HAT Projects blog

Our local guerilla gardener

2009-07-10T22:17:00.002+01:00

We've always been fans of guerilla gardening - citizens planting flowers, or vegetables, in patches of unloved urban dirt. So we were particularly pleased to see that even Essex now has its own guerilla gardener - the "selfstyled Human Shrub". And he's made it into the Guardian.

'The self-styled Human Shrub, covered in green foliage, struck for the second time on Sunday when he replaced weeds with flowers to transform dormant plant containers in Colchester, eastern England...The shrub, whose identity remains a secret, first emerged earlier this year when he protested in full plant regalia outside the town hall against Colchester council's plan to turf over rose beds to save money. He waved a banner urging people to "save his brothers the shrubs, and sisters the roses".'

In a wonderful clash of cultures, the council member responsible for parks said "If the Human Shrub is crossing dual carriageways in order to make a political point then I think he is being very irresponsible." I'm not sure health and safety was the first thing on the mind of this wonderful reincarnation of the ancient Green Man. Green Men have had a particular presence in the east of England and we love this new one with his full costume of moss.

Jerwood Gallery wins planning

2009-05-21T14:44:00.002+01:00

We were delighted to be granted planning permission last night for the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings. There has been a great deal of local debate over the project, and the planning application seems to have set some kind of local record for the number of comments received - 365 in favour and 44 against. We were thrilled that it was in the end unanimously supported by the planning committee members.

We've had fantastic support from many local groups and individuals, so many thanks to everyone who has helped us in this process. We look forward to now developing the detailed design - the ambition is to start on site in spring 2010 and to open in early summer 2011.

The press release issued by the Jerwood Foundation can be downloaded here.

The trouble with Charles

2009-05-13T21:59:00.004+01:00

Prince Charles's speech at the RIBA this week perfectly illustrated the difficulty of using words to describe architecture in any meaningful or specific way. On many levels, there was actually very little in his thesis that most contemporary architects would disagree with. Indeed, his statement that "Architecture defines the public realm, and it should help to define us as human beings, and to symbolize the way we look at the world; it affects our psychological well-being, and it can either enhance or detract from a sense of community" comes close to epitomising what most of our generation feel to be our primary responsibilities. Like Charles, we want to respond sensitively and intelligently to the context in which we build, and to involve communities in the process as fully as possible.

The trouble is that the same words can be used to describe very different outcomes when it comes to design. Responding sensitively to context can mean Poundbury pastiche or sculpted Gehry form-making, depending on your point of view. It is a shame that "the one mainstream figure with the profile to bring architecture to broad public notice" (AJ) doesn't get out more (or isn't allowed to) to talk to real architects about what they are trying to achieve. Has the Prince visited Accordia, for example? or talked to Fat about New Islington? (Sam Jacobs also has good comment on the Prince here.)

It is a shame that the prince is so well minded by his 'traditional' friends that he never gets into a proper conversation. The stilted exchange of formalities face-to-face and the tide of 'comment' in the media to which he cannot respond is no good substitute.

Jerwood Gallery submitted for planning

2009-04-01T16:40:00.008+01:00

We should have posted about this earlier, but our designs for the proposed new Jerwood Gallery in Hastings were submitted for planning around a month ago. We had three days of public exhibition/consultation in Hastings following the submission, with over 2000 people through the doors, and we were very pleased that despite some of the controversy about the project, the vast majority of the feedback was extremely positive. Thanks to everyone who came along!

Above are a couple of images of the project and the model that we showed at the exhibition (click for a larger version). The cladding of the gallery is proposed to be a dark pewter glazed ceramic rainscreen, similar in tone to some of the mathematical tiles local to the area, which we hope will catch and reflect the wonderful seaside light and the changing weather, dematerialising the mass of the building to a certain extent. The glaze has an oily sheen and a hand-made quality (we have been talking to a small local glaze manufacturer) which we hope will give the building texture and interest close-up as well as the larger-scale effect of the tiling.

The other buildings that form the masterplan (which we developed for Hastings Borough Council) and the landscaping of the new public space are being designed by Tim Ronalds and J&L Gibbons Landscape Architects and it's been a really fruitful collaboration.

In due course we will post more detail about the project up here, but we thought a quick update was overdue!

First project on site

2008-09-26T10:44:00.003+01:00

It is tiny step, but on the other side of the country, our first project authored as HAT is currently having its foundations poured! Another milestone. Here in the studio, we are busy but today enjoying the lovely September sunshine over the fields that we overlook - seen here first thing in the morning.

Saving CO2

2008-08-07T09:03:00.003+01:00

My old friends at Worldchanging report on, and helpfully reproduce the graph from, a McKinsey report on the costs of reducing carbon emissions (so I'm hotlinking on to it below). It's quite an interesting one as we are always being asked by clients and friends what the best way is to save energy in buildings, often with a glint in the questioner's voice that suggests they are rather looking forward to installing some technologically-advanced wizardry that will make them feel 'innovative' and special. And always, we give a fairly unsexy answer that, well, super-insulation and really efficient heating systems will save you more energy than all the mini wind-turbines you could possibly cram on your roof.

This report also suggests this is true on a global scale. The most cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions is through insulation. It is actually cost-negative - and the most cost-negative - as it saves money through reducing energy use. More efficient lighting, air conditioning and heating also score very highly - and are cost-negative - compared to many of the technologies that get a higher profile such as wind, or carbon capture. So globally, it is most economic to focus on improving building stock, before building wind farms.

This shouldn't be surprising, as the idea of using less energy first, before finding ways to make it 'sustainably' is common sense. But we still aren't seeing, in developed countries, let alone the less developed, widespread strategies that upgrade the efficiency of the building stock wholescale (existing and new-build). It's just a bit unsexy and means interfering in privately held property, which requires masses of monitoring and bureaucracy. It's also an area where it is more difficult to lever in private capital, unlike contracting a company to build a generating facility where they will be guaranteed a good market for all their product, all the time.

It is also something clearly that needs to be addressed across the globe, and particularly in the cities that are currently growing exponentially with formal and informal new-build, and not just in cold climates but in hot too (insulation keeps heat out as well as in, so can reduce the need for air conditioning). How are Indian or Chinese building regulations on insulation these days? Making buildings better may be cheap, but it is certainly complex to implement.

To BREEAM or not...

2008-07-03T11:35:00.002+01:00

Forgive the awful pun. But the new BREEAM 2008 guidance has been published today and I've been reading Mel's handy summary of what it all means. We're currently considering whether to go BREEAM Bespoke on a project that we're working on, so it is all rather timely.

I think most architects and services engineers have mixed feelings the BRE. From its origins as a government-funded body, since going private it seems to try to squeeze money out of every angle, while effectively operating a monopoly on green accreditation in the UK. The new guidance only seems to reinforce this when you read that to achieve the highest level of Outstanding, in addition to an 85% score you must have the project written up as a case study by BRE Global - and I'm sure that doesn't come for free.

In the case of our project, as it doesn't fall into one of the pre-existing categories we would need bespoke criteria drawn up. One might think that the BRE might like to have the invitation to expand their research base, and get to road-test criteria for another building type - but no, it will cost around £2-3,000 to get the criteria drawn up, and that's before you even start paying for the assessment process. And if you look at the criteria and decide not to go forward, it's just money down the drain.

Our arts client is absolutely serious about wanting to do the most environmentally responsible building they can given the brief and site - and they would really like to have a recognised accreditation to prove it. But when it looks like a BREEAM assessment would cost more than the acoustics fees, one starts wondering whether it is really worth it. Any views out there?

Team V

2008-07-02T15:33:00.002+01:00

From just being us and a cat (literally) we now number five in the studio. We have Thomas - modelmaker extraordinaire and workshop master (will post some examples of his bandsaw skills soon); Richard - who has bravely made the switch from Vectorworks to Microstation and is now busy fleshing out our ideas and making sure they actually fit on the site; and Jack, our student for the summer. Not sure where all the women are...but we would like to find a Part I/II to start in September so if there's anyone out there looking for a job, get in touch.

First planning permission

2008-07-02T15:29:00.002+01:00

Well, six months into the new practice and we are proud to announce that we received planning permission for our first project. It's only tiny, but we think it is rather lovely and, in a rural conservation area, it sailed through planning with no hitches. Here's to a 100% record...

A long-overdue post

2008-05-28T17:31:00.002+01:00

Oh my. It feels like this afternoon is the first little breathing space I've had for months. We've been busy here - putting in our first planning application (for a tiny, lovely, cottage extension), finishing up a feasibility study and small strategic masterplan down in Hastings, and responding to several potential new projects. We've done some fun things too - a visit to Orkney, most recently, where we visited both the new - the Pier Arts Centre - and the old - the magnificent St Magnus Cathedral and, even older, standing stones in beautiful fields.

This afternoon, I've got a report out of the door and have managed to start on a small research project into affordable housing that has come in - a pleasant, focused thing to do and a change from coordinating a complex mix of stakeholders and factors. Tom is still very busy, but also switching his focus to another project for a couple of weeks. And our childcare is starting to allow us less juggling and more good work time. So our apologies for the blog lapse, but we will try to get more regular as our office routine settles down.

A blind eye to Building Regs?

2008-03-13T20:42:00.002Z

Today brings claims by leading M&E contractors that Part L enforcement is "shambolic". HVCA President John Miller said "Contractors are not hearing or seeing anything about enforcement of Part L. Building Control Officers have responsibility for this, but many are turning a blind eye.”

We had a conversation about this only the other day, prompted by hearing of by a Building Regs non-enforcement situation that had resulted in problems, years later, with a project we know about. The plain fact of the matter is that very few BR issues seem to be enforced, particularly on smaller projects. The onus is generally on the developer or architect to do the work right and to get a completion certificate; if this isn't given, for whatever reason, there is very little chance of a statutory enforcement notice being issued unless the non-compliance is hugely dangerous to life and limb.

So a building can stand for years without a completion certificate, and then when it goes on the market...well, a prospective buyer is right to demand the certificate and the situation becomes tense. And even enforcement notices are often ignored; and as these come with a time limit beyond which they expire, illegal structures can exist for years, as happened with a roof extension on a building I used to live in.

Given that Part L is set to become increasingly tougher and more expensive to comply with, what's to say that a sort of mass disobedience might not occur - or a sub-market of properties, more affordable to buy, that simply don't come with completion certificates? Of course this is very unlikely to happen - and the claims by HVCA seem to suggest that BC officers are in fact issuing certificates despite having little evidence of Part L compliance.

BC is, as every architect knows, an area of local government where resources are stretched. There simply aren't enough man-hours funded to mean that every instance of non-compliance is issued with an enforcement notice so most BC departments prioritise 'dangerous' situations. But one of the problems in the project mentioned above was a minor fire door issue - is this not considered dangerous enough? when is a door dangerous enough to warrant enforcement? and where does Part L fall along this scale of priority?

Defining 'eco'

2008-02-27T22:00:00.002Z

The current debate over the proposed 'eco-towns' that has had communities holding demonstrations, developers withdrawing schemes, planners and advisers worrying about transport and the usual suspects predicting the concreting of our verdant hills, focuses the mind on what we really mean by 'eco'. The isite blog has touched on this already, focusing on the rather weak green credentials of some of the probable eco-town projects, and I hear Rob has cogently summarised the issue for buildings as 'carbon, cost, comfort': "What's the point of creating a technically perfect low carbon building if the occupier doesn't like it or won't use it the way you want to?" (via Phil). At the larger scale: what's the point of building a zero-carbon ~~housing estate~~ town in the wrong place for transport, for local communities, for the bigger picture? Sustainability is not simply about carbon: it is about sustaining communities functionally and psychologically; reinforcing or creating a sense of place that engenders pride, that will encourage all generations to live there for the long term, as well as providing the buildings and services that they need to do so, and limiting our impact on the climate and environment.

Most local communities want affordable housing for their children, and lower carbon emissions; and it is easy to imagine a way of consulting over the location for new 'eco' development that would be vastly less contentious than getting developers to submit bids to central government. It is damaging to genuine efforts towards a lower carbon footprint that unsustainable projects such as some of the 'eco-town' sites are badged with the 'eco' label. Cynicism about the impact of low-carbon policies on everyday life is already increasing, and if popular suspicion reads every government 'green' initiative as a covert way of doing something unpopular, support for measures that might genuinely do good may well wither away.

The same goes for products that are dubiously badged 'eco'. Like the rest of the world, I was at Ecobuild for a few hours this week and left dispirited at the crude rebranding of plastic and aluminium windows, timber products shipped across the Atlantic, and unrecyclable insulation as 'green'. Prize for the most absurd 'green' product probably goes to the "basalt fibre reinforced polymer" wall-tie which is supposedly better than the steel one because it minimises thermal conductivity; this may never take off in the building industry but some of the more serious products are equally contradictory.

One problem is that the word 'sustainable' is so fuzzy that terms such as 'eco' and 'zero-carbon' have been seized upon as substitutes, although they tend to narrow the debate to something purely technical. There is a need to reclaim the debate from the point-scoring of codes and percentages, however difficult it is to do so in language that is clear and unambiguous. Otherwise there is no way that our carbon emissions are really going to reduce - we need to address the system, not just the symptoms.

Information and the city

2008-02-13T10:39:00.003Z

For an immersion into the complexity of the information systems that surround us, I can't recommend highly enough Dan Hill's post over at City of Sound (a real must-read blog) on The street as platform. It's long, yes - but covers almost every use of data in our lives, from phones to Oyster cards, wifi to CCTV, and vividly demonstrates how this is changing the way we operate in physical space. As Hill writes, this is a "new kind of data, collective and individual, aggregated and discrete, open and closed, constantly logging impossibly detailed patterns of behaviour. The behaviour of the street."

The post describes no technology that doesn't already exist, which makes it all the more remarkable. And as Dan points out, "How much of this life of the street, this rapidly increasing torrent of human activity, is registered as a field of enquiry or activity in most planning activity?" This data-filled world presents huge challenges to the processes of planning, governance and management of the public (and private) realm.

The interface between the physical and the 'virtual' (not a good word, but it will have to do) and indeed the private and the public is becoming blurred to an extraordinary degree. Who is to govern the part of the street where my open wireless network is accessible, and where therefore someone might want a bench to sit on so they can use their laptop? Who decides whether the pavement in front of an office building can be monitored by the CCTV of the tenant? how does this overlap with the council-run CCTV system? If a widely circulated YouTube clip features a brutal mugging in a prominent London square, how do you persuade people that it is actually a safe place to eat lunch, and does this have anything to do with its physical design?

As architects, this is something we must take into account. It may mean that a commission to redesign a public space may in fact result in interventions in the data web much more than physical changes on the ground; but this is a difficult thing to persuade a client of, not least because to maintain a positive presence in the web requires more skilled ongoing management, and is more potentially controversial, than the cleaning of new paving slabs.

And, as Dan Hill says, "we should be aware of the limits of information services, until made physical. Either from a phenomenological point-of-view, or from the view that just says these systems tend to be transient, it's important to keep a sense of perspective". The physical is still important - it lasts, it is democratically visible and tangible to all users in the same way (though of course interpreted vastly differently), it has qualities of sensory pleasure or discomfort. But to pretend that we can opt out of the data network and experience purely the physical is now a fallacy.

Football Tuesday

2008-02-05T17:49:00.000Z

At HAT we love football: we are annually bankrupted by our season tickets to North London's finest and daily readers of the best football blog. So we love this seasonal post about Shrove Tuesday football and the landscape of the playing field over at Sam Jacobs' blog, StrangeHarvest.

It also reminds me of the lovely project Play or Rewind by Cliostraat that superimposed games pitches onto the streets and piazzas of Siena.

Of course, urban games (Shoreditch golf, etc) are hip now, and football in the street features in glossy Nike advertisements and computer games, but surely the appeal of these comes from the fact that boys still kick balls against walls; use gates as goals; and the myth of Brazilian and African superstar players honing their skills barefoot in dusty urban streets. The formal pitch markings may have abstracted an urban landscape, as Jacobs speculates, but they are constantly being mutated back into urban specificity in return.

HAT Projects is recruiting!

2008-02-05T10:56:00.000Z

We are looking for one or possibly two committed and enthusiastic Part I/II assistants to work on a range of projects we have in the office, including an exciting new art gallery. We are very committed to enabling our team to learn as much as possible about the building process and if you are capable, we will let you take on as much responsibility as you can. We're a small office so you will see every part of the process - we are not looking for CAD monkeys to be sat in a dingy corner, although proficiency with Microstation would be advantageous!

If you are interested, please apply by post with a CV and samples of your work, or email us if you have any questions.

Ikealand dreams

2008-02-01T11:33:00.000Z

I'm sure everyone has already read about the opening of the first Ikea prefab development in the UK - cheap "houses for the many", in the words of Ikea UK's chief exec, echoing the utopian rhetoric of a previous generation of prefab developers in the 1950s.

All the technical stuff is interesting, all the ownership arrangement stuff is also interesting (how to stop these houses ever falling into the hands of the vaguely well-off) but for me the thing that made me love these ugly little boxes was to discover that every house comes with an apple tree in the garden.

Ikea creates a renaissance in orchards. We talk about healthy eating, design for healthy living; and isn't this one of the simplest and most human ways of actually achieving this?

PlanningAlerts.com

2008-01-29T10:09:00.001Z

Another great site from the guys at MySociety, designers of ultra-simple and ultra-brilliant websites that enable us to write to our elected representatives, get your council to fix those broken streetlights, make communal pledges, and more. Now you can get email updates whenever a planning application is filed in your local area (up to a 2km radius) through PlanningAlerts.com.

They've also done some more work on their brilliant travel time maps, integrating all sorts of fantastic stuff (how about being able to easily see where you should buy a house given your price range and the length of time you want to commute to work? or whether it is quicker to drive or take the bus?)

I just wish that someone (i.e. the Department of Transport) would give them some proper funding so they could roll this out for the public to use, rather than just drip-funding another little teaser. This web app would be so incredibly useful for anyone working in planning and, I bet, would turn a few accepted wisdoms on their heads about where new development should be encouraged if we really want to promote public transport...

Ecocities

2008-01-24T14:17:00.000Z

Back in July, on my old blog, I wrote about this BBC article about the less rosy side of the much-hyped Dongtan 'ecocity'. It's been back in the news recently following Gordon Brown's trip to China as an example of British expertise helping the Chinese address environmental issues, and I was surprised, listening to the Today programme the other day, that a critical perspective on the project seems to have disappeared again.

Another person expressing untempered optimism about Dongtan (though he has the sense to ask whether a few projects like this can really save the planet) is Hugh Pearman here. Not only Dongtan, but Foster's huge square 'ecocity' in Abu Dhabi, the huge 'zero-carbon' Pearl River Tower and Rem Koolhaas in the Gulf are held up as exemplars. But where is the sustainability in an eco-suburb for the wealthy, the creation of any new city in a desert region, no matter how it then powers itself, or an expensive skyscraper whose hi-tech component parts will have huge amounts of energy embodied in their prototyping, construction and transportation?

I have a tendency to question altogether the prevailing eco-wisdom that dense urban living is more sustainable than a revisited ruralism. At the present it is true that Western-style rural life is often car-dependent and energy-intensive, while dense and walkable urban areas are certainly better than sprawling suburbs. But visit countries such as India and the boundaries between rural and urban become blurred and perhaps point towards alternative visions; and even here, in Essex, to see the amount of enterprise that occurs in the villages and farms around us is staggering. The big sticking point is transportation but in terms of food miles, energy generation and water conservation to name but three areas, country life has definite advantages.

Ultimately, country and city will have to exist in balance, but this doesn't mean focusing all our energies on visions of urban futures. I've spent some time looking at potential models for new rural development but we need both policy and the private sector to put more energy into ex-urban areas. This is a theme we will be returning to again and again, as we look out from HAT HQ onto fields, and talk to our neighbouring rural entrepreneurs...

Design and build

2008-01-18T15:39:00.000Z

In the UK, 'design and build' generally refers to a form of procurement where the building contractor takes responsibility for the design of the building as well, leaving a limited role for the architect. In the USA, the phrase normally refers to the reverse - an architectural practice that also builds its own projects, generally private homes or small residential/commercial developments. A 'design-build' approach is also practised in several architectural schools, most notably the Rural Studio in Alabama where I spent a year, but also in Kansas, Parsons School of Design, the University of Texas and Washington State.

Here in the UK, there have been very few examples of practices taking this approach - Turner Castle for example. But it has hit the headlines again with the news that Tom Heatherwick, star designer of bridges and public art installations, is going to act as main contractor on the 300m2 Aberystwyth Arts Centre in order to 'liberate their working methods'.

It seems that the tipping point was the cladding, which "just wasn't possible for a contractor to price". We are used to architects developing bespoke material solutions for their projects - I think of the extraordinary lace concrete cladding that Caruso St John are using in Nottingham - but usually this takes place within a more standard form of contract, and often causes big issues in terms of nominated subcontractors, performance specifications and cost certainty. But for Heatherwick to take contracting into their own hands - particularly for a public building such as the Aberystwyth Arts Centre - potentially lays the practice open to far more risk and liability and also may expose the client to huge cost issues if things do not go to plan, as there will have been no competitive tendering process. I wonder how this sits with the procurement policies of the commissioning body.

But we also have sympathy for this approach. As architects we are fascinated by the potential to use materials in new ways and to test out fabrication processes in advance rather than designing purely on paper. Here at HAT HQ we have a workshop below our studio in which we hope to be able to do some of this, and Alex de Rijke says that they are planning to build a fabrication workshop near their studio to develop their work on engineered timber. Surely a process of prototyping means less risk in the end product than the traditional method of leaving it to the contractor to figure out, or the failures that every Cambridge graduate of my generation will be familiar under the heading of 'Corten Catastrophes' - where a good idea on paper ends up dripping horrible stains all over the place in practice.

Equally, with more architects trying to do small developments of their own - the awkward pocket sites that no commercial developer likes to deal with, a few units here and there - there is more incentive to turn contractor as well and take the whole package into one's own hands. At HAT we are also interested in this approach, Tom having worked in the past on similar projects with MOOarc. But for a public arts building? That's a brave step.

Housebuilding and the credit crunch

2008-01-09T10:16:00.000Z

Much Christmas chat touched on what the effect of the credit situation would be on the UK construction industry. Today, news comes from Persimmon Homes that their sales fell since August, and they blame it on the credit crunch.

On the one hand, we have a much-vaunted 'housing crisis' which is blamed on high prices and low supply; hence a raft of growth areas where ambitious targets for new housebuilding are set. On the other hand, these targets will not be met by the private sector if buyers can't obtain mortgages and there is a squeeze on credit that affects the financing of speculative development. At the same time, construction costs are rising as a result of the Code for Sustainable Homes, for example.

Projects may well go on hold in areas which have low consumer confidence - parts of the Thames Gateway, for instance - fuelling calls to aid housebuilding further by relaxing regulation and planning restrictions, or to invest further funds into development areas via English Partnerships and other agencies. It's notable that Persimmon's lower-priced social housing arm, Westbury, continued to see growth on the back of government support; more of this 'support' will undoubtedly be needed if Gordon Brown is to fulfill his pledge to put housing at the top of his agenda, and the increased targets that he promised to fulfill.

The two faces of prefab

2008-01-08T18:22:00.000Z

Prefab is a buzzword that comes around in cycles, but it feels like this time around the buzz has lasted for years despite limited realisation of the vision. On the one hand: prefab as Dwell magazine chic is exemplified by the news that MoMA in New York is exhibiting five architect-designed prefab houses this year, ranging from Horden Cherry Lee's Micro-Compact House to a house supposedly designed for New Orleans reconstruction but that really smacks of fantasy (laser-cut pieces assembled with a rubber mallet). On the other: prefabrication as a 'modern method of construction' (MMC), the answer to expensive labour, skills shortages, quality issues, and other symptoms of a malfunctioning Western construction industry - Travelodge is planning to build half its hotels with modules readymade in China.

Our newest employee hard at work!

2008-01-04T12:12:00.000Z

On a personal note, we are delighted to welcome into the world our first child, Iris - seen here already ensconced in the studio!

Happy 2008 to you all.

Test post

2007-12-19T17:37:00.000Z

Testing new HAT Projects blog