Developing News

New company, new website, new blog

2008-01-29T10:21:00.000+00:00

It's been a while - but I'm hoping that for those of you who haven't trashed me from your RSS feeder, this will pop up as a little surprise. I've been busy - new house, new baby, and a new practice, HAT Projects, set up from our studio here in Essex and currently working on lots of fun stuff, including the feasibility study for a new art gallery in Hastings. All of which means a new blog, which can be found here, so I hope you'll all migrate over and have a look, and sign up to a new feed!

The other side of the Dongtan 'exemplar'

2007-07-02T12:08:00.000+01:00

I thought this was a good piece of true BBC reporting, exploring whether all is as rosy as it seems in the creation of the 'exemplar ecocity' at Dongtan. None of it surprises me - that it will probably become a "suburb for the rich", that it is being accompanied by potentially disastrous development of shipyards and power plants nearby. But I have been surprised that the building and development press have so far been so blinkered as to the reality of what modern China means for projects like this.

There is the kind of wishfulness (exemplified by much of what Norman Foster says) for the speed and decisiveness of a totalitarian government in making 'big things happen' - architects and developers appear to long for European systems to work so smoothly. But they seem willing to disregard the trophy nature of these projects; the lack of a strong environmental policy from China in any strategic way; the social consequences of mass relocation of people, moulding of land, creation of new 'utopias' with no context to serve political ends.

But while we criticise our government for token gestures in proclaiming tiny new 'ecotowns' on ex-MOD sites, or hailing a fifty-home development as a national showcase for sustainability, we should remember that the 500,000 homes of Dongtan is exactly the same tokenism relative to the scale of China's development over this decade. And at what cost?

Crap Calculator

2007-06-20T12:24:00.001+01:00

DEFRA have launched their new online carbon calculator, as David Miliband proudly announced on his blog. I'll give you the link in a second, but don't all rush - because this has got to be a prime example of how not to design a user-friendly online tool.

Think irritating flash popup that does that thing where it fills your entire screen. Then takes several minutes to load due to the volume of gratuitous animation. Then every time you fill in a question, takes ages to move onto the next one, and even more time when you finish a 'section'. And an html version that runs even more slowly, if that is possible.

When all you need is a series of simple questions in html, with almost no graphics, running on a nice fast server so that you don't get so irritated that you stop bothering half way through and never do find out quite how much you are damaging the environment. I applaud the idea behind a good online calculator (this one includes a postcode function), but guys - this is really not the way to do it, when there are plenty of other ones out there that are, well, just a whole lot easier to use.

The link is here, if you want to experience the full horror yourselves. Oh yes, and it has possibly the least memorable URL known to man, just to top it off...

UPDATE: Adrian suggests in the comments that the server is simply overwhelmed by too many hits. I can't really believe that so many excited Britons are logging onto this website as to 'overwhelm' it. FYI, I originally wrote this blog post in between waiting for it to load the next question. Several hours later, I still haven't been able to finish the questionnaire. Surely DEFRA could have managed to host this on a server that would cope with the attention...and that they haven't done so is just sheer incompetency on their part.

(And now I can't load the developers blog either, so they must really be having problems!)

On the way they are calculating carbon footprint, there seem (at the halfway point that I've managed to get to) to be some questions that are more aimed at encouraging behavioural change than contributing to the calculation. If you have already entered the amount of electricity you use each month, questions about how much you use your washing machine are pointless. And other calculators that are available are more effective, showing the amount of carbon each particular element is contributing to the whole rather than simply a sum total. But all these points pale into insignificance alongside the fact that in nearly eight hours I've not managed to actually work through the damn thing to the end.

Greening Suffolk

2007-06-15T11:06:00.000+01:00

A quick update from a project that I'm working on in my birth county of Suffolk - the new initiative Suffolk: Creating the Greenest County (skeleton website here that we launched a couple of weeks ago) which is starting to gather momentum. Not nearly as fluffy as it sounds, the project is bringing together lots of passionate and active people in the county to strategise some ambitious targets, and the actions needed to get there.

As part of this we're holding a conference in October that will spread the message wider to community leaders, business, and the local authorities, and start to get them all to consider what their organisations or communities can do to contribute to the bigger aims. It's very much going to be a hands-on event with a series of seminars on different themes that are all about stimulating discussion, creating learning opportunities and sharing experience from those who've already started to take action. But we're also talking high-level with keynote speeches that will address the 20-year scenario for Suffolk and the big debates over how the county needs to adapt.

I've started to nail down panel members for the seminars and have some really interesting people lined up but there are a few spaces left to fill: so I thought I might open it to you to see if you have any smart suggestions. I'm specifically looking for someone to contribute on post-occupancy of sustainably designed buildings and behavioural change of building users. In addition we're still developing the focus for seminars on transport (green travel plans and so forth) and waste minimisation. And any ideas for other interesting people would be gratefully received!

To reduce, or to adapt?

2007-06-01T16:51:00.000+01:00

The debate that Nigel Lawson has so effectively ignited by arguing that we should concentrate on adapting to climate change rather than stopping it, is an interesting one and exactly mirrors a (less polarised) conversation I had a few weeks ago with one of the leading City investors in low carbon technology. It is foolish to claim that Lawson doesn't have a point. Climate change is happening, and even if we do manage to turn the ocean liner around, the emissions that we have already produced will continue to have an effect for many years, and it will be decades, if not longer, before the effect of any cutbacks we make now will be felt. And that's without even getting into the possible effect of feedback loops. It is not enough to put our collective heads in the sand, hope that the government legislates for carbon cuts and that the problem will go away.

So like it or not, we have to concentrate on adapting to the effects of a warming climate. Strategies for our water resources (rainwater and aquifers), for sea level rises, for extreme weather events, for agriculture, for buildings - all of these need to respond to the reality of ongoing climatic change. How will we grow crops, what kind of seed stocks will we need, how can we keep our buildings cool in summer, where will our water come from if it doesn't rain for four months of the year? These are enormous, but also solvable, challenges. They are opportunities for those who are entrepreneurial enough, but also ask tough questions about the way we manage our land and lifestyles on both macro and micro scales.

But just because we need to adapt doesn't mean that we shouldn't also look to cut our energy consumption where at all possible. The two are sides of the same coin; we need to get smarter in both directions, if maintaining our quality of life, and our economy, is to be sustainable at all. We need to use less and make better use of what we have. Water provides a really clear example: we should be implementing low-water agriculture and buildings, at the same time as collecting rainwater more efficiently for distribution, and recycling the water that we do use. On the issue of carbon, we can't just adapt our way out of climate change that is reaching unheard of speed, with unknown consequences. We have to cut our emissions as well as finding ways to cope better with the implications of what we've already done to the environment.

The other aspect of this approach is that it reduces the pressure to 'prove' or 'disprove' climate science (although, to be frank, one might think that the debate should be over). Solar flares or whatever your chosen theory, the world is getting hotter and we have to adapt to this. Also, whether or not carbon emissions are the primary cause of the heating, they certainly aren't helping, so cutting back on them is undeniably a good idea. We can't do anything about solar flares, so let's tackle the bit we can. It's a bit like genetic causes for obesity: you're not sure if you have them, but even if you might do, that doesn't excuse your overeating.

Finding the way forward to both reduce and adapt sounds like a double whammy for policymakers that is hard to stomach. But it is the only answer to the predicament we find ourselves in; and actually, reducing our consumption is simply one part of adaptation, and vice versa. Your business is asked to cut emissions by 25%? You do this through adapting: your building to require less airconditioning or lighting; your processes to require less refrigeration or heating, despite changing temperatures outside. What is more, for the public to see both aspects being addressed may make measures that tackle each side of this equation easier to stomach. It answers the frequent comment that 'at least global warming means decent summers' by saying yes: enjoy them, but here's a low-energy air-con system that you can use when it gets too hot, and a way for you to avoid that hosepipe ban by being smarter about your water, or by not needing a hosepipe in the first place.

The message should be not that the world is ending, but that it's changing; and here are the ways that we can, and must, adapt to both the good and the bad side of that.

Gateway disarray

2007-05-25T09:35:00.000+01:00

Not only is the design bad (at the ‘Middlesbrough level of the Premiership – with some more akin to Watford, without, of course, the same fear of relegation’) despite the threat of Housing Corporation funding being withheld for badly designed schemes. But we should be building at twice the rate we are.

The National Audit Office has published a rather damning report which says that the government is no longer accurately counting the number of units being built, and criticises the DCLG for "having no cost strategy". Hang on a minute - how can it have no cost strategy at all? Apparently they lack "a single costed plan for the programme to join up local initiatives". Forgive me, but that seems to be a basic omission.

So it is business as usual in the marshlands of Essex and Kent - the government playing catch-up to the developers who are racing ahead on their own isolated patches, with a total lack of effective, strategic leadership, no matter what Judith Armitt may be trying to do (and I'm sure her intentions are the best.) There are signs of progress in the London areas where the LTGDC and other agencies seem to now be taking a firmer grip - Design for London flexing its muscles by pressuring Barratt to upgrade its design team quality, as a recent example. But beyond the M25 it is, sadly, another story at present.

RIP Sandy Wilson

2007-05-20T22:34:00.000+01:00

Colin St John Wilson, seminal professor at Cambridge architecture department (where I studies though not, of course, under him) and best known or infamous as the architect of the British Library, died last week. It is funny how the press fell over themselves to eulogise him although most of them were very dismissive of the BL when it opened. But the reminiscences of him were largely just - his wide scope of interests (including an extraordinary mid-century art collection), his belief in a humane, nuanced and warm architecture, his admiration of Alvar Aalto (which prompted many borrowed architectural motifs) and his work at Cambridge. Like myself, and indeed like a former assistant to Wilson and subsequent Cambridge professor Peter Carolin, he actually applied to Cambridge to read History and switched to architecture.

I most recently went to the new wing at Pallant House which houses his art collection in a building he designed in collaboration with MJ Long, his 'life' partner, and her firm Long & Kentish. It was a serene and noble building, responding to its setting in historic Chichester with grace but not condescension, and appropriately of its time, despite its Aalto references. He is an architect who will be sorely missed, even if much of the architectural world has learnt to appreciate his merits only on his passing.

Brown's eco-towns

2007-05-16T19:11:00.000+01:00

Talk about the five 'eco-towns' that Gordon Brown would like to propose has filled the trade press and had significant mainstream press coverage too. Common mis-perceptions have been that these are actually new towns (they aren't - they are existing development sites or areas that he would apply new 'green' rules to), and he has also attracted criticism (epitomised by Jonathan Glancey) that this is merely greenwash over the same old 'unsustainable' growth areas. Because Brown commissioned the Barker reviews of both housing supply and planning, and those reviews raised the hackles of people who, fundamentally, want to contain development and seem to believe it is impossible to build new housing developments that actually do have a sustainability of their own, sections of the commentators have already cast Brown as the bad guy who doesn't care - who wants to erase our green fields at any cost and carpet the land with Wimpey homes.

But it may be that actually he does mean it when he talks about sustainability. I'm loathe to judge either way before the detail comes out. It is true that many developments that completed recently have not epitomise sustainability - lacking shops, schools, local jobs. But that does not mean it isn't possible to do better - and indeed, that there may be projects in the current pipeline that will do better. It is notoriously difficult to phase the development of major employment opportunities and housing in tandem. Inevitably, for some time, there will be commuting one way or the other. And I do sometimes wonder how many of the critics have actually visited a representative spread of new housing developments. Sure, they aren't all pretty, but some are actually sensibly sited near town centres and services, and meet real needs for local housing.

And let's at least praise Brown for committing to some action, unlike the Tories who have yet to detail any concrete plans for implementing their new-found greenness and passion for new housing (for fear of upsetting their voters who are anti-development, I might suspect). Given that these 'new' towns will be built anyway, one way or another, isn't it better that he makes them conform to at least some green standards (renewable energy, sustainable drainage, higher building performance)?

We can't afford to be anti-development for the sake of it; and it is a fallacy to claim, like Glancey, that urban infill can provide the quality of life and housing, or the quantity, that will solve our housing problems. Reviving local economies needs housing nearby, and building the housing may actually precipitate people who live in it deciding to set up businesses locally, in the medium term. London can't and shouldn't provide all the jobs, if you are serious about sustainability; the rest of the country isn't just for leisure and holiday homes. So let's just give these new developments a chance - and the greener they are, the better.

School with no playground

2007-05-11T16:03:00.000+01:00

No, this is not about a failing inner-city school that has been found to have no outside space, but the most expensive new flagship school that is being designed not to have a playground. I thought this was quite an extraordinary story. The Foster-designed school in Cambridge will treat its pupils like employees so, it is believed, they will not require free time outside. What this says about our approach to workplaces is also somewhat weird. Most workers leave their office for lunch, even if only to stroll to the local sandwich shop - a degree of freedom the school's pupils will not be allowed.

There are sports pitches, but no playgrounds - and an argument is being made that this will reduce bullying. But bullies do not need playgrounds to operate - and children do need spaces to learn to socialise and negotiate public behaviour. And in a word of warning the article ends:

'A school without a playground has been tried before - at Unity city academy in Middlesbrough, said to be modelled on a Tuscan mountain village. Two years ago, Ofsted said it was a "failing" school, with the lack of playground contributing to "the negative attitudes of the pupils". The school hurriedly got itself a playground.'

Seattle and other green news

2007-05-11T15:30:00.000+01:00

A few items caught my eye recently among the burgeoning quantity of green-themed news...

Seattle has approved an interesting new green building code that requires developers to provide elements from a menu that includes green roofs and walls, permeable paving, biodiverse habitats and garden space. Clearly modelled on the Malmo BO01 code, developers are awarded points per element, weighted according to their 'greenness'.

BioRegional Quintain are the poster boys (and girls) of the zero-carbon development sector but CABE has criticised a current project for not carrying through its sustainable ideals in a more holistic way, in the masterplan. The 40 acre, 750 home scheme near Middlesbrough was masterplanned by Studio Egret West.

The Think conference came up with a so-called 'action plan' in relation to environmental issues. Not sure what, if any, impact this will have. I'm intrigued by the idea of buildings having a master 'off' switch - something I've been thinking about in terms of domestic energy use - though obviously things like freezers and computer servers will have to be wired into a separate system with backup.

Shooting from the HIP

2007-05-09T17:46:00.000+01:00

The 'controversy' over HIPs and, in particular, the energy performance certificate part of them continues to rumble on in the media and in Parliament, though my hunch is that they are unlikely to be halted. I find it all a storm in a teacup (or should that be a hipflask?) and this Telegraph article to me sums up the fallacy of the arguments being made against them.

So older buildings come out badly on energy performance? Well, that's not a flaw in the rating system, that's the point of the system. We know that old buildings are not efficient, and we also know that it's often hard to retrofit them so that they will ever be so. But that's the idea - to encourage people to buy houses that are more energy-efficient, and provide the incentives to upgrade the kind of stock that can be retrofitted easily. The idea isn't particularly to make life hard for the owners of £900,000 thatched farmhouses featured in the Telegraph - but they may as well come to terms with the fact that yes, their property leaks heat and costs a fortune in CO2 every year. Perhaps they might then consider switching to an A-rated boiler, installing double glazing or installing loft insulation - all of which are practical and simple steps.

So their assessor was misguided to suggest that these particular home-sellers add wall insulation. But to be fuming because your energy-efficient lightbulbs don't count (what on earth stops a new owner putting in incandescents?) is going a little far. As the report says, a badly-insulated Victorian home uses five times as much energy as a new one. It's about time our national obsession with the charms of a 'period' property got a reality check.

I own a Victorian pub conversion flat in London, and my partner has just bought a 19th century stable block conversion in Essex fields, so we are in precisely this predicament - loving the quality of the buildings and now racked with guilt about their energy inefficiency. But in London I have double-glazing and a decent boiler. My bills are manageable and being in a flat reduces heat loss. And in the country, we are seriously considering alternative energy sources and other steps, for precisely this reason. I think this is a reasonable price to pay for our selfish benefit in deciding to live in a beautiful but impractical building.

You buy an expensive, wonderful designer dress rather than a practical, simple one from M&S because it makes you feel good. You know that you will get cold and have to buy a new coat to go over the top. That's the deal. Why not the same for houses? Stop moaning, middle classes...

Abu Dhabi 'zero-carbon city' unveiled

2007-05-08T13:52:00.000+01:00

Billed as the 'world's first zero-carbon, zero-waste city' - I think Dongtan (covered recently by WIRED) might have words to say about that - this is a Foster-planned project, to house 50,000, in the desert state. The hubris of the Gulf states knows no ends - and has ended up with a perfectly square walled mini-city (50,000 surely isn't really city-sized?) in the middle of nowhere, with a science and technology institute developed in conjunction with MIT, "research facilities; world-class laboratories; commercial space for related-sector companies; light manufacturing facilities and a carefully selected pool of international tenants who will invest, develop, and commercialize advanced energy technologies."

Oh, and lots of monorails, which will provide the "personalised rapid transport system" for this car-free development. And "surrounding land will contain wind, photovoltaic farms, research fields and plantations, enabling the city to be entirely self-sustaining."

Sounds completely bizarre and thus, believable for this part of the word. Photovoltaic farms - alas, sadly, not actually growing giant crystals in ponds of ionised solution in the desert - are of course hardly 'zero-carbon' to make. And the energy needs of an airconditioned research centre in the middle of the desert are going to be pretty phenomenal. Let's not start questioning the sustainability of the whole thing on the macro scale, however, as that will be never-ending...

Pictures, here if you're and AJ subscriber.

Post lapse

2007-04-25T21:55:00.000+01:00

I am a naughty blogger. But life has been busy in both personal and professional spheres with lots of exciting stuff. And to be honest I don't know when/if this is going to change massively but I will try to keep up. And in the thought that most people read this blog via RSS I'm resurrecting an old del.icio.us tag and splicing it into the feed so that at least I can track some of the interesting stuff that I come across but don't have time to post about properly. Very 'lazyblog' of me, I know...but needs must. Sorry.

Meanwhile, one thing that caught my eye recently was this article by Madeleine Bunting touched on many issues that I'm interested in, though I don't agree with all of her analysis. I guess it depends on how you start thinking about the middle class, partly, as well as how you start to define 'rural' - and the countryside, in a broad-ish definition, is certainly not as homogenous or NIMBY-ish as she presumes.

Quick bits from the murky world of development

2007-04-12T18:19:00.000+01:00

The £1bn Liverpool Baltic project has collaped into administration. Unbelievable, really, that such a massive project can be so badly planned and run.

Everyone already knows this but in case you don't, British Land beat out Stuart Lipton's Chelsfield Partners to bag Euston Station's redevelopment.

Apparently commercial development is at its highest level for three years.

And Prince Charles will appear, bizarrely, by videolink at this year's Think regeneration conference, on May Day.

Cultural Planning Toolkit

2007-04-12T18:02:00.000+01:00

Oh, the Canadians. I had the task of submitting a tender for a Cultural Planning Toolkit to be funded by DCMS last year. We didn't get it, though we got close...

But now I see that the Canadians have got there first and, from at least my very brief glance, done it better than anything resulting from a trial-by-committee British approach to such things. Here is their version of a CPT.

Wonderfully, it doesn't even mention the word 'art' in the introduction, except in a sentence about European approaches. It talks about cultural planning as a "way of looking at all aspects of a community's cultural life as community assets...Understanding culture and cultural activity as resources for human and community development, rather than merely as cultural 'products' to be subsidised because they are good for us...and when our understanding of culture is inclusive and broader than the traditionally Eurocentric vision of 'high culture' then we have increase the assets with which we can address civic goals."

When was the last time you saw a piece of British policy talk about 'civic goals'? It is all similarly good stuff - clear writing about pride of place and local identity, and the idea of 'democratic cultural policy'. It has a very clear step-by-step process to cultural planning, based on a community mapping and participatory approach, and including a great list of the downsides to planning - "planning isn't magic...planning can become a subsittue for action" and others.

And it has the best policy definition of 'culture' that I've come across: "Culture is what counts as culture to the people involved - the shared beliefs, customs, rituals and values of a people in a given place and at a given time."

Simple and bold. Couldn't see DCMS coming up with that one.

Quick links

2007-04-04T17:54:00.000+01:00

Oh, sorry...I've been way too busy to post recently. And am about to escape for Easter to a place with no internet. So here's a rather dry round-up of some recent things that caught my eye.

Vinoly has beat Fosters on their own territory, winning the contract to develop plans for Battersa Power Station under its new owners. It will remain to be seen whether his plans will get built, however - given the lengthy history of discarded schemes that the site carries.

Another in the list of white elephants, the always ridiculous scheme for a huge indoor ski slope in Sheffield is going down the pan, as the developer Menta is on the point of entering adminstration, with huge financial problems.

The competition for designers for Barking Riverside has been launched. And in the Kent gateway, Land Secs is going to venture into housebuilding in order to keep closer control of the quality of its huge Ebbsfleet sites. With the growth of mixed-use as a sine qua non in contemporary development, this doesn't surprise me and is an interesting move.

You can look forward to a complete restructure of Building Regulations, just about the time you manage to figure out the new Part L. Abolishing planning permission for micro-generation equipment moved a step closer this week. Last week Building had quite a useful round-up that weighs up the effectiveness of micro-generation options. And public buildings will have to publicly display their energy consumption from next year.

Last week Design for London announced the membership of its advisory group which includes many usual suspects (Farshid Moussavi, Hanif Kara, Kees Christianse) alongside Spencer de Grey and David Levitt.

And in the comedy news of the week, Ashford Future's CEO has resigned after porn was found on his computer...Everything you think about men in the development industry is clearly true.

Some quick green links

2007-03-29T10:33:00.000+01:00

The Low Carbon Buildings Programme is in even more disarray. Pathetic, on behalf of government, not to fund and manage this properly when there is so much demand out there.

Faithful and Gould have put out some rather arguable stuff about how zero-carbon developments will cost 30% more than normal ones built to current Part L. But this is because they claim that the only way for high-electricity use projects (such as dense mixed-use or office) to be carbon-neutral will be to use photovoltaics. I know that wind turbines won't do enough but what about CHP as well? Surely the future for this kind of thing will be mixed-modal energy sources.

The Observer on eco-homes (as reported here) seems to have highlighted an issue that all of us actually working in this stuff know - that stuff heat loads, the real problem with new-build homes is cooling. And yet, the government is so keen for us to never use a/c that it won't fund low-carbon cooling solutions like reverse-cycle ground source heat pumps.

British Land becoming 'carbon-neutral'

2007-03-29T10:18:00.000+01:00

That is, if you count offsetting. The carbon-neutral rhetoric is here certainly being used as weak greenwash. British Land announce they will go carbon neutral by 2009. One really telling aspect of how they are approaching this came out when I read some of the details:

Their head of planning and environment Adrian Penfold on BREEAM. "If there's a criticism it doesn't focus enough on issues like climate change. It's watered down by other factors," he says and advocates adopting a "modular" approach to eco-measurement.. "There could be a module directly focused on global warming and other modules dealing with other issues, which would form part of an overall rating."

Herein, to me, lies the rub: BREAAM admirably tries to create a holistic understanding of sustainability. Hence it is not all about those carbon targets. It does matter where your building is sited, whether there is adequate public transport, and all those other aspects that I suspect is what Penfold means by being 'watered down by other factors'. A super-insulated rainwater-recycling biomass-burning business park is still not sustainable, if it is sited miles from anywhere and encouraging car use, or if it is displacing natural habitats of value. But these days, all anyone wants to talk about is direct carbon emissions, because it is (supposedly) easy to measure, and you can reduce them by doing things that are relatively easy, requiring only a bit more money, and that don't affect your core business model (as, for example, deciding never to build another out-of-town business park would).

There's a real danger here, and I'm not the first to point it out, that we are entering a world where only carbon (and, to a certain extent, water) matters. But sustainability is about systems, about how a system works from top to bottom and across scales; about networks of decision-making, about lifestyles and complexity. Developers like BL need to buy into this approach, if they are to have any integrity; looking beyond their direct 'footprint' to the implications of the things they do. They may argue that the systems thinking is for planners and policy-makers to do, not them; but that is clearly dodging the bullet.

What I've been up to

2007-03-27T19:08:00.000+01:00

I generally don't blog about myself - but a couple of big projects that I'm involved with are kicking off at the moment and might be of interest. I'm working with 5th Studio on this very exciting new park along the Lea River from above the Olympics down to the Thames. A Lower Lea Valley Park has been an idea on paper for a long time; now we will try to set a framework for it to become real over the next decades. It's a big and ambitious project and will certainly be an interesting process.

And I'm working in my home county of Suffolk on another ambitious initiative: Suffolk: Creating the Greenest County. A cross-cutting programme that is aiming high, we are just starting to figure out what making a 'greenest' county might mean. But with a group of very radical and committed local people who are already engaged in ground-breaking work from local food hubs to eco-schools, waste and serious amounts of renewables in the form of the Greater Gabbard wind farm among other projects, this is no hot air pledge. I'm helping them put together a conference in the autumn that will start the process of engaging local businesses and communities with how they can put this into practice, as well as with the development of a strong brand and web resource that will allow wide local engagement and debate.

All exciting stuff and not the only projects on the boil right now...keeping me busy!

Rouse to head Croydon

2007-03-22T10:52:00.000+00:00

I was fascinated yesterday to read that Jon Rouse, ex-CABE supremo and current Housing Corporation boss, is moving on again to become chief exec of Croydon Council, at the age of just 38. Croydon is a political hotbed at the moment; having swung from Labour to Tory at the last local election, it has a multitude of large regeneration schemes on the table, not least the controversial and long-running Croydon Gateway saga.

It will be interesting to see how he drives forward the council - which, of course, has plenty of other things to worry about other than regeneration - and certainly will be tracked here, when he takes up post in the summer.

A green Brown Budget?

2007-03-22T10:12:00.000+00:00

While the rest of the mainstream press is more interested in how he managed to wrong-foot Cameron in a way that bodes well for the coming battles between the two, here in the world of building stuff, we are interested in other matters.

The Budget was being touted heavily as a 'green' budget, and was alternately hailed as green by the government and not green enough by the RIBA - anxious to be seen to make comment, methinks. Meanwhile other important bits were that Brown's pushing ahead with the planning gain supplement, adding a sweetener to the local authorities that they will get to keep most of the revenues raised.

The green stuff included, as expected, stamp duty exemption for 'zero-carbon' homes up to £500,000, VAT at 5% for energy-reducing products, and increased funds (but still not enough) to the massively oversubscribed Low Carbon Buildings Programme. There was also an increase in road tax for the highest polluting cars, the return of the fuel escalator, and increases in both landfill tax (up £8 a year) and the aggregates levy. Householders gain tax exemption from income they gain through selling micro-generated power back to the grid, which will really make no difference at all seeing as this is generally around £50 a year. And, most meaninglessly of all, Brown announced a competition to develop the UK's first full-scale demonstration of carbon capture and storage, a review to examine the technologies for 'decarbonising' road transport, and an "intention" that, by the end of the next decade, all householders will have been offered help to introduce energy efficient measures.

All in all I'm not the only one to think that it's a timid Budget as regards the green agenda. But looking more broadly, I'm pleased that Brown has stolen some of the thunder from the Tories over tax and demonstrated the capacity to engage in the theatre of politics. I enjoyed the surprise factor of the income tax reduction; and look forward to seeing more of this confident, showman style in coming months.

Last week's linkage

2007-03-19T10:23:00.000+00:00

Apologies for lack of posts. I don't think anything really exciting happened last week - or maybe I'm just being cynical, because it was MIPIM and everyone was too busy grandstanding each other.

But it's hard not to be cynical when you read this sort ot stuff - Peel Holdings 'announcing' a new multi-billion masterplan of large perspex blocks on a Liverpool dockside, just so they can inflate their land values that little bit more. Let alone Bellway announcing that they have reduced their carbon footprint by a third - through offsetting in Ecuador. Right. (Surely a worthy contender for one of Mark's eco bollocks awards?)

Then there is more traditional MIPIM crap such as overinflated towers being sold as "the defined height of luxury" with foyers "crystallized by Swarovski" and waterfront living that is - oh, 500m from the waterfront? Enough of a distance to get yourself driven in of of the fleet of Rolls-Royces that comes for free. Ugh.

Foster waxed lyrical about Russia - more stuff along the lines of "I can't think of anywhere in the world that will do what we're going to do." What, spend that much money per sq ft? More prosaically, Farrells is 'creating one of the most vibrant and walkable cities in Europe' in - erm, Coventry (didn't MJP try to do that?) with a coloured perspex commercial mixed-use scheme, although the project director admitted that 'major issues still need to be resolved', including possible funding difficulties. Another effort to raise land values?

The only non-MIPIM stuff was that attempt to create a stir over the green belt, featuring the unlikely alliance of the Guardian and CPRE. Well, let's hope for a more exciting week this time round - though with everyone's belated hangovers kicking in, I doubt it. But at least you'll have a Budget round-up to look forward to...

Green linkage

2007-03-11T22:35:00.000+00:00

Phew. Its been a busy week and so my sunday blogging is really just a way of clearing my virtual desktop of links for the week ahead. And yes, some of these links are more than a week old...

DCLG's new big idea is 'eco-towns' and David Lock is doing a study. These are effectively 21st-century garden cities but smaller - satellite towns of 5-10,000 homes, with good transport links to larger centres, as part of the New Growth Points plan. Precisely what the 'eco' bit means here isn't made explicit but I'm sure Lock will come up with some interesting ideas.

David Miliband gave a speech that sounded interesting but didn't have much concrete in it, about changing land use and farming patterns.

A city law firm (RPC) has come up with the idea that architects face lawsuits if they don't take account of climate change in their designs, through injury claims. Sounds like they are looking for an excuse to rake in millions more in fees, but we'll see.

The Church of England is planning a carbon audit of all its bishops residences as part of its ongoing reviews of its estate, and after initiating a wider carbon audit of its buildings last year.

In the rather dull world of Whitehall, the sustainable procurement action plan has been launched, while it was well-reported that the government has failed to meet its own targets for cutting emissions and waste, wuite spectacularly given that the targets were pretty low already. And Phil Clark has a useful policy round-up that saves me from doing some other linking.

In brief: architects in politics, takeovers, salaries etc...

2007-03-09T10:35:00.000+00:00

Architect Kisho Kurokawa is going to stand for governor of Tokyo. I'm all in favour of this. Apparently he wants to abandon Tokyo's bid for the 2016 Olympics.

Castle Bidco has had a bid accepted for Crest Nicholson, at the enormous sum of £715m.

Apparently architects are experiencing a salary boom. Unfortunately, it seems from my personal experience that this is strictly limited to the large or commercial firms, not the small-to-medium design-led firms who also have lots more work on, but are still often offering shockingly low salaries. I think that people shouldn't stand for that, personally - I know how hard it is to find good staff and so the ones you have should be compensated accordingly. If you've got lots of work in the office and still can't afford to pay people decently, there's something wrong with your business plan.

IKEA's BoKlok flatpack homes have got planning permission for their inaugural UK site near Gateshead.

The infamous Vinoly Walkie-Talkie skyscraper has started its trial by public inquiry.

This was a non-story about the £60,000 house, which was never going to be sold for £60k. At the formula of equal portions site purchase, construction cost and profit, a sale price of £180,000 is around the expected mark, I would have thought.

Straw Bale House

2007-03-09T10:26:00.000+00:00

It's Friday...so for your amusement, here's how a man built himself a whole new house, without planning permission, inside a dutch barn full of straw bales. Yes, really. Strangeharvest has a great series of images showing the process of carrying off such a feat. He lived there for four years while battling the council after neighbours tipped off the planners, and now has eight weeks to demolish the house.