Written by:
John Jackson
Section Editor
Business News Wales
Children always seem to draw the same picture of a house, you may even have one on your fridge door right now.
It’s an image that includes the essentials, a front door usually in the middle with windows either side and windows above, topped off with a roof and maybe a chimney. The houses we buy when playing Monopoly have the same silhouette, and many of the houses people live or aspire to live in don’t deviate too far from this much accepted shape of a detached home.
Other than it being semi-detached, the home I was born and grew up in looked a lot like this. It’s vernacular was plain, but as it was built in the late 1950s it was a spacious house with a neat front garden, a big back garden and space to park off road. There was also a large grass verge opposite which became the unofficial playground for the children living along the street. Of course there was much less traffic, so although we were playing next to a road we felt safe, and we were always within shouting distance of our parents.
This space was of huge value, it meant as kids on a nice day we could run around, play games and socialise, while at the same time giving the grown-ups a welcome break from our excess energy. It allowed children of different ages to mix together, and although there would at times be disagreements amongst us, we would all look out for each other. I believe this space played a valuable role in helping us to develop our self-confidence and social skills.
All this happened on a well built and nicely planned council estate in the 1970s and is in stark contrast to many of the housing developments that have been built since. On modern developments seeing the rows of three story terraced town houses lined-up opposite each is a prime example of this contrast. Each house is little wider than two cars, and unsurprisingly each house has parking for two cars at the front, and often as not that’s it. No front gardens and houses facing onto a narrow street with no room for trees, visitor parking and nowhere immediate for children to play. This suggests a car door to front door way of life, where even the small back gardens get engulfed by the ubiquitous trampoline.
These houses, and the developments they are part of, seem lacking in intelligent design. They have vernaculars that nod toward a previous era of domestic architecture in order to meet the apparent desire for people to have a home that looks “traditional”. Yet ironically people living in traditional homes are busy calling in the builders to create highly contemporary rear extensions to provide themselves with the full open living experience. Could it be the case that people don’t really hanker for a traditional looking home, and instead due to the shortage of supply of new homes simply don’t have a choice?
The physical layouts of developments rarely pay sufficient attention as to how people will be able to enjoy living not just in their home but on the development itself. This will become an increasingly important consideration if people continue to spend more time working from home.
Environmental concerns are being taken seriously, and this will impact on where and how we live. With this in mind now seems to be the ideal time to embrace intelligent design to ensure we create a built environment that is fit for the future.
In practical terms this raises the question: How should intelligent design be applied in the built environment?
To help answer this question architect Chris Loyn of Loyn & Co Architects explains how design can be used to create healthy, sustainable living environments.
“The buildings we create must not be thought of as objects in isolation. Intelligent designs must recognise buildings exist in a context, in relation to their existing or intended setting, be this rural, sub-urban or urban. To perform well they must respond to their specific site, to be purpose designed for their particular place. This is most critical for the places we are expected to live in.
Tragically too many of the providers of new housing fail to consider this and scatter their standardised ranges of ‘anywhere’ boxes over the land with disregard to key design matters such as orientation, to take account of the elements – the path of the sun, the prevailing wind, the beautiful view, the relationship with neighbouring properties, the quality of the spaces between and a host of other factors. Good architecture is not just about the interior accommodation, it is equally about the external characteristics and how they both inter-relate with one another. The inside and the outside are two parts of the same whole.
How the house is designed to respond within its immediate and its wider environment will to a large extent mark its success or failure as a place of comfort in which to enjoy living.
As a starting point, understanding where you are designing is key to making the right decisions about material selection, construction detailing, the size and location of openings – windows, screens and doors – the amount of insulation, the airtightness and means of heating and cooling to control the thermal performance of the building envelope. It is also the basis of creating a functional high quality interior layout.
In this time of change, the quality of our housing needs to be reviewed and improved to create more sustainable, energy efficient and adaptable dwellings, not only in terms of new build schemes and refurbishments but also in the instances where existing buildings are being converted to residential use.
I truly believe we can achieve this and make better housing for residents to enjoy and turn into beautiful homes.”
The lockdown put how we live firmly under the spotlight, it has provided a real impetus for change to make homes more liveable. At the same time there is a real commitment to building homes that are carbon zero to protect our environment. There are an increasing number of examples where this is already happening, including here in Wales, at the Parc Eirin development and in Cambridge with the Marmalade Lane cohousing community development, and these help to illustrate what the future of housing could look like.
We may well be witnessing the beginning of a move away from homogeneous developments to ones that use intelligent design to create homes and living environments that function effectively to improve the wellbeing of residents.
