RIBA Research Symposium 2008

Session 1: Keynote

Welcome and introduction by Jack Pringle, RIBA Immediate Past President, Pringle Brandon

Live Comments By Zoe Berman

The importance of research as a link between student and practise -

the need to explore, experiment and think about how architects are designing the places we live.

Sadly, research is poorly funded but crucial part of development.

Housing faces great challenges but it "needs architects" to address issues of expanding cities,

how houses can be built better with social benefit; there has to be a research base behind this.

Alejandro Aravena, Elemental - Do Tank affiliated to the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and COPE Development and equality in architecure.

To design under a scarcity of means is "relevant",

design has to be precise and has "limits", to be irreducible.

Elemental, a 'Do Tank', see the city as a source of equality providing infrastructure, public pace and design quality.

The play-off of quantity v. quality housing units usually sees cheap match boxes being - fragile and poorly built.

Redefine what we mean by quality - not about simply making houses bigger but arriving at a set of conditions where housing is a social investement not a social expense. With less money available form government funding there is a tendency to move houses further out of cities, make them smaller and build poor quality.

Project - to rehouse 100 families within an existing favela with a poor quality of life but a network of oppertunites offered by the city. Singular houses impossible, row houses make it impossible to expand (through self construction) and over crowding. High-rise buildings generated the response from the families "if you give us high-rise blocks we will go on hunger strike". Conclusion - "we have a problem!"

The resolution was to provide 36 sqm houses, with individual access - the families involved throughout the design process to create housing untis that the inhabitants could further develop, 'self build' and add to the intial hosuing units - USS $ 7500 to build a hosue initially, which the inhabitants further developed themsleves allowing for an increase in value, as appose to the decreasing value of the stereotypical favela house that like a car only decreases in value.

Session 2: The issue of space

Mike Roys, BRE, "Housing Space Standards - A National Perspective"

Andrew Drury, HATC Ltd, "Space in the Home: What is Being Built, and Is the Customer Happy?"

Mike Roys: Reassessing our space needs - with a population increase and an average household today of 2.4 persons (make that 3!) and dramatic growth of single person households,how does this reflect in what we build? Lots of graphs and numbers...! But translate this out inot three dimensions and the figures reflect that we're building a lot of detached properties and a lot of flats. Yet there is the perceptionm that houses are getting smaller, with modern deatched properties built on smaller plots.

What we're building now - more flats than ever before, increase in density squeezing more into less space.

Andrew Drury: Two studies a) An exstensive study of what is being built in London and the South East? Measuring gross internal area, net internal and "Net Net" -(inbetween spaces.) Examples - 1 bed apartment in London 30 sqm, with 3 bed house out of London an average of 55 sqm habitable area.

b) Are people happy with what is being built?

56% of the 2,400 respondents in flats with 44% in houses/ bungalows. Number crunching ot eh data is on-going but in summary, areas of most dissatifaction came with lack of space for recycling bins, insuffienet space for children to play whilst being suoervised in kitchens, lack of storage space throughout, no real choice on funriture layouts and not enough space for furniture and decorative objects. kitchens, storgae and privacy bveing the main areas within the home where poeple felt dissatisfied.

Session 3: Case Studies

Stephen Proctor, Proctor and Matthews Architects

Walter Menteth: Research into urban housing solution. Consort Road providing housing for key workers, a project exploring how to use best efficiency of space within central lonodon. A brown field site with busy A road, railway via duct, accousitc and environemental disturbance with limited access to site. In response the internal spaces accousitcally, and thermally, buffered. Single glazed 5 storey high glazing buffers the apartments from the noise of nearby railway. 6.3 m span concrete frame with perimeter servicing, core and perimeter with movable screens between allowing for flexible open space that is reconfigurable. 6 sqm winter gardens located on the south side of the flats can deliver 12% extra seasonal floor space. 

Stephen Proctor: An approach to high density, low rise family houses.

Two floor family housing for inner city living - we in the UK are the only country in Europe where our space standards are going down whilst our construction costs are the highest. Generally, those countruies building at high density appear to see the need to build at density and whilat maintaining high space standards.

In Rochdale Proctor and Matthews engaged in exstensive consultation, engaging with local community to understand what kind of housing the people of Rochdale there want. The proposal saw large perimeter walls to allow for gardens and public relm space. Striving to future-proof the houses the design allowed so that houses can be split up and rearranged. A modern 'back-to-back' typologies creating 'two fronts', two houses in one, explored the evolution of architecture that is relevant to place and created a terraced house that had a locality and individual aesthetic.

Taking this thinking forward into the £60k House challenge, using offsite modular construction to achieve this model of housing on a suburban site and still deliver a high level of design and space. This developing of typolgies has been furthered by the practice through exstensive exploration of MMC (Modern Methods of Construction) possibilites.  

Questions

Session 4: Types of space

Fiona McLachlan, University of Edinburgh, "Cutting the Cloth"

Till: "a shameless plug for the book..." Standarisation is a fixed measure of space, but "space is beyond measure...(it should not be) reduced down to a hard measure" - like a dining room that can only be used as a dining room; the idea of fixed space in the home creates dedundant space. This creates typecast space, creating a cycle of "false logic" where we create spaces that are deemed successful according to how well they accomadates furniture and in so doing disregarding the inconsistency of living, the loose fit, periphery, change of needs. The need to build-in flexibility. The danger of housing defined by 'cash-flow analysis' is that buildings are inflexible, unsustainable.

"How we design space soft enough to take in different spatial uses" - further expanded upon by Till as 'hard space' = determinate space, whilst 'soft space' = indeterminate.

"They did the minimum and forgot the existence" Joan Villa

Soft use - vernacular, human, people design 'stuff' without architects, creating spaces and 'rooms' rather than predefined boxes designed to a fit furniture in it. Unfinished, raw, excess, slack space - low cost, you can finish it yourself. Creating slack space, as beautiful presented in Alexander schemes earlier in the day, leaving open space to be filled in "with the dexstruss of every day life". Generosity of space creates shared areas and space that can be used as a something else - a hallway come study come playroom, permeable circulation, make-it-your own, unmarked.

As architects of 'hard' design we extend our control over a building. In soft space we hand over the control to somebody else. Can we realease our tight grasp and be brave enough to provide a simple platform, which people can inhabited by those who live in them, rather than being fixed and preordanied in their use.

McLachlan: "What do we mean by design quality?"

A complex question - for developers it appeared to be a combination of internal design, external building site layout and urban design. But what about the people who actually live in the spaces? Why are developers deciding what good design is? Surely the interests of a developer are rooted in their wallets, not in social progression. Dangerous to use a developer as any kind of measure for what makes good architecture when their bias is indubitably defined by profit rather than any kind of good, progressive or intelligent architecture.

Session 5: Policy

Andrew Orgorzalek, PCKO Architects, "Current Practice: Opportunities, Inspirations and Constraints"

Dominic Church, CABE, "Space standards and densities: how policy tools and the market interact"

Bowie: Graphs and pie charts, floor heights and correlation to rent, "the higer the density the smaller the home gets". Space standards, conformity with legislation. Lots of data.

Orgorzalek: Lost text!

Church: The cost of creating spaces that are too small, cost in terms of lack of adaptabilty for sustainability, cost in terms of health (a hosue where therer is no space to eat together so meals must be eaten on your lap infront of the TV), where there isn't enough space for children to do homework etc., shortage of space leading to a lack of socail collusion - a wider set of costs of la ack of space.

We can't afford to build homes that are poor standard; the wider cost is far greater.

Different typologies, lateral thinking can get us around the difficulty of poor spacial standards. Berlin example, large courtyards and generous room sizes with ground floor for retail/workshop creating mixed use blocks and a range of flat size in the block of flats - 1 bedrooms to 4 bed apartments make the block non-prescriptive in who can live there. Cultural preference - social diversity, changing demographics reflected in a British housing market that is varied and diverse. Specific to England is the marketing of the home as how many rooms it has rather than what floor space there is, and creation of home intimately tied to the land with as a 'bundle'.

Session 6: Homes, housing, neighbourhoods and communities

Patrick Hammill, Levitt Bernstein Associates

Barnes: Place making research. Layout, content and density. Savills research shows that most important to people in terms of what they want are neghbourhood, external appearance, good schools, low mainentance whilst issues of room size and storage were low on the peoples list of 'wants'. What suprised me was that on this graph neighbourhoods were most importnat communtiy was second to least important, which I struggle to conflate - what does it mean to have one, without the other?

Evidence that busy neighbourhoods are highly valued, as are 'permiabilty' (choice of route and ability to move through the area). Importance of neighbourhood retail, ammenities that are inlcuded on the standard list for building developers - funeral parlour, surgery, residential care, town hall offices etc. The importnace of considering not just a flat/ house but the space that surrounds it.

In terms of value some of the highest value properties are located in the most densley populated - conventionally properiy developers think that low density (spacious) is most valuable but actaully the most valuable parts of London are the most populated - Kensington and Chelesea, popularity of southern 'uber towns' Oxford, Guildford, Cheltenham where people don't have to get in their cars to access the city.

Density/ intensity, permiability, mixed use = high value

Savills lists Oxford as the optimum city -  which for myself throws up flasing lights with regards to craftsmanship; Oxford was built with a phenominal quality of material, craftsmanship funded by patrons where personal financial gain was not the end goal but instead had a stong philanthropic backdrop and a desire to build for posterity over financail gain.

Questions

Plenary Session

Sian Berry, The Green Party

Steve Carr, English Partnerships

Richard Hill, Housing Corporation

Dickon Robinson, Building Futures