designofhomes.co.uk
Palladio and Le Corbusier: what can we learn from them about housing?
http://www.designofhomes.co.uk/017-palladio-and-le-corbusier.html
The design of homes. A blog about housing design issues in the UK. Palladio and Le Corbusier: what can we learn from them about housing? Posted on 01 March 2009. There are two major architecture exhibitions on in London at the moment: Andrea Palladio: His life and Legacy. Until 13 April 2009) at the Royal Academy of Arts; and Le Corbusier: The Art of Architecture. Until 24 May 2009) at the Barbican Centre. What can we learn from the works of these two architects today, particularly in relation to housing?
designofhomes.co.uk
Sustainable suburbia
http://www.designofhomes.co.uk/021-sustainable-suburbia.html
The design of homes. A blog about housing design issues in the UK. Posted on 05 June 2010. Suburbia often gets a bad press. Writers love to satirise or mock it as bland and boring, or even worse, stifling and oppressive. More seriously, the charge against suburbia today is that it is environmentally unsustainable, at least in the car-centric incarnation that we’ve been building in Britain for the past few decades. Poster image from the London Transport Museum. Today, architects, planners and policymakers...
designofhomes.co.uk
Housing Manual 1949 (part one)
http://www.designofhomes.co.uk/025-housing-manual-1949-part-one.html
The design of homes. A blog about housing design issues in the UK. Housing Manual 1949 (part one). Posted on 26 December 2010. The 1949 manual addresses this very point:. In the manual of 1944 emphasis waslaid primarily on the provision of three-bedroom two-storey houses. Who were the authors of the 1949 manual? The manual has been prepared with the assistance of a sub-committee of the Central Housing Advisory Committee and a panel of architects appointed by the associations of local authorities. The typ...
designofhomes.co.uk
Tour Bois-le-Pretre: transformation of a housing block
http://www.designofhomes.co.uk/042-tour-bois-le-pretre.html
The design of homes. A blog about housing design issues in the UK. Tour Bois-le-Pretre: transformation of a housing block. Posted on 15 April 2012. Tour Bois-le-Pretre. Photo by Frédéric Druot. Tour Bois-le-Pretre was designed by the French architect Raymond Lopez and completed in the early 1960s. It is 50 metres high and has 16 storeys. The tower originally had 96 apartments but the recent renovation has added another four units. Then in 2005, Paris Habitat, the Paris Office for Public Housing, ran a co...
designofhomes.co.uk
Contemporary courtyard houses
http://www.designofhomes.co.uk/019-contemporary-courtyard-houses.html
The design of homes. A blog about housing design issues in the UK. Posted on 26 April 2009. Houses with courtyards have been around for centuries but they are not a common housing type in Britain. However, the use of internal courtyards for terraced homes in tight-fitting plots seems to be a increasingly common feature in new high-density house designs. There are some clear advantages to courtyards:. Private outdoor space not overlooked by neighbours. There are some disadvantages as well:. And British pa...
designofhomes.co.uk
TV review: The Secret Life of Buildings
http://www.designofhomes.co.uk/030-tv-review-secret-life-of-buildings.html
The design of homes. A blog about housing design issues in the UK. TV review: The Secret Life of Buildings. Posted on 9 August 2011. The Secret Life of Buildings. Is a three-part series on Channel 4 looking at how buildings affect our mood, our health, our comfort and wellbeing. Presented by Tom Dyckhoff, the architecture critic of The Times, episode one was shown on Monday 1 August 2011 and looked at the design of our homes. Here’s the episode description from Channel 4:. And what can we do about it?
designofhomes.co.uk
Housing Manual 1949 (part two)
http://www.designofhomes.co.uk/026-housing-manual-1949-part-two.html
The design of homes. A blog about housing design issues in the UK. Housing Manual 1949 (part two). Posted on 16 January 2011. I’ve recently been reading a book called An introduction to urban housing design: at home in the city. The Parker Morris Report was a step backward. Flats were barely mentioned. The planning of blocks and the provision of outdoor space was not discussedthe report effectively regarded flats as stacked-up houses. The manual begins by acknowledging that:. I think the jury is still ou...
designofhomes.co.uk
Why housing space standards matter
http://www.designofhomes.co.uk/046-why-housing-space-standards-matter.html
The design of homes. A blog about housing design issues in the UK. Why housing space standards matter. Posted on 31 March 2013. Unlike many Western European countries, England and Wales do not have minimum space standards for housing mandated by law. The exception is London where housing that receives any funding from Government must meet the minimum space standards set out in the London Housing Design Guide. Why do housing space standards matter? Just to be clear, we are not talking about palatial space...
designofhomes.co.uk
Housing is the lowest form of architecture
http://www.designofhomes.co.uk/044-housing-is-the-lowest-form-of-architecture.html
The design of homes. A blog about housing design issues in the UK. Housing is the lowest form of architecture. Posted on 24 June 2012. It’s been exactly five years since I started this blog, so you could say this is an anniversary post of sorts. I thought it might be interesting to revisit a question implied in my first blog post five years ago: does domestic or volume housing fall under the field of architecture? For more on this.). In contrast to mass housing (where the mass of us live), the individual...
designofhomes.co.uk
Could you live in a “super mini house”?
http://www.designofhomes.co.uk/022-could-you-live-in-a-mini-house.html
The design of homes. A blog about housing design issues in the UK. Could you live in a super mini house? Posted on 16 October 2010. The original web links in this article no longer exist. However, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Has a copy of the some of the original pages. The links in the post below have been updated to point to the Internet Archive copy. Could you live with another person in a home that measured just 15 square metres? In Japan: to design a super mini house . I confess I haven’t ...
