“Space in new homes:what residents think”

The report points out that UK new housing has very poor space standards, including low levels of storage, food preparation areas, sufficient space for furniture or space in which to socialise. Basically CABE point out that “there is mismatch between the space needed by residents for everyday activities, and the space provided by the market”.

Well there is no new news there but at least it is good to see what everyone has known for so long being bourne out by official research. The real question is what should everyone do about this problem? As is CABE’s remit, it will be lobbying all of the existing players to promote the value and social importance of space in the home and critically they will issue a recommendation to local authorities to introduce minimum space standards via their planning departments.

The battle will no doubt move to the question of what is the minimum, and how do you effectively measure it, and what are the measurements for affordability. In fact what is the space standard threshold that improves space provision yet still allows for profitable private development to continue.

We will no doubt see the emergence of new space standard conforming pattern books developed by local authorities in answering these questions, and informing their partnering developers of the type of space and design standards they are after. This will be no bad thing, but unless there is a closed feedback loop established which openly invites authentic end user engagement in establishing these pattern books, such space standard could just be a paper exercise which only serve to slow the delivery of new homes in the UK. More on ‘people pattern books’ to follow….

In particular he will talk about the role of Web 2.0,  in particular the potential to harness technologies behind virtual communities and social networking to enable and empower communities as the developers of their own homes and communites. Be2camp explores Web 2.0 in the built environment and is free to join.

http://be2camp.ning.com/page/be2camp-brum.

By its nature, speculative development distances the end user from the design process. In any other mass production industry, excluding real end user feedback prior to production would be considered commercial madness. But with housing, where demand outstrips supply and where securing planning permission and market value present major risks to the developer, end user feedback becomes less relevant than a conservative appraisal of ‘the market’ in abstract. Future residents of new developments therefore only engage after designs are basically fixed and planning is won. There is simply never an opportunity for the prospective householder to have a direct input on the overall design of their future home or their neighbourhood during design development stages.

In the UK however there is significant latent demand to build or develop your own home. According to research by mortgage lenders, 70% of homeowners think about building their homes at some stage. Self build annual completions only account for approximately 10% of new homes in the UK whilst self commissioned housing is a fairly common model in Europe (55% in Germany, 45% in France). The majority of prospective British self builders however never achieve their aspiration, perhaps put off by the complexity and length of the process, but more likely never presented with the opportunity of suitably located land upon which to develop their new home. So in the context of the UK housing crisis, why don’t local authorities tap into this latent demand, and properly enable people within their own communities to develop their own homes?

At Slider Studio we have long thought that this would be a good idea, and imagined a hybrid system combining the benefits of self build with the efficiencies of volume house building. Our team of architects and software developers set about developing a method for organising self build at volume scale. We call this method ‘enabled self procurement’ or ESP for short.

The basis of our proposal is that large public sector land banks would be split up by an ‘enabling developer’ into individual serviced housing plots, and sold off with planning permission attached to each plot. An enabling developer would co-ordinate the whole development, and would construct the roads, services and public realm, but also build out some houses as case study examples showing people exactly how to do it. The planning permission secured on each plot would be subject to a strict urban design code which controlled the overall massing, the type and tenure of housing and car parking arrangments. The permission would also reference an approved pattern book of home types suitable for that plot. The pattern book house types would be jointly developed by the enabling developer in partnership with the local authority and ‘early adopter’ residents whose role I will explain shortly. In addition the enabling developer would prepare and commoditise all other necessary design, contracts and professional know-how needed to get housing built, and could sign up the local supply chain of small builders to offer construction services to the emerging community, thus promoting local skills and economic regeneration in the area.

To help us further understand the ESP model, we developed and tested a 3D simulation, based on our ‘YouCanPlan’ gaming engine, funded by UrbanBuzz and working with a range of industry professionals and academics to fully map out the process. The purpose of the simulation was to illustrate what the design outcomes in an ESP development might actually look like. We ran a competition to find pattern book house designs which would allow the enabled self builder to customise and build their own homes and we selected 10 designs to form a ‘proof of concept pattern book’ for our simulations. The simulations were then run online and open to the public to participate in. Participants could search the community for a plot they liked, selecting options from the online pattern book to assemble a customised house types on their individual plot. They could then publish their designs for viewing and comment by their prospective neighbours and the public at large.

The YouCanPlan simulation helped twofold; it helped people understand the home they were assembling on their plot and it helped peope visualise the type of neighbourhood emerging around them. Importantly it also suggested viable simulation tools for local planning officers, offering a degree of certainty about an ESP development, illustrating how it might turn out after everyone had developed their plot using the permitted house types and urban design codes. Whilst the simulation deployed the ten competition winning house designs of very different styles, the pattern book approach could also be very prescriptive, ensuring a tighter aesthetic cohesion to whole the development, perhaps reflecting the local context, local planning policy, and views of local neighbours.

A pattern book coupled with a design code is not so different an approach from some European models, and before planning law existed, much of Georgian London was built out by many smaller developers in this way. The important point is that for each ESP development, the agreed pattern book and design code is the key to capturing affordable design knowledge and removing the hassle from the process for the non-professional. Over time, popular house types would emerge as being cost effective and favoured by end users, evolving regionally to suit different needs and markets. But unlike pattern books evolved by space pinching volume house builders, an ESP pattern book, sponsored by the public sector for use on public sector land, could actually be open sourced, shared nationally, honed through continuous feedback from people who have both built and lived in the homes. Bad, impractical, spatially inadequate, underperforming or unnecessary design would thus be removed over time. Architects and system suppliers could be paid to contribute to this ever evolving people’s pattern book, updating and maintaining designs, as well as delivering construction management services on the ground on behalf of the enabling developer.

So how do we envisage the growth of a community over time?

Any ESP development can be broken down into three stages. In the first stage ‘early adopter’ households are able to take an option to purchase a plot of a specified size and orientation, according to their budget. The early adopters are in effect tied in partnership with enabling developer and local authority, working together to agree appropriate design codes and pattern books. The second stage starts after planning is granted and the early adopters can then complete the sale of their specified plots at a reduced market price to reward their risk of participating in the first stage. During this second stage new parties also join, paying a bit more for their serviced plot to reflect its raised value with planning secured, but still saving money on the market price by joining at the build stage and enjoying the increased choice offered via the agreed pattern book. Together this growing community has increased capacity to co-ordinate contracts with local builders, approved and trained by the enabling developer, to assist them in the assembly and fit out of their new homes. A few homes are actually completed by the enabling developer, and sold as shells to people to customise internally, and a few are completed fully in the usual manner and sold at market prices, recognising that not everyone has the time or energy to get involved in development. The final stage, when the construction is fully complete, is when the resultant community begins to mature, cashing in on the social capital built up through the ESP process. When people finally need to move away, they would be able to sell back to the enabling developer. In fact we believe there are a number of emerging financial and legal models, including the community land trust model, for which ESP offers attractive benefits.

But in whatever legal framework ESP is deployed, the enabling developer always reduces his market risk because he has partnered with a significant sample of the local market, and has already sold options on serviced plots – we imagine up to 20%. He also reduces planning risk because the local community and planning officers are openly consulted from the outset, and the application is backed by the early adopters who want to develop and live in the community, and these local people would be seated right behind the enabling developer in any contentious planning committee meeting!

So if the UK needs more new homes of better quality, set in neighbourhoods where we all want to live, surely the most direct way is to get the communities to develop them for themselves? Local authorities should be encouraged to team up with enabling developers to create favourable conditions to support mirco and small scale development opportunities for people who want to live in the resultant homes. In other words local authorities should begin to create development opportunity for all and only then will we get the type of housing we all deserve.

We received votes from over 500 UrbanBuzz members. The results will be announced on 27th of February which will coincide with a featuren in the Architect’s Journal.

You can link to the gallery from the UrbanBuzz home page.
Please visit www.urbanbuzz.org, join the community if you have not already done so, view the gallery and vote for your five favourites.

We are looking to build the ten winning pattern book designs into the Youcanplan software as part of the on line pattern book. The winning schemes will thus form the architecture of an exciting online ‘enabled self procured show village’ to be populated by members of the house hunting community this summer.

We then hope to use this illustration as evidence of what is possible, and of the public interest in the idea, in our continuing search for a real ESP pilot project

Ian Abley’s Summary Code for Type Approved Homes – click here to download PDF

The definition of “Dwelling Type” in the Code for Sustainable Homes appears to frustrate housing type development as house builders have sensibly understood them. Namely, that “types” are abstract but scaleable house and flat models that can be situated on any site, within obvious technical parameters. The CSH “Dwelling Type” is not sufficiently typological. This seems to frustrate a pattern book approach to planning. To make the CSH more of a Code for Type Approved Homes it is necessary to separate the 9 Code categories into sub-sets of the 34 issues that:

• can be generalised in the technical design of non-site specific house or flat types – 13 issues

• contractors will need to managerially control when the homes are to be built – 3 issues

• show how the typological designs must be formally and spatially situated on any plot of land – 7 issues

• can only be assessed when the topology of the specific site and the demands of the planning system are clear – 11 issues

The sub-set of topological issues must be minimised if designs are to be worked out and prototyped. The other three sub-sets of issues, or just over two thirds of the Code in typological, managerial, and territorial issues, may be pushed as far as commercially achievable by individual house builders before sites are developed. Out of the 104 credits to be worked with by designers that gives the following sub-sets:

• Typological issues – 45 credits, highly subject to the development of SAP 2009

• Managerial issues – 6 credits

• Territorial issues – 13 credits

• Topological issues – 40 credits, including all credits in the materials category requiring use of the Green Guide

The issue is when design can happen, and how few designs are needed to produce the widest range of developable solutions. It is possible to consider the Code as a question of meeting the Local Authority Building Control system of National Type Approvals Certification (LANTAC), giving economies of scale to house builders. This has to be done making assumptions about solar orientation in the Standard Assessment Procedure 2005, which is the basis of the current Building Regulations, and which will become a more important aspect of SAP 2009. The policy risk to be averted in the next four years is that SAP 2009 is allowed to undermine the need for a type approvals process.

Emphasis is then placed on improving the building envelope, in particular for better thermal and acoustic performance, and with the consequent need for more efficient building services. These will be integrated around the water based services, the mechanical ventilation, and the lighting systems, and will be physically separate from the air tightness of the building envelope. Since services need to be changed more rapidly than the building envelope, or the structure, the services should not be buried in inaccessible places, or run through construction tested for air tightness at the time of first fit-out. These are technical and organisational aspects capable of being prototyped and improved iteratively in a programme of research and development devoted to achieving a sequence of type approvals. The basic point being that over a 100 year life structural envelope, the kitchens, bathrooms, toilets and utility rooms, will all be upgraded on 10 to 15 year cycles as they wear out, become technologically obsolete, or fall from fashion.

The materials category may contain 24 of the 40 credits that are topological, but they are weighted low in importance in the CSH, as of October 2007. At the very maximum the materials category accounts for 7.2% of all the available points. There is then no need to be excessively concerned with the impact of local variations in the 13 point Life Cycle Assessment criteria that stand behind the Environmental Profiling ratings of the weighted Green Guide. No need either to worry too much about of the local uncertainties of “responsible sourcing”. These issues must be resolved when substitutable structural and architectural choices are made during planning applications. If they have to be determined too early in house and flat type development the misfortunes of the planning process or competitive construction product manufacturing can necessitate a complete re-design. Repeat fees for LCA practitioners undoubtedly, but the Green Guide is hardly an arena in which designers or construction managers can respond creatively to clients.

However that requires the weightings column to be fixed. If the materials category is allowed to be re-weighted in importance at any time in the future, the ability to design housing development typologically will be reduced. If weightings are fixed, then why have weightings? Why not just have scores out of 100 points, with a maximum of 4.5 points in the Green Guide as a mandatory entry level requirement, and an optional 2.7 points for the “responsible sourcing” of structural and architectural materials. If there were only points then, as defined by the Code, the housing design problem would be expressed as:

• Typological – 14.06 points at Code 1 and 49.86 points at Code 6 – with the need for SAP development to focus design

• Managerial – 3.13 points at Code 1 and 6.27 points at Code 6 – with more points at Code 1 for better managers

• Territorial – 15.84 points at Code 1 and 15.84 points at Code 6 – with the same design goals at all Code levels

• Topological – 3.33 points at Code 1 and 18.46 points at Code 6 – with most to gain in landscape and day lighting design

While CSH weightings remain unchanged, the greatest design advantage is in typological research and development. If weightings change, or other items are added to the 9 categories and 34 issues, a lot of design effort in pre-planning stages of development might be abortive. If the Code remains constant, then house builders may concentrate on the sophistication of their national house and flat types, in advance of planning approvals, with good building envelopes and integrated, upgradeable building services. They can also be maximising the point scoring abilities of site management, finding less bureaucratic ways to produce typologically designed housing, developing the planning pattern book as a site manual. House builders can do this largely unaffected by the commercial uncertainties of land acquisition deals, aesthetic preferences, and ongoing supply chain negotiation. That is true through to the higher Code levels up to 2016, by which time, if the CSH remains unrevised, some minimal topological issues will need to be better understood, such as day lighting and the importance of architectural fenestration.

That may suggest that house builders have to focus more on landscaping as ecological enhancement from Code level 4 onwards. A better landscape offers a maximum of 9.32 points, more than twice the top value of any combination in the Green Guide, and can be seen as more of a design opportunity and marketing advantage than limiting materials options consequent on protracted and not inexpensive construction Life Cycle Assessments. Also a landscape lasts, and matures. A complex LCA assessment on a “Dwelling Type” that within the short term may be changed unrecognisably, either by extension, adaptation, or the upgrade of kitchens, bathrooms, toilets, and utility rooms, seems like a weak investment of time and effort.

So the summary is this…

• Concentrate efforts on developing stronger, popular house and flat types that will assist with improving the construction management process, and which anticipate all declared planning policy issues to be formally and spatially addressed within and around the home.

• When the time comes expect to have to greatly improve the landscape on the specific sites that types are arranged into, to create a new and attractive local topography, since that is money well spent in market differentiation.

• Always keep structural and architectural options open on materials so that development programmes can respond to changes in the planning approvals process, to local demands and individual choices, and so that commercial competition can be maintained in the supply chain.

What is needed is a Code for Type Approved Homes. The Code for Sustainable Homes shows how that might be achieved. Forget “sustainable” and think “upgradeable” when designing repetitive but architecturally variable house and flat types for all sorts of new landscapes.

Andrew will work on a paper for publication in May 2008.

We have received a range of exciting entries, and we hope the technical jury will pass them all to the online voting gallery so that the UrbanBuzz community can decide which schemes they want to see built into Youcanplan. The voting gallery is still currently under construction, but we are confident that we can launch it for February 01 2008, and it will be open for a week.

Everyone in the online UrbanBuzz community gets to vote for 5 winners, and each winner will receive £1500 from the project coffers.

The voting gallery wil be accessed on the UrbanBuzz site. More details will be posted next week.