What is pattern book housing?

A few interested parties in our competition have asked us what we mean by ‘pattern book housing’.

For a detailed historical perspective, I would recommend visiting www.crowstep.co.uk, which is the website of architect and architectural historian Colin Davies. He has researched pattern book housing in detail, explaining it clearly on his site, and he has addressed its thorny relationship with the UK architectural profession in an essay ‘Professionalism and Pattern Books’ which you can download from the site.
AT ESP-sim we explain pattern books in the competition brief that you can also download when you register for the competition, but essentially our view is as follows:

Pattern book designs are not based on a specific site, but capture the necessary design information in order to allow others (usually individuals and builders) to adapt that design for a particular site. The basic pattern book design itself might capture the overall layout and aesthetics of the design, but it is usually backed up by technical production information that need to be purchased from the author or publisher of the design.

We think an approach using contemporary pattern book housing can offer a practical and sustainable solution to UK’s housing crisis, and presents an opportunity for good architects and designers to develop extremely well designed housing ‘products’ which are adaptable to different sites and housing markets across the UK, and which can be constructed in large numbers by individuals and their own builders in enabled self procured developments. We also think contemporary pattern book housing can be both sustainable and cost effective.

The Youcanplan Pattern Books competition is deliberately an ideas competition, so a degree of interpretation of the pattern book concept is invited. The results should help us develop our illustration of ESP and bring the pattern book debate further into the public domain.

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