design-of-homes

Consider that Le Corbusier is one of the most famous architects of the 20th century so this was a surprise. Eventually, I did find what I was looking for by going to the library and visiting an architecture exhibition. The point of all this is that we assume everything is mostly online and so it's our first port of call for any research or knowledge gathering. But there is a huge amount of information and knowledge found in books that have never made it online. If you never go to the library, you simply won't realise what you're missing.

"In 1972 Leslie Martin and Lionel March published a cogent analysis of the key forms of urban development. They postulated that on any given site development can take three basic forms which they called 'pavilion','street' and 'patio'. These forms cover different proportions of the ground area.

If developed with buildings of the same height and depth the pavilion form would provide the lowest density and the patio form the highest. On the other hand, constructing a given amount of floorspace would need buildings of different height depending on which form they took. Figure 2.2 illustrates this principle [see: http://imgur.com/LmJ1tTg ]. It shows that the same amount of floorspace could be built on the same site as a fifteen-storey tower block, five-storey linear blocks or a three-storey perimeter block."

But take away the countryside location of these homes and could the tiny house work in an urban environment? I'm doubtful. The future for housing for most people on the planet (including the US) is in cities and urban environments. Can you live in a tiny home where you don't have long, uninterrupted views out of your windows? Or where you only have windows along one side of your dwelling (e.g. single-aspect apartments). Do you feel you have enough privacy when your apartment or house is joined with your neighbours' home?

Millions of people already live in homes like this and have to contend with these issues. The challenge for homebuilders and architects is to design housing to address these issues: homes that give us light, space, privacy, quiet and comfort in a noisy urban setting. Sadly, if I look at the new build housing going up in the UK I'd say architects and house builders are doing a pretty poor job of it. Are things better in the US in this regard?

Also, space can be 'modest' in size rather than micro or miniature and still be sustainable or amenable to high density. For example, London has it's own housing design guide that recommends new one bedroom apartments for two people to be a minimum of 50 square metres (538 square feet). That's still less than space standards in continental Europe but it's enough space to live comfortably even if it doesn't count as tiny by Western standards.

This is an excerpt from the last national housing space standard published in the UK in 1961 (the national space standards were scrapped in the 1980s by the Conservative government). This report was written over 60 years ago, and yet what is says is still relevant today (at least in the UK)

"…a good house or flat can never be be made out of premises which are too small...additional space is also an important long-term investment, for if a house or flat is large enough it can usually be brought up-to-date as it gets older; but if there is not enough space the improvements can be impossible, or at least unduly expensive. Homes are being built at the present time which not only are too small to provide adequately for family life but also are too small to hold the possessions in which so much of the new affluence is expressed...Such places cannot be expected to meet the needs of their occupiers today, still less hold their value in the long term."

(From a government report called Homes for Today and Tomorrow, published in the UK in 1961)

Size is relative. There are definitely cultural factors that influence what we consider small or large. For example, London has the London Housing Design guide which recommends a one bedroom flat for two people to be a minimum of 50 square metres. I don't think that’s palatial or excessive. It's still less than what many other European countries recommend (it’s 20% less than what Germany recommends which is 60 square metres for a one bed flat for two people [1])

In the article, it states that UK developer Pocket Living are building 38 square metre one-bed flats. 38 square metres is fine for one person, but not for two people in my opinion. These apartments may have high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows, but they are usually single-aspect and narrow in length (with the windows at the narrow end) in order to fit as many units into the available plot of land.

I'm not a fan of this micro apartment trend. Housing lasts for decades and future generations will have to take over and live in this micro-housing stock. Is this the housing legacy we should leave future generations?

[1] The Case for Space report (PDF) from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) published in September 2011: http://www.architecture.com/files/ribaholdings/policyandinte...

What's wrong with terraced housing? It is more suitable for high-density developments than detached or semi-detached housing. A mixed development of houses and flats brings in a variety of different households and people. This makes a place much more attractive to live in than a place with only one type of dwelling. Well-planned terraced housing doesn't have to lead to sprawl.

In the UK, families with growing children have an aversion to flat living. It may be irrational, but this attitude hasn't changed in decades and is unlikely to change in the future.

This is a well-known effect that architects have employed for centuries. In fact, you probably encounter it in many places without even thinking about it:

- when walking into a cinema auditorium, you walk through a low-ceiling entrance or corridor and then the auditorium space opens up in front of you. This effect is even more dramatic in some old theatres and opera houses

- the historic concept of contrasting spaces has been used in many different ways by changing the type of space or the size/scale of a space. For example, the narrow streets of a medieval town that suddenly and dramatically open up to a large market square.

The Swiss architect Le Corbusier designed a block of flats (apartments) called the Unité d'habitation (housing unit) in Marseille in France. It was completed in the 1950s and had a huge influence on the design of post-war housing across Europe (it generated much controversy too).

The duplex flats have a narrow width of just 3.66 metres. As you enter the flat, the first ceiling height is 2.26 metres (which Le Corbusier described as "intimate"). This leads into the double-height space of the living room (i.e. the second ceiling height). The windows in this double-height space are 15 square metres. Light floods in to the apartment in winter and summer and, according to Le Corbusier, can penetrate to a depth of 20 metres. The flats are fitted with stairs without risers to accentuate the sense of space.

Here are some pictures of an apartment: https://www.flickr.com/photos/88017382@N00/8562877755/ http://www.house42.com/2010/10/14/unite-dhabitation-duplex-a...

I live in the UK and I look at a country like Germany that has much stricter rental laws than the UK (including rent control policies) and I see a superior system. It seems that tenants in Germany enjoy much better security of tenure as well as protection against rapid or unfair rent rises. So it seems that rent controls can work.

What's partly happening in London is that the housing market is overun by buy-to-let landlords and "property investors". They are often chasing the same properties as first-time buyers, adding to the rise in house prices. If buy-to-let activity was curtailed (for example by removing certain tax advantages), it might dampen some of the pressure on house prices. (However, it's highly unlikely to be regulated more tightly given that many of our MPs have second or third properties).

Strong rental laws (including rent control) might actually help deter the worst type of property investor or buy-to-let owner: put off by the responsibility to comply with such laws. It doesn't mean that someone can't make money from property if that's want they want to pursue. But rent control laws send out an important message to wider society: that housing can't be treated as just a pure profit-making exercise. It has a social component that simply cannot be ignored.

Does it? What's happened in Chicago has many parallels with public housing projects in (some) European countries. There was a boom in large scale public housing developments in many European countries in the 1950s and 1960s. Many of these housing developments were large monolitic blocks. Some random examples:

- Droixhe in Liege, Belgium http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Vue_de_Droixhe.Jpg.

- The Aylesbury estate in London: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aylesbury_Estate_View.jpg.

- Chêne Pointu in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois https://www.flickr.com/photos/noobax/6188995903/

Many public housing developments were not stitched into the fabric of the city, but set apart from surrounding towns or city centres. The architects who built these blocks had the best of intentions (although some also had strong ideological views that influenced their designs). But today, we recognise that this style of overscaled, monolitic block design was a mistake. In the UK, the era of large scale mass public housing was largely over by the 1970s, but their effects linger on today in our attitudes to public housing and housing development.

Despite the run-down nature of many estates, strong social ties developed among residents. When estates are marked for regeneration, those ties are often broken as people are re-housed and dispersed. What does community even mean nowadays in cities when housing is snapped up by absentee investors and buy-to-let landlords with no interest in their neighbours or the neigbourhood?

A population can be educated and still pass controversial laws. Switzerland, through a referendum, voted in favour of banning the building of minarets a few years ago. It was a completely democratic decision by the populace (57% in favour of a ban). Mosques can still be built, just without minarets.

What surprised me as someone viewing this from abroad was how this could become a political issue worthy of a referendum. Even more surprising was some of the campaigning around the issue, particularly the menacing and controversial posters in favour of a ban [1]. The impression I was left with (and tell me if it's an unfair one) was that Switzerland, a thoroughly democratic country, had a rightwing and reactionary streak to it (one which it's perfectly entitled to have).

[1] http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/files/2010/11/ch-1.jpg

This might be convenient for you as a website owner, but this is not a good experience for the user (or a fast one). So there is something to be said for the all-in-one package that Wordpress provides.

Buy-to-let is rampant in the UK. Other European countries sensibly restrict it's growth or they enact strict tenancy laws to deter the worst type of buy-to-let landord (UK laws are weighted in favour of landlords). In the UK, we've lost any sense that housing has a social component.

I write a blog about housing in the UK and wrote about this topic five years ago. Depressingly, the situation is even worse today.

http://designofhomes.co.uk/016-damaging-effects-of-buy-to-le...

This was my thought too. This quote by architect Christopher Alexander from his book A Pattern Language" feels very relevant:

"…face-to-face rental, with the owners occupying the main structure is the one kind of rental relationship that is reasonably healthy. The landlord is actually there, so he is directly concerned with the well-being of the life around him and with the environment, unlike the absentee landlords who own property only for the money which it makes."

In the UK, we have huge numbers of buy-to-let landlords. They are the worst type of abstentee landlord. I see AirBnB operating in the same space.

People like having familiar neighbours, not neighbours who come and go contantly, and who have no commitment, concern or care for their neighbourhood; or for their immediate neighbours. Do these things matter to absentee landlords? For most of them (especially in the UK), absolutely not.

Housing has a social factor that cannot be ignored. In fact, it isn't ignored in countless countries who place restrictions on renting property for the very reasons above.

I'm guessing most of the static site generators probably fulfilled the needs of the programmer who wrote them (which is totally fine and kudos to them for releasing their work so others could benefit). However, static site generators are not what you'd call "user-friendly" (in my view) unless you're comfortable with the command line and like markdown. (Wordpress isn't particulalry user-friendly either, but more so than static site generators in my opinion.)

The real challenge for most cities is to build high-density housing where you might not have pleasant long views out of your window or lots of natural light. Higher-density housing doesn't mean high-rise, but it probably won't include building (many) detached homes. Apartments and terraced (row) houses are more suited to high-density developments.

Could you still live in a 200 square feet home if it was a single-aspect apartment in an apartment block? (Single aspect = windows along just one side of the apartment compared to a double-aspect apartment with windows at the front and back of the apartment). Or could you live in an equivalent tiny terraced house?

Just for comparison, London now has minimum space standards for new homes (but England and Wales do not). A one bedroom apartment for two people must be a minimum of 50 square metres (538 square feet). In Germany, the equivalent apartment is 60 square metres.

http://designofhomes.co.uk/images/046/space-standards-london...

To me these spaces are modest in size rather that palatial but space is relative and we all have different ideas of what tiny, small or large mean to us depending on where we live. New build homes in the UK tend to be the smallest in Europe and the quality of many new build homes is poor. Here's a comparison of the average size of new homes in the UK, Ireland, Netherlands and Denmark:

http://www.withoutspaceandlight.com/resources/img/space/comp...