future Systems, Edward Cullinan and Sutherland Hussey featured in Royal Mail’s Modern Architecture series. Perhaps an Olympic stadium series would bring fresh names to the fold.

WWW.LOUISHELLMAN.CO.UK

Hair today...

01.03.12

hot air You can see why Donald Trump – who sports a combover – might find wind farms a nuisance. This week, he described plans for 11 new wind turbines close to his £750 million Aberdeenshire golf resort as ‘ugly’ and ‘horrendous’. So strong is Trump’s dislike for these renewable energy sources that he has personally agreed to sponsor a campaign group – known as Communities Against Turbines Scotland or CATS – against the £33 million offshore wind farm. The claws are out. 23

Letter from London

The ARB should be abolished. Why do architects need a regulatory body at all? Paul Finch

24 theaj.co.uk

commonplace in the 1930s. A permanent reminder of that period is the appointment to the ARB of non-architect members by the Privy Council. These days, the consumerist arrangement looks increasingly irrelevant, with the audit ideology beloved of accountants, lawyers and project managers shot to pieces after 2008. The ARB now finds itself cleaning up where somebody has been prosecuted, like the road-sweeper after Trooping the Colour. Where it takes up a case independently, it is usually architects one has never heard of being disciplined under procedures that look as though they have been invented by Mr Pastry. Complaints can be brought by vindictive people who don’t have a case in civil law, but risk nothing by going to the board.

The ARB now finds itself cleaning up where somebody has been prosecuted, like the road-sweeper after Trooping the Colour

jon’s pics/flckr

Headlines about the Architects Registration Board (ARB), the Reform Group, the RIBA, its president and the forthcoming election only serve to mask the real truth about compulsory regulation of the profession. That truth is that the ARB should be abolished. To deal with minor points: first, if George Oldham is a racist then I am Rem Koolhaas. Second, I have no idea why the RIBA is promoting its own special slate of candidates for the ARB elections, but it is perfectly entitled to do so. As a long-time contributor to the life of the institute and as people who have long campaigned for a rational registration board, Oldham and others also have a right to express their concerns. The real question is why the board is needed at all. The conventional argument, trotted out ad nauseam when deregulation was mooted in the early 1990s, is that it protects the public thanks to the Hercule Poirots of Hallam Street. Of course this is all baloney. Let’s remember that the ARB is in no position to compensate a client who has been really badly served by an architect; they would have to go to court to get damages. But anyway, is it the case that aggrieved construction clients are mainly upset over the service delivered by architects? Certainly not. It is builders, in all their myriad forms, that attract the ire of the general public. Is there an equivalent of the ARB for constructors? No. Is there one for engineers, who actually make buildings stand up? No. Is there one for surveyors, including the valuers who have landed the property sector in one of its highly predictable messes? No. So why are architects picked on? It is because ideas about professionalism and the professional status of architects are hopelessly mired in the past, specifically 1931 when legislation created the ARB’s predecessor, the unlamented Architects’ Registration Council of the UK. There may have been a case for it when architects ruled the roost, acted quasi-judicially, and operated in the sort of hierarchical social structure that was

So the ARB plods on, judge and jury, chief prosecutor and witchfinder general, in a fantasy world where sloppy record-keeping and processes have to be rooted out so the public can sleep safely. As for architectural education, the board merely replicates and irritates to no effect. The board handles a minute number of mainly tin-pot disciplinary cases each year at extraordinarily disproportionate expense. The government is not interested in doing anything about it because it is architects, not taxpayers, who foot the bill. Edwin Lutyens was right in opposing regulation when it was first proposed; I would love to think the profession might one day get off its knees, collectively refuse to pay the uncapped tithe that the ARB imposes, and watch it end up in the dustbin of history where it belongs. 01.03.12

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Black box

Here’s a way to ease off the carbon: retrofit everyday objects as well as buildings, writes Rory Olcayto whose 1993 essay, This is not a Pipe, described the speculative technology as ‘an enchanted village in which common objects have magically acquired new abilities’. It also recalls Richard Brautigan’s 60s beat poem All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (I like to think (right now, please!)/of a cybernetic forest/filled with pines and electronics/where deer stroll peacefully/past computers/ as if they were flowers/with spinning blossoms.) IC is the punkier version of the UC, which so closely resembles Brautigan’s hippy future. Design critic and sci-fi author Bruce Sterling is convinced. He blogged on Wired, ‘I’m pretty much buying this vision of future computation, not because it’s all fubar sci-fi awesome, but because it’s so plausible and, most of all, cheap.’ Sterling calls it sustainability’s killer app. ‘You’ve got no material footprint. You’ve got a recyclable cardboard pizza box to your name, basically.’ It’s the next step in our deepening relationship with the past. ‘Maybe writing on a typewriter is more efficient than using an iPad. IC gives you the opportunity to use what you know best and continue to use it, even if it doesn’t work any more,’ Cassinelli told the Observer. ‘It’s like having an old car you like very much; you don’t want to throw it away but there are no spare parts to repair it. Never mind – let’s just make it work from the outside. It’s using powerful resources to make things live again.’ The future is cheap. The future is vintage. The future is a banana retrofit. See the video at TheAJ.co.uk/IC

robin LEE architEcturE

If you could use your antique 1918 Underwood typewriter and Louis XIV-style mirror to Google or tweet from your living room, rather than your beige Packard Bell, you would. I’m taking that as a given, whether you’re a Postmodernist, Metabolist or even a Gothic Revivalist. Thing is, with Invoked Computing, you can. Sustainability has found its killer app: why make new things when we can retrofit everything we already have? Invoked Computing (IC) is a pervasive computing technology that changes household objects into communication devices. Developed by Alvaro Cassinelli and Alexis Zerroug at the University of Tokyo, two proof of concept prototypes were demonstrated at Tokyo’s Digital Content Expo last year. The first turned a banana into a telephone and the second saw an old pizza box used as a laptop. Magritte would love it. It’s all based on gesture. If you swipe a banana to your ear, local ambient computing recognises the action and uses parametric speaker arrays (Google it) to make sound apparently emerge from the banana. It’s the same deal with the pizza box; open it like a laptop and video and sound are projected onto the cardboard. IC inverts our relationship with tools: instead of having to master a device, IC tailors them to suit your behaviour. IC is an outgrowth of Ubiquitous Computing (UC), a term coined by Silicon Valley visionary Rich Gold,

26 theaj.co.uk

Inbox Here’s a snapshot (left) of Robin Lee Architecture’s latest project: a live/work tower and podium block in Peckham, one of six schemes designed during the AJ/Philips Peckham Charrette last week (see p10). Its warehouse-style form and ‘stacked’ elevations draw upon the industrial buildings and ‘wholesale’ shops of nearby Rye Lane, whose shopfronts are hidden behind stacked goods. Constructed from locally

sourced recycled brick, the facades incorporate a lighting strategy that frames each opening. The tower is located on a car park site designated for residential use, where Peckham Rye Park blends with the townscape. Lee, chose to work within Southwark Council guidelines during the day-long event. ‘It’s a gateway building, marking the entrance to Rye Lane,’ he said. 01.03.12

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Letters

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C16 retrofit De Matos Ryan renews Home Farm ■ sustainability in practice

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George Oldham writes Rory Olcayto’s leader (AJ 23.02.12) charging the ARB board with ‘prejudice, stupidity and hypocrisy’ and depicting me as some sort of reactionary is simply bizarre. Putting aside what appear to be the writer’s own prejudices, and I quote: ‘old white boys’, his absurdly extrapolated conclusion that my private email, (not an ARB email incidentally) ‘suggest(s) that there is a layer of prejudice and amateurism within the body that regulates this profession’, is just deranged. I am well known as one of the ARB’s most outspoken critics, but I would never accuse the eight members appointed by government and the seven elected by the profession as having anything other than the most liberal sensitivities. Furthermore, I am on record as strongly supporting its outstanding chair, Beatrice Fraenkel, particularly in her achievements in improving relationships with the RIBA. As a supporter of the Stephen

LETTER OFK THE WEE

Editor Christine Murray (4573) Deputy editor Rory Olcayto (4571) Acting administrator Rakesh Ramchurn (4574) Digital editor Simon Hogg (4572) News editor Richard Waite (07918 650875) Reporter Merlin Fulcher (4564) Editorial intern Sophia Kelleher Technical editor Felix Mara (4568) Senior editor James Pallister (4570) Sustainability editor Hattie Hartman (4569) Sustainability intern Ruth Dreyer AJ Buildings Library editor Tom Ravenscroft (4644) Art editor Brad Yendle (4578) Designer Ella Mackinnon (4567) Production editor Mary Douglas (4577) Sub-editor Abigail Gliddon (4579) Contributing editor Ian Martin Editorial director Paul Finch Group chief executive Natasha Christie-Miller Managing director of architecture and media Conor Dignam (5545) Group commercial director Alison Pitchford (5528)

Lawrence Trust, and also as a member of the RIBA Council who was once on a government list as an anti-apartheid campaigner, I find these extraordinary allegations, based on one word taken out of context, as fanciful as they are hurtful. I hold my hands up to an accusation of ‘not thinking’ in not noticing your reporter’s name when I hit the ‘reply all’ button when sending a note of support to the seven Reform Group members, who understandably felt neglected by an RIBA establishment, which had endorsed others while ignoring their outstanding achievements in helping the ARB more positively recognise the role of the RIBA. However, I completely reject the allegation that I referred to Lisa Basu and Kirk Ray Morrison as ‘the ethnics’. I abhor discrimination and it should be clear in the context of my email that, ironically, it was the RIBA’s endorsement process that was the cause of my complaint. However, a private gripe on a single issue does not constitute a public condemnation. Angela Brady is a campaigning president; I like and respect her for it, and would not want her to

Commercial director James MacLeod (4582) Business development managers Nick Roberts (4608), Ceri Evans (3595) Group advertising manager Amanda Pryde (4557) Account managers Hannah Buckley (3762), Simon Collingwood (4515), Steph Atha (4609) Classified and recruitment sales Ashley Powell (4518)

cease being so. I am truly sorry for inadvertently causing any embarrassment; my only interest is in supporting candidates who want a minimalist ARB. George Oldham, Prestwick

ARB recidivism Rory’s editorial is spot on. Gerald Kaufman MP once alleged that the Labour Party manifesto under Michael Foot was the longest suicide note in history. Now equalled in the profession by 90 per cent of the current ARB election statements. Admitting to 30 years in the profession is surely its own type of recidivism. Gordon Murray, via email

Board representation What is the Architects Registration Board exactly, if not the elected people who comprise it? Board members are representative of the ARB. The ARB’s fatuous attempt to distance itself from these emails (TheAJ.co.uk, 23.02.12) rather than taking responsibility for them, is very disappointing. Oliver Houchell, via TheAJ.co.uk

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Building study

Off Broadway (Market)

30 theaj.co.uk

Mark dway

central staircase, and the same number of three-bedders on the other, with two retail units below. Because there are less than 10 units, the local authority did not stipulate affordable flats. None are designed to Lifetime Homes standards, nor as accommodation for disabled residents, and the client did not want to pay extra for environmentally responsible design beyond the statutory essentials. The site is in a conservation area and Broadway Market, a parade of ground floor A1-5 units with flats above, is unusual because of the way it is embedded in a predominantly residential district. Hardly any of these units belong to chains, and the parade starts at a hump bridge over the Grand Union Canal 1 at one end and is terminated by London >>

Ada S

treet

Broa

roadway Market, in the east London borough of Hackney, has everything young professionals could wish for: a bookshop, a delicatessen, a cycle repair shop (with café) that sells second-hand bikes and cycling helmets disguised as trilbies, an old-fashioned toy shop, and now, at its junction with Ada Street, a mixed-use development with inclined black rendered walls and a random arrangement of large, reflective windows by Amin Taha Architects. The client, a friend of practice director Amin Taha wanted an inexpensive development with a gallery at ground floor level and flats above, and a utilitarian quality that would appeal to thirty-something professionals. The outcome has three two-bedroom flats on one side of a

Abstract and asymmetrical, Amin Taha Architects’ mixed-use development makes a flamboyant and frugal addition to its hip East End neighbourhood, writes Felix Mara. Photography by Charles Hosea

3 2 1

Location plan

1. Grand Union Canal 2. Regent’s Canal 3. Works

Right Ada Street elevation – a facade in constant motion 0 10m

01.03.12

Ada Street mixed development, London Amin Taha Architects

Ground floor plan

First floor plan

7 8 2

6 1 2

10 11

9 12

11 10

10 10

Fields at the other. The architect and planning theoretician Camillo Sitte might have referred to this as an urban corridor and, with its secluded, convivial atmosphere, it resembles a long external room. The planners did not regard Taha’s site in Ada Street as high-street development, but there was a height restriction – hence the flat rooftop – and they expected it to be ‘ground-floor-plus-one’. They got ground-floor-plus-three. Embedded between buildings on either side of its Ada Street frontage, and with further development to the south expected, Taha’s addition deliberately stands alone and makes no attempt to ape its 19th-century

32 theaj.co.uk

neighbours in Broadway Market, where there is a pronounced horizontal line between shop fronts below and flats above. ‘We didn’t want the windows to align with the other buildings as this would have “connected the dots”,’ says Taha. Although European architects are understandably proud of their traditional urban heritage of streets and squares, perhaps the backlash against the type of Modernist town-planning which endorsed stand-alone buildings went too far. Taha’s building has none of the traditional detail of the brickwork facades of Broadway Market, with no projecting copings or window sill drips, and this gives it an abstract quality similar to, but much more pronounced than, the white-rendered iceberg on its west flank. There’s an abstract quality in the distorted clock-face pattern of its windows, like a levelledout version of Henri Matisse’s painting The Snail. There’s also a timeless, enigmatic quality, like a Giorgio de Chirico painting. It could as well be in outer Tokyo, and the narrow retail units and flats on its east side and meagre courtyard reinforce this impression. Rather than simply 01.03.12

Second floor plan

Third floor plan

Legend

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1. Entrance to flats 2. A1 unit 3. Courtyard 4. Kitchen 5. WC 6. Bin store 7. Cycle store 8. Letter boxes 9. Kitchen/living/ dining 10. Bedroom 11. Bathroom 12. Ensuite

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serving the flats. This staircase is treated with loving attention to detail and is meticulously set out. Its flights are precast concrete with fair-faced soffits, and this has made it possible to work to exacting tolerances, with 30mm gaps between these units and the skylight-washed blockwork walls. An offset on plan of only 10mm between flights, leaving clearance for 3mm diameter stainless steel tension cables at 50mm centres which form the staircase guardings, strung like a harp between springy laser-cut frames at ground floor level and a V-beam at roof level with an integral gutter between the polycarbonate rooflights. Stainless steel eyelets, forming guides

for these cables, and brackets for the cantilevered CHS handrails are fixed to the faces of the precast flights. The landings are finished with screed and grout, and they span between the stairwell walls, so there are no awkward downstand beams. Because the budget was tight and procurement was Design and Build, the blockwork is not fair-faced and the riser cupboards in the staircase do not, as intended, read as a simple, continuous black wall – there are too many vertical joints. But at least the key-clamp balustrade proposed by the contractor was rejected. The interiors of the deep-plan flats do not shy away from this hardcore >>

From far left Henri Matisse’s The Snail; Render to north-facing walls absorbs light while windows reflect colour; ‘Before’ photo with typical Broadway Market facades (right)

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AMIN TAHA ARCHITECTS

drawing on the genius loci, Taha’s addition, with its strong presence and subliminal refinements, actually helps to redefine it. The Ada Street frontage is gently cranked on plan and, more noticeably, in its section and elevation. ‘You can soften the mass by tilting the facade,’ says Taha. The vertical windows sink into and contrast with these soft, matt, battered walls, and rather than absorbing most of the light that hits them, they variously reflect the sky and the warm hues of neighbouring brickwork, giving the facade life and a quality of realism that verges on the surreal. Alternating positions of ventilators in the large apertures add further animation. The specified window manufacturer’s products are available with black frames, and Taha took the opportunity to match them with the finish to the render, although at one point he dabbled in a colourful ‘paint-pour’ treatment. Like the guardings behind the full-height opening windows, the gates at the main entrance to the flats and the adjacent cycle store door are bespoke, with black perforated metal sheet, which also forms the balustrade on the top landing of the staircase

Ada Street mixed development, London Amin Taha Architects

minimalism, eschewing skirtings, false ceilings and radiators. Ceilings are precast fair-faced hollowcore planks, carefully installed with canvas straps rather than chains to prevent damage. It would be difficult to install downlighters without a bodged conduit detail. Floor surfaces are polished, power-floated concrete with embedded underfloor heating pipes, which provide thermostatic control in each room, but the client insisted on a varnished finish which is inconsistent with the soffit treatment. Gypsum board wall linings have 10mm shadow gaps where they meet the floor and ceiling, and Taha also designed cabin-like kitchen units and fitted cupboards with concealed lighting in the recesses at their junctions with the ceilings. ‘We didn’t have much control

Section A-A

Guardings are strung like a harp between the staircase flights over detail,’ says director Richard Cheesman (who, interestingly, worked as the contractor’s novated architect while Taha remained ‘client side’), but although sanitary fittings are very basic, the interiors are nothing to be embarrassed about, and are enhanced by the way their windows frame external views. The project was on site for just nine months and although the contractor chose a share of the overall profits from the development in lieu of payment for preliminaries, overheads and profit, the cost of £850 per square metre is still remarkable. Taha’s commitment to the project helped to make this possible. ‘We had to draw everything up, if only to give us something to argue with, even if we ended up painfully losing time and money,’ he says, but you sense that he prefers this to the embarrassing alternative of bastardised conceptual design completed by others. Some astute decisions also helped. Apart 34 theaj.co.uk

from inclined timber framing to the battered walls, there are no columns: most of the vertical structure is load-bearing blockwork, and this expedited construction. Its insulated render has an additional layer of reinforcement at ground level and, although some would prefer the resonance of three-part render, no one could deny that it sounds and feels like what it is. ‘For us, it’s just sensible building – you have to spend £3,500 per square metre to get architecture with a capital “A”,’ says Taha, perhaps thinking of other projects in his office or Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI in Rome (AJ 19.11.09 and 30.09.10), which he worked on. But on the levels of design and technology, which are always at one in the best architecture, Ada Street succeeds precisely because of its extraordinary economy of means. ■ footnote 1 The south side of this waterway is actually part of the Regent’s Canal

Above CHS handrails cantilever from fixing points on precast flights either side of harp-string guarding 4

Legend 1. Entrance to flats 2. Ada Street 3. Andrews Road 4. A1 unit 5. Kitchen 6. WC 7. Bedroom 8. Ensuite 9. Bathroom 10. Rooflight 11. Fitted cupboard 0

500mm

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See working detail, p37

01.03.12

Ada Street mixed development, London Amin Taha Architects

Project data

Top Typical living/ kitchen/dining room with concrete floor and soffit, no skirtings and full-height opening window with

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perforated metal guarding Left The third-floor kitchen snuggles up against the battered external wall Above Ada Street elevation

start on site April 2010 completion January 2011 gross internal floor area 635m2 type of procurement Design and Build total cost ÂŁ540,000 (excluding OHPP taken as part of a financial agreement with client) cost per square metre ÂŁ850 architect Amin Taha Architects client Jack Burns structural engineer Webb Yates m&e consultant Syntegra Consulting quantity surveyor Cedarmill acoustics consultant RBA Acoustics contractor, project manager and cdm coordinator Cedarmill approved building inspector PG Surveyors cad software used Various estimated annual co2 emissions 52kg/m2

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Working detail

Ada Street mixed development, London Amin Taha Architects Wall-window-roof-floor detail Our client expressed an ambition for utility and unadorned domesticity. The practiceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s general strategy is to find a binding aesthetic form with a reduced material palette. The detail illustrates the extension of this logic through the use of fewer, yet standard products to reduce construction junction types, associated specialist trades, their time on site and associated costs. Externally, the Dryvit insulated render system, certified to 24 degrees from the horizontal, is used to perform a number of roles, avoiding the need for copings, sills, external gutters and drains. First, it was used to weather external walls and the upper pitched roof, and around window openings to form reveals, returning to an integral sloping sill. At roof level the system alone forms the parapet and coping, terminating against the roof coverings. Finally, the integral DPC at the base avoids an overlap of trades when sealing the building. Together with Velfacâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s glazing and Guaranteed Asphaltâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inverted flat roof, the external envelope is reduced to three products and trades, contributing to the coherence of the form. This reduction is followed through internally, where precast concrete planks are left as exposed soffits, and floors are power-floated concrete. This standard floor build-up was engineered to meet acoustic performance requirements without the need for suspended plasterboard ceilings or raised floors. The resultant savings permit the use of underfloor heating and 5 amp lighting circuits throughout, allowing better room layout flexibility, without radiators or pendants determining furniture arrangements. Richard Cheesman, director, Amin Taha Architects 01.03.12

Legend

1. Underfloor heating 2. Isorubber Base acoustic resilient layer 3. Hollowcore RC plank with fair faced soffit 4. Concrete topping 5. Rigid insulation 6. Power-floated screed 7. Sealant on closed cell backer rod 8. Polyurethane expanding foam insulation 9. Galvanised fixing lug 10. Shadow gap bead 11. Moisture resistant MDF sill with eggshell finish 12. Dryvit Outsulation insulated render 13. Breather membrane 14. EPS insulation 15. Dryvit Outsulation rail system 16. Rendered sloping sill with Dryvit Dryflex base coat 17. Reinforcing mesh 18. PPC pressed metal flashing to match window frame 19. Velfac 200 window. PPC finish to outer frame. Factory applied paint finish to timber inner frame 20. Raking timber stud 21. Insulated render 22. Roller blind reveal 23. Metal bead 24. Skimmed plasterboard 25. Regulating asphalt 26. Two-coat mastic asphalt 27. Polyester fleece isolating membrane 28. Filter membrane 29. Stone gravel ballast 30. Pressed metal flashing 31. Two-coat asphalt skirting 32. Parapet render on shaped EPS insulation 33. Dryvit Outsulation rail system T spline 34. Dense blockwork 35. OSB

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Building study

Cabin fever

David Kohn’s boat hotel for Living Architecture is pure whimsy, writes Felix Mara. Photography by Charles Hosea

‘L

iving Architecture is a social enterprise dedicated to the promotion and enjoyment of world-class modern architecture.’ That’s what Living Architecture’s website says. Sounds great. And creative director Alain de Botton’s proposed method of promoting modern architecture, which involves renting out specially commissioned buildings for short, reasonably priced, breaks, seems very noble. But are all these buildings world-class modern architecture? Peter Zumthor’s Secular Retreat, scheduled to open at the end of the year, promises to be a cracker,

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but most of the completed buildings are either neo-vernaculars or follies. David Kohn Architects’ A Room for London, designed in collaboration with the artist Fiona Banner and opened in January, falls into the second category. Living Architecture, who collaborated with the arts organisation Artangel on the project, boasts of ‘exceptional contemporary architecture in unusual settings’. Seemingly washed up atop a post-diluvian Queen Elizabeth Hall, a concert hall in the Southbank Centre complex, Kohn’s folly certainly has the unusual setting. He says: ‘Living Architecture’s

agenda is to provide an experience of architecture that isn’t going to an exhibition, looking at a magazine or seeing a fragment of it, but actually to experience it – to live in it for a night. The brief was to make a room that was an invitation to be removed from the city and be contemplative.’ As required by the brief, the refuge was fabricated off-site, in three sections, which were craned in and assembled on the roof, where it will remain until the end of the year before being dismantled and either reassembled elsewhere or recycled. Given this strategy and site, Kohn and Banner set about dreaming up a narrative surrounding the room’s provenance, and hit on the idea of a boat which had sailed down the river and, after a flood, been washed up on an asphalt beach. And so it sits, a very nice pseudo-boat as pseudo-boats go, or rather don’t go. A temporary lift hoists guests up to the roof and they enter the boat at its lower level, passing through a lobby and a passage between a shower room and a WC, then between a kitchen and library into the sleeping and living accommodation, with >>

01.03.12

A Room for London, London David Kohn Architects with Fiona Banner

views of the Thames and the London skyline on three sides. A ladder leads up to a larger octagonal library, opening onto the upper level decks. ‘We definitely didn’t want it to feel like a modern interior,’ says Kohn, ignoring the brief and Living Architecture’s manifesto. ‘In some ways it’s contemporary and in some ways old.’ Steampunk, you might say. But it would be rash to dismiss A Room for London as purely mimetic. You could level similar criticisms at examples of more contemporary-looking architecture which are inspired by the imagery, rather than the performance, of shipbuilding or yachts. What’s distinctive about much of Kohn’s work is its qualities of steadfast originality and abstraction, and this comes across in the boat’s simple, stylised, toy-like form. The boat is listing under the weight of its literary and artistic cargo, arguably Banner’s main contribution to the venture. The

Legend 1. External lobby 2. Hallway 3. Kitchen / dining 4. Bedroom 5. Seating area 6. Library 7. Front deck 8. Rooflight 9. Rear deck 10. Hatch to floor below 11. Desk 12. WC 13. Shower 14. Kitchen cupboard 15. Drop-down ladder above

DAVID KOHN ARCHITECTS

notion of a ship led to musings about Joseph Conrad, whose novel Heart of Darkness begins on the banks of the Thames and, as a continuation of this shaggy dog story, Kohn’s boat takes its name from the ‘Roi des Belges’ which Conrad captained on a voyage to the Congo. There’s plenty of onboard memorabilia surrounding this myth and King Leopold II of Belgium. ‘You can read as much history as you like into it,’ says Kohn. Then there’s the whole John Soane element, which inspired Kohn’s sequential, layered planning. ‘Soane has a small-scale intensity, and there are lots of small spaces that give views on to much 40 theaj.co.uk

Section

Previous spread, from left The brief used the word ‘perched’ to describe the installation’s rooftop location; Guests proceed through a Russian doll-like sequence of spaces upon entering; The external cladding to the diminutive tugboat-like vessel is spruce ply Left The tower, octagonal library tower and hull, seen here, were craned in separately Opposite Internal joinery is stained birch ply and Douglas fir. Sound is absorbed by felt ceilings

Upper level plan David Kohn Architects _ 511 Highgate Studios, 53-79 Highgate Road, London NW5 1TL _ 020 7424 8596 Room For London _ Long Section_ 1:100@A4

See detail opposite

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14 3

David Kohn Architects _ 511 Highgate Studios, 53-79 Highgate Road, London NW5 1TL _ 020 7424 8596 _ Room For London _ Upper Level Plan _ 1:100 @A4

Lower level plan

01.03.12

Louvre detail (closed)

100m

Louvre detail (open)

larger ones, through oculi or heavily layered frames.’ This certainly chimes with Kohn’s intention to create a sense of being apart from the outside world. It feels pretty surreal up there – you’d go mad if you stayed too long. ‘The architecture is asking to be handled and worked,’ says Kohn, and this is completely in line with Living Architecture’s emphasis on experiencing buildings. The boat is crammed with accessories: beds with attached partitions which slide backwards and forwards to create different spatial and sleeping configurations, louvred windows behind folded shutters for crossventilation, mast-top wind turbines, a weather station and a log book, in which guests can record details such as tide levels and wind speeds. The coolest details on board belong to the standard ship windows, with radiused corners that help their frames resist breakage when the hull twists, which came in handy when it was craned onto the roof. This all says ‘boat’ and ‘Soane’ but, especially internally, it fails to cohere as 01.03.12

an appealing artistic whole; surprising, but not so unusual in an art-house project. There’s no chemistry in the combination of colours, finishes and textures. The stained birch plywood internal linings evoke Soanean vermillions, but like their marine-blue neighbours, they are about as appealing as stained plywood can be and the grey finish on the CHSs doesn’t help. As in some Design and Build projects, the high quality of execution and finishing just emphasises the lack of artistic vision and invention in the design, and this is most visible in the mast’s detail, or rather lack of detail. It’s hard to reconcile A Room for London with Living Architecture’s statement of objectives: ‘The history of architecture has always been capable of being shaped by a few great domestic buildings – Chiswick House, the Schröder House, the Villa Savoye [....] The houses hope in their own ways to be as innovative as the famous Californian Case Study houses of the 1950s and 1960s.’ This is a project preoccupied with fantasy. Next port of call, Disneyland! ■

Legend for lower-level window detail

1. 55mm thick Douglas fir frame, stained with Lifetime Dark Oak 2. Continuous embedded weather seal 3. 24mm Birch ply tri-fold shutter, stained with Rustin’s Red Mahogony and Osmo Polyx oil 4. 150mm ø CHS, painted grey RAL 7037 5. Position of shutter when open 6. Bespoke steel bar, painted grey RAL 7037, backed with 6mm birch ply 7. 18mm birch ply sill, stained with Rustin’s Ebony and Osmo Polyx oil 8. 24mm thick spruce ply stained with Lifetime Dark Oak and Osmo oil 9. 2mm aluminium sheet sill and upstand

Project data

design and concept David Kohn Architects in collaboration with Fiona Banner cost £150,000 project manager McLennan quantity surveyor Boyden Group structural engineer Price & Myers m&e consultant Max Fordham main contractor and fabricator Millimetre light fittings Manufactured by Izé to David Kohn Architects’ design lift design and supply Alimak Hek appliances Miele wind turbine mast Eclectic Energy

Technical study

WARDROBE

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Living the high life

Davy Smith’s Digby Road scheme provides an intelligent mix of homes – and the tallest living wall in Europe, writes Felix Mara. Photography by Lyndon Douglas

42 theaj.co.uk

ousing association design guides do not have a reputation for getting architects’ creative juices flowing. Guidance on internal layouts and detailed design are, to say the least, prescriptive. But when it came to the external design and massing of the Digby Road development in Homerton, east London, concept designer Davy Smith Architects had an opportunity to make a statement that expressed confidence in the type of high-density, high-rise living called 01.03.12

for by the brief, undaunted by the stigma it has carried in the past.

Site plan legend

1. Courtyard 2. Homework club 3. Concierge 4. Core 1 5. Core 2 6. Core 3 7. Core 4 8. Core 5 9. Cycle store 10. Refuse store 11. Plant and biomass 12. Store 13. Homerton station

01.03.12

Main picture Level 6 roofscape. Assembled ranks of modular terracotta cladding range from ochre to orange

Site, brief and layout Davy Smith Architects, who were also responsible for the planning submission, stacked up 97, mostly double-aspect, affordable and social rented flats, rising from 5 to 14 storeys in a V-shaped plan configuration, reaching a density of 1,458 habitable rooms per hectare (HRH), well over the 1,100 HRH in central London developments which is endorsed

by the London Plan. ‘It’s difficult to plan a triangular site,’ says director Peter Smith. ‘The planners wanted the triangle closed off, but this would have caused overlooking problems.’ Davy Smith has provided an intelligent mix of one, two, three and four bedroom flats. This mix includes duplex flats and family units at lower level, with 10 per cent suitable for disabled residents. The development is built over the Eurostar and HS1 tunnel, so there were restrictions on loadings. >>

key points

• 1,458 habitable rooms per hectare • Most flats dual-aspect • Windows in aluminium pods • Gradation of terracotta tile colours • Nearly all flats have balconies • Solid balcony guardings • Code for Sustainable Homes level 3

Digby Road development, London Davy Smith Architects

Legend

6 6 2

1. Core 1 2. Core 2 3. Core 3 4. Core 4 5. Core 5 6. Duplex

Fourth floor plan

6 AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk Search ‘digby’ for more drawings and data

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Section A-A

44 theaj.co.uk

A steel frame, though lighter, would have entailed acoustic, fire protection and detailed construction problems, so concrete was used instead. ‘The tower was on the limit,’ says Davy Smith architect Rachel James, ‘so it has steel stairs and no floor screeds’. Cladding Davy Smith’s concept for the rainscreen terracotta cladding gives the development a distinct identity. ‘Terracotta can look quite dull,’ says Smith. ‘We addressed this problem by using lighter tile colours in the courtyard.’ Davy Smith used three slightly different standard tile colours, ranging from ochre to orange, developed by testing various facade patterns on physical models. Although local patterns appear random, there are also pronounced gradations of colour, for example on the north elevation. What’s also unusual about the tiles is their vertical orientation, with three identical modules per floor, which coordinate with openings for windows and balconies. ‘We’re fed up with horizontal tiles,’ says Smith. ‘Vertical tiles are good for corners, but most of the angled tiles had to be bonded.’ It would, of course, have been nice if single tiles could have turned the corners. ‘Typical tiles are standard, but that was about as far as it went.’ Special perforated tiles neatly provide ventilation to habitable rooms but unfortunately the tile fixings, which have a silver finish, grin through the horizontal joints. All windows are framed by aluminium pods that help to form tidy connections with the EPDM waterproofing and the breather membrane. Windows looking on to the railway are double-glazed, as everywhere else, but have thicker glass to keep noise out. Nearly all the flats have balconies, with concrete floors, guardings and thermal isolators where they connect to the flat slabs. ‘People cover up glass balustrades with towels,’ says Smith. The guardings are also more than the 01.03.12

Cladding detail 17

DEFLECTION HEAD

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DEFLECTION HEAD

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Cladding legend

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200mm

1. Terracotta tile on aluminium cladding rails 2. MacFox ‘helping hand’ brackets supporting cladding rails fixed through neoprene pads and Pyroc cement board to Metsec frame 3. Sika EDPM to lap under breather membrane and behind window pod 4. Tyvek breather membrane 5. PPC aluminium window pod 6. PPC aluminium frame 7. Base of window pod includes weathered drainage sill and drip 8. Metsec base rail secured to slab by special support brackets with chemical anchors. 9. Gaps below base channel due to deflection filled as required 10. Cavity fire barrier 11. 10mm tolerance zone between slab and Pyroc board 12. Kingspan K15 Rainscreen board 13. MDF window board with mastic seal to window frame and plasterboard below 14. Soundbloc acoustic plasterboard 15. Floating floor 16. Movement joint with Rockwool corofil acoustic sealant 17. 8mm-thick horizontal Petrarch ‘Heather’ smooth finished cladding boards

minimum height of 1,100mm required by Part K, offering more protection and privacy. As required by the conditions of the planning award, all rainwater pipes are boxed in. Living wall As well as conserving energy with a biomass boiler and communal heating, Digby Road also wears its green heart on its sleeve with a 220m2 west-facing living wall, that inclines three degrees from the vertical and extends from the sixth floor roof terrace to the top of the tower. ‘The system comprises HDPE cellular cassettes that contain the growing medium, and thus enabled 24,500 plants to be propagated in the nursery and installed on the building fully established,’ says Jim Quinn, an associate at A&Q Partnership, which was appointed as construction architect responsible for detailed design. ‘The modules are secured to pressure treated softwood battens, fixed and sealed to an EPDM waterproofing membrane on plywood sheathing, supported by a lightweight metal frame.’ An integral irrigation system is electronically controlled to trickle feed the planting and a drainage channel at the base collects any run-off for recycling. There is also 350m2 of undulating sedum beds on the sixth floor terrace, which adds to the biodiversity mix. Conclusion Smith is critical of the interior specification and layout, which both >> 45

Digby Road development, London Davy Smith Architects

Living wall detail 11

Living wall legend DEFLECTION HEAD

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had to follow Network Housing Group design guidelines. ‘The idea of flexible, open-plan living doesn’t exist in housing associations.’ Kitchens have fluorescent light fittings that residents are not allowed to change, which, says Smith, ‘the people from Network Housing wouldn’t put in their own homes’. All flats meet Secured by Design standards, but this makes it very difficult for residents to negotiate the development’s 46 theaj.co.uk

0 200mm

restrictive lift programming and staircase door access design if they want to visit each other, which I learned the hard way when I was shown round the development by Network Housing Group’s project manager, Colin Sharratt. Nevertheless, the project team has done well to provide so many shallow, dual-aspect plans on this difficult site, although most of the architectural fun is reserved for the facade treatment. ■

1. ACO Deckline strip drain to collect run-off from green wall 2. Galvanised steel angle fixed through ply to aluminium cladding rails. Sika membrane EDPM dressed down to drain out over angle 3. Tyvek breather membrane dressed down and fixed to insulated cladding board with waterproof building tape 4. Insect mesh to base of cladding cavity 5. Tyvek breather membrane on 18mm thick Pyroc sheathing board 6. 500mm high x 250mm wide x 100mm deep Aldingbourne Nurseries HG1 green roof module 7. Aluminium cladding rails fixed with MacFox ‘helping hand’ brackets 8. Sika membrane EDPM waterproofing membrane bonded and sealed to18mm thick WBP exterior quality ply 9. 18mm-thick WBP exterior quality ply sheathing fixed to aluminium carrier rails 10. 2 layers 15mm Soundbloc acoustic plasterboard on 500g Visqueen polythene vapour barrier fixed to 100mm wide Metsec cold rolled galvanised steel frame 11. 60mm Kingspan K15 Rainscreen board

Project data

start on site September 2009 completion November 2011 internal floor area 7,944m2 procurement Design & Build total cost £21 million concept and planning architect Davy Smith Architects detailed design and construction architect A&Q Partnership client Network Housing Group structural engineer Manhire Associates m&e consultant Calford Seaden client’s agent, cost consultant and cdm coordinator Hunters living wall and green roofs Aldingbourne Nurseries (ANS Group) approved building inspector PG Surveyors main contractor Archer-Hoblin Community cad software used Vectorworks 2008 and SketchUp terracotta rainscreen NBK Ceramic cladding and aluminium window pods BR Hodgson tower entrance facade Ketley Staffordshire brown brindle bricks double-glazed aluminium windows and terrace doors AWS Turner Fain secured by design entrance doors JCK Joinery plant room and refuse store doors Sunray Engineering abseiling and mansafe systems for living wall and green roofs Steadfast (Anglia) petrarch cladding panels to balconies CEP Claddings estimated annual co2 emissions 3.39kg/m2 (including renewables) airtightness at 50pa average 6m3/h.m2 overall area-weighted u-values External walls 0.22; Floors 0.25; Openings 1.8; Roof 0.16 annual mains water consumption 38m3/occupant heating and hot water load 67kWh/m2/yr on site energy generation Communal heating system with biomass pellet boiler generates 100% energy for heat and water cycle store capacity 100 bikes car parking spaces per unit 0.1

01.03.12

Practice

As part of the government’s plan to simplify the planning system and drive growth, one area that has been overshadowed by the debate surrounding the National Planning Policy Framework is the separate proposal to extend permitted development rights to allow offices and other commercial properties to be converted into residences. Irrespective of legislative changes, the move is a timely reminder of the potential that redundant office space has to provide much-needed new housing. Child Graddon Lewis has published a report analysing the impact and opportunities of the government’s proposals, prepared with Nathaniel Lichfield & Partners, Robinson Low Francis, Ramboll, with the NHBC as advisory partner. Child Graddon Lewis has converted numerous office spaces to homes over the past 22 years. There have, however, been circumstances where these schemes have encountered barriers from local policy on the protection of employment space. Some local authorities, and in particular the City of London, are rightly worried about the loss of employment space and the quality of residential accommodation that comes from these conversions. There is also concern about the delivery of affordable housing, which as a consequence would be outside developers’ remits. Ultimately, it appears that the government will follow a ‘softer’ policy approach and include a presumption in favour of change of use, while allowing local authorities the opportunity to assess design, quality and delivery of affordable housing. Government figures suggest that changing disused commercial properties into residential could create as many as 22,000 new homes, although variations in location, building suitability and financial viability are likely to lower this number. The areas with the greatest opportunities are in established centres or residential environments, particularly around central London and the south-east. Regional town and city centres such as Bristol, Harrogate, Norwich and Southampton also provide opportunities, given their current under-supply of housing and projected increases in households. 01.03.12

An office upgrade costs around £1,400/m2, but an equivalent new-build could cost £2,200/m2

HANNA MELIN

Planning portal Using empty offices for homes makes sense – and the government knows it, says Arita Morris

But does the business case make sense? Average land values put residential land at over £1.8 million per hectare, commercial at around £700,000 and industrial fractionally lower at £600,000, acquiring land currently used for commercial or light industrial use is the cheaper option. These four cost scenarios illustrate the possibilities: • Upgrading an older commercial building to current standards and requirements • Converting to residential to existing regulations • Converting to residential to 2013 regulations • An equivalent new-build residential development. Office upgrades, unsurprisingly, are cheapest, at around £1,400 per square metre. A residential conversion to Part L 2010 would cost around £1,600, and to Part L 2013, £1,700. Then comes the biggest hike: an equivalent newbuild development would cost around £2,200. How such conversions will take place is dependent on several factors. Many urban centres have reached full capacity due to previous high-density residential development and mortgage rationing. Precise location is everything for post-completion saleability, ruling out a lot of current commercial buildings. Equally, family-sized homes are less likely to be accommodated. The results of the government’s consultation are still to be announced. Yet even while there are suggestions that a softer policy approach may be a preferred option, the presumption in favour of sustainable development outlined in the NPPF, should provide a useful starting point for developers and their advisors seeking to unlock vacant buildings. Arita Morris, associate director, Child Graddon Lewis. Download Departments to Apartments at www.cgluk.com 47

Culture

THERE’S SOMEPLACE LIKE HOME The RIBA’s exhibition is an entertaining and accessible retrospective which hopes to engage the public with 300 years of British housing, writes James Pallister 48 theaj.co.uk

01.03.12

room’s length. The display panels are rather handsome, painted black and shaped in the shorthand for home used by children and monopoly houses alike – the gable end. We start in the era of Jane Austen and the large townhouse, and move quickly through Georgian London to the Victorian period. A horizontal timeline acts as a datum guiding visitors through the show, reminding them of who was on the throne and who was at war with whom, keeping them abreast of the context of the drawings, photographs and advertisements which detail the latest in desirable residencies. The years are marked out by key themes. So after the 1848 revolutions in Europe pop up on the timeline, we’re soon into REFORM and the Morris and Pugin-inspired Arts and Crafts movement, and the introduction of a domestic language we can still see today. Then there’s Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City and we’ve approached the 20th century and COMFORT, marked by the 1930s relaxation of credit regulations and the more widespread marketing of mortgages. The influence of European

MIKE ALTHORPE

The marketing imagery of the mid 2000s seems especially vapid post-crash

Sometimes the most familiar stories are the best. The RIBA’s new exhibition, A Place to Call Home: Where We Live and Why, focuses on telling the story of everyday homes in Britain. It won’t hold many surprises for architects familiar with British housing history, but it’s a tale well told. The show sets out to explore ‘why our homes look the way they do, who they were built for and how they were sold to us’. It takes up the whole of the RIBA’s front gallery and has made the most of an awkwardly long, thin space by criss-crossing its eight boards across the 01.03.12

exhibition A Place to Call Home: Where We Live and Why, RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London W1, until 28 April 2012, free

future homes commission The deadline for submissions to the Future Homes Commission is 23 March www.behomewise.co.uk

Modernism shows in the post-war diagrams and photographs in EXPERIMENTATION. Ernö Goldfinger’s Balfron Tower and Denys Lasdun’s Keeling House mark the show the ambitious experimentation of Modernist schemes. That picture of Ronan Point’s collapse marks the earlier schemes’ damnation through association with the cheap, mass-produced versions, which, stripped of their predecessors’ human details, became a byword more for urban blight than the lofty ideals of Modernism. ASPIRATION tackles the early 1980s and the peeling back of the state. Margaret Thatcher is pictured with a family who have bought their own council house, and the austere language of thrift associated with the mortgage advertisements of the first part of the 20th century gives way to aspirational fluff featuring laughing couples and champagne flutes. Byker Wall and Brookside Close are the stars of this period, which segues nicely into URBANISM: the move back to the cities, Richard Rogers’ Urban Renaissance, riverside living and the gentrification of down-at-heel parts of towns – like Shedkm’s Chimney Pot Park in Manchester for Urban Splash, represented in model form along with Lasdun’s Keeling House and Goldfinger’s Rowlett Street. It’s recent history, but we’re sufficiently far away to look at it with some clarity, and it’s a strange experience. The marketing imagery of >> 49

Culture RIBA’s A Place to Call Home exhibition

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HUFTON + CROW

couples in coffee shops near their pristine flats of the mid 2000s, thin at the best of times, seems especially vapid post-crash. The exhibition closes with UNCERTAINTY. And how! We’re left with a few stats on the parlous state of housing – not enough of it and much of it too small or too expensive. Home ownership is at its lowest level since 1988, and there are 4.5 million people on social housing waiting lists. The exhibition ends by asking visitors to reflect on what they would like in their home, and to complete a survey on the pros and cons of their current abode. If this was the sum total of the RIBA’s contribution to the future of housing, it’d be a pretty sorry state of affairs: a competent, interesting story – and one pitched at the level to meet its stated aims of opening Portland Place up to the public – but not one which offers many answers. Thankfully it isn’t. This is the populist bit of the strategy: get people into the RIBA, get them thinking about the houses they live in, and hopefully raise their aspirations about what they demand from the housing market. If the awkward guest curatorship of Sarah Beeny – who has been allocated a few boards, helpfully decorated with a cut-out of her head in case visitors are in any doubt they are party to the musings of someone off-the-telly – is what it takes to get people to expect more from their houses, then so be it. Better, though, was last year’s RIBA report, The Case for Space, and the ‘Shoebox Homes’ headlines it generated. Among the report’s key findings was that the average new UK house was significantly smaller than European neighbours, and that almost a third of people surveyed would not consider buying a home built in the last 10 years. Raising expectations won’t be enough though. And this is where the research and propositional part of the RIBA’s plan comes in, in the form of the Future Homes Commission. Due to report in the autumn, chair John Banham stated at its launch that, ‘Crucially, we won’t just be analysing the problems of the past. We want to look to the future.’ He’s calling for all interested parties to join in the submission of evidence on how we can improve housing in this country. You should let him know your suggestions; all your gripes, mad proposals or constructive criticism. It’s a great opportunity for architects to show their value to the public.

RIBA LIBRARY & PHOTOGRAPHS COLLECTION

Almost a third of people would not buy a home built in the last 10 years

01.03.12

MIkE AlThoRpE

RIBA lIBRARY & phoToGRAphS CollECTIoN

150 years of housing types Left Mansion Block by John James Stevenson and AJ Adams Bottom left Waterside Apartments by Careyjones Chapmantolcher Bottom middle Courtyard and corner shop, Corby New Town, Corby Development Corporation Architects Department Right Balfron Tower highrise by Ernรถ Goldfinger Below Installation shot of the RIBA exhibition

Culture Cohousing in Britain

in cohousing we trust Britain now has a new, low-cost, community-centric development model, writes Stephen Hill ‘Warning: This book may harm your mental health.’ Not that it is anything other than highly readable, full of understated common sense and well mannered in its advocacy of cohousing. It’s just that reading it brings with it the crushing realisation of the inadequacies and inequities of current housing markets. There is nothing in planning and housing policy and practice that can change the fact that every new home we plan is already obsolete – socially, economically and environmentally – before we even start to design it. Cohousing is already well established in Scandinavia, Germany and the US, but is only just taking off in the UK. It involves a group of people setting up a trust and acting as both client and developer, to build property that can be sold at both market and well-below market rates. Guest editor Martin Field acknowledges that Cohousing in Britain is set in the current political context and amid concerns about ‘how non-egalitarian and divisive the UK has become in its mainstream approaches to meeting social concerns’. He does not need to indulge the politics; the experience and stories of cohousing speak for themselves. While the rest of the housing industry tries to do as little different as possible, cohousing groups, and community land trusts and co-operatives, are the only housing producers actively designing for the future. They are working on how to live in a time with fewer natural resources, less energy, less land for food, less help for age and infirmity, and more people. Their experience shows us that sustainability codes and fancy kit are irrelevant unless they can also relate to people’s lived experience and behaviour. The LILAC project, now being built in Leeds, does what it says on the tin: Low Impact Living… (permanently) Affordable (housing)… Community. But go back to a survivor from the 1970s heyday of co-ops, the Sanford Co-op in south London, who recently used their major repairs fund, prudently accumulated over a generation, to leverage government grants for renewable energy kit. Knowing this was not enough, all the residents also signed up to reducing their collective CO2 emissions by 60 per cent, growing food 52 theaj.co.uk

book Cohousing in Britain: A Diggers and Dreamers Review, Eds Sarah Bunker, Chris Coates, Martin Field and Jonathan How 164pp, Diggers and Dreamers Publications, 2011 footnote 1 ‘Whatever Happened to our Streets’, Stephen Hill, 2009

on site and increasing walking and cycling: something we will all have to do, and cannot do efficiently or cost-effectively on our own. But talk to any mainstream housing producer about co-ops or community land trusts, and they will roll their eyes and talk condescendingly of time-consuming, costly, risky projects and difficult people, meaning: ‘This doesn’t fit our method of production and we don’t like communities with an agenda of their own’. That is a problem for cohousing that is uniquely British, unlike European governments which have been supporting cohousing for over 30 years as a highly successful housing solution for building stable communities and the demographic challenge of aging. The cohousing projects in this book remind us of another important lesson that we mostly forget: it’s the space between buildings that creates the unique character of a place and provides much of the social glue for the people living there. Wise architects like Richard MacCormac have been saying this for years. Eric Lyons and Ivor Cunningham made the quality and management of shared space the dominant design principle for SPAN housing in the 1950s and 60s: housing now much loved and lived in by architects. Yet unpublished research on housing design quality by CABE1 in its wind-down phase concluded that housebuilders and their designers had no idea about what the space between buildings was for. It was treated as an expensive but essentially inconvenient medium for retailing residential floor space. What a profligate waste of a hugely valuable and essential natural resource. Meanwhile, mainstream housebuilders are still struggling with the illiterate economic argument that people need persuading sustainable homes will cost ‘more than’… well ‘more than’ what exactly? More than an obsolete, unsustainable home? More than an already unaffordable product, making sustainability a privilege for the better off? More than the price of a speculative commodity that we happily pay more for if it’s near to a good school, or if its price went up by two per cent last month… after all, that must be a ‘good thing’? At the opening of the RIBA’s A Place to Call Home exhibition last month, heritage minister John Penrose said that his hope for the RIBA’s Future Homes Commission was that it could answer two questions. First, how has the way we live changed over the last 30 years? Second, how will we live together in the future, as a society? That is just the question that the contributors of Cohousing in Britain are trying to answer. We can’t know what that future will look like. The commission will need to ask new and better questions of the profession if it is not to repeat previous attempts to champion better housing design, which tickled the sensibilities of designers and enraged housebuilders, achieving little: completely predictably. 01.03.12

This book is not a compendium of answers, but it does show us what that adaptability and resilience might have to look like. RIBA president Angela Brady, in her enthusiastic preface to the book, calls cohousing ‘so utopian’. That is wrong. Cohousing, community land trusts and co-operatives are working out how to live in a necessary future of greater competition for finite resources. It is the rest of us who are stuck in an utopia of unlimited bounty that no longer exists. It never did. Stephen Hill is an architect and director of C20 futureplanners

Below Shared community spaces at the Riem cohousing development, Munich

A new show in Manchester documents the ones that got away, writes James Pallister

When Michael Heseltine opened Ringway 1, protestors famously hung banners out their windows proclaiming, ‘Get me out of this Hell Hole!’, and one group drove a van the wrong way down the new West Cross Route between North Kensington and Shepherd’s Bush, which later became known as the Westway. Ringway 1 was never completed, and the huge demolition of parts of central London – and the addition of enormous elevated freeway-style motorways as part of the proposed ‘London Motorway Box’ – was avoided. A similar fate met Manchester’s proposed Helipad network, whose plans were scuppered following the 1970s oil crisis. A landing site (behind Piccadilly Station, if you’re interested) was demarcated to make sure Manchester didn’t miss out on the then-predicted boom in intercity helicopter transport. Other helipad sites across the city, in Castlefield, Piccadilly Gardens and next to Strangeways prison, were considered. Like London’s GLC, the council also had plans for radial motorways which would have wiped out large parts of the Victorian city, but met with similar difficulties of land ownership. Visitors to Manchester’s CUBE Gallery – still going strong despite fears of closure – can see all these finely worked-out plans in a new exhibition, Infra_MANC. It celebrates Mancunian infrastructure that was never quite realised, as well as some which was. Curators Martin Dodge and Richard Brook have cast light on some little-known built projects from less optimistic times, for example six miles of secret tunnels under Manchester’s Chinatown, built to protect the city’s vital telephone system against atomic bombs during the Cold War, but now closed to the public.

visit Infra_MANC, 24 February – 17 March, CUBE Gallery, 113-115 Portland Street, Manchester, M1

01.03.12

Ian Martin

a new age dawns with the advent of the Royal Institute for the Pop-uption of British architects for £25’. someone in Qatar will LoVe the sound of that, you watch.

monday. Reputation is important to me. I go out of my way to avoid the charge that I am ‘pandering to an artistic elite’, whatever that means. my latest ‘vibrant arts-based community’ – a theatre created from smart-matrix CGI, gossamised platinum and spun gold; 1,000 serviced apartments with armed, handsome security staff; a six-star hotel with funicular space shuttle; approximately 280,000m² of tax-notional office and retail cash waiver, and a nightclub called Loco Bunga – is located on a modest island in Russia, for example.

FRIday. Huge day for the Royal Institute for the Protection of British architects. Its ruling body on matters of moral destiny, the noble and most ancient Council of artful Contrivance and Brand Identity, has gathered to discuss a proposed change of name. RIPBa president molly Bismuth wants to replace the word ‘Protection’ with ‘Pop-uption’. of course opponents claim that pop-uption isn’t strictly speaking a word and, furthermore, would expose members of the institute to ridicule and sharp banter in the workplace, especially on building sites. ‘may I see some credentials please?’ ‘yes, here is my card. I am a member of the Royal Institute for the Pop-uption of British architects.’ ‘Please proceed, ha ha ha: pop-uption.’ The sniggering alone could fatally undermine the profession’s dignity. But ms Bismuth is adamant. ‘we are here today, gathered in our vestments of truth and honour, some in ceremonial hats and sparkling notions, to make the most momentous decision in our institute’s history. should we remain fossilised, with our heads up our past? or rather, should we grasp the new pop-up reality and look the future in the eye?’ Here she slaps a thigh, makes a ‘pop-up’ gesture and growls briefly. after lunch, those eligible members still awake file in solemnly to vote. It’s a tie: two-all. There’s a short debate, then agreement that the change of name shall be observed until the standing-down of the incumbent president. ‘Hail, the Royal Institute for the Pop-uption of British architects!’ cries ms Bismuth. ‘so say we all!’ answer the three remaining conscious members.

tuesday. Redesign Liverpool with an inflatable waterfront development. This will give maximum flexibility in the future as it can either be puffed up to look more menacing than its historic neighbours, or floated away by sulky corporate windbags. wednesday. Lunch with my old friend darcy Farquear’say, freelance architecture critic. I don’t think he’s ever been this scruffy or had stubble like that since the late 1980s. and for the first time I can remember there’s no Bauhau the dachshund. darcy and his quivering overdressed muse have been inseparable for years. alas now Bauhau’s riding a small dog popularity thermal thanks to tin tin and The Artist, darcy rarely sees him – despite ghosting his popular architecture column in the Creative on Sunday. ‘He’s never home these days. I blame that bitch of an agent. she’s his Plus one now for all the swish dos, he’s staying over at her place a Lot…’ darcy’s posture’s gone too. I ask him if he’d considered sabotaging Ground Zero, Bauhau’s weekly sideways canine look at the world of the built environment. If darcy started subtly changing Bauhau’s personality from yappy populist to gripey bastard… well, sooner or later he’d say something controversial and the liberal vigilantes of twitter would demand his sacking. ‘yes, I’m sick of this humiliation,’ says darcy with resolve. ‘From now on, I’m going to be a totally different dachshund.’

58 theaj.co.uk

hanna melin

tHuRsday. a brainstorming day. If I could just think of something clever to turn Battersea Power station into, some crazy geezer in sunglasses might pay me to do it. The trick is to keep things exciting yet vague. I’m going for ‘iconic destination where visitors can shop, browse, gaze, graze, booze and go up the chimneys on a thrilling sky walk

satuRday. Pop down the pub. sunday. Bauhau’s column in the Creative on Sunday is very bitter this week. ‘Hey, anybody here heard of wang shu? no? well, he’s just won the Pritzker Prize. Really? what’s tHat, you ask? yeah, welcome to the twilight world of architecture, where genuine talent is crushed and the merely fashionable is promoted and fawned over by witless giggling fannies…’ There are already over a thousand online comments, overwhelmingly positive. Poor darcy. new Bauhau’s a hit. 01.03.12

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