Families in the City launch

 

06.06.2006

 

A competition created to enable staff to design high density housing for families in cities has revealed new concepts and ideas which PRP hopes to market externally. The results of the competition, Families in the City, show new approaches by architects which reflect modern day lifestyles, including factors such as ethnicity, home working and the changing needs of families over a long period of time.

Barry Munday, chairman, PRP, said: “The June 2006 London Assembly report underlines an issue that we, and our housing association clients, have grappled with for a long time – we simply are not designing enough homes for families to enable them to stay in cities. We are concerned by the danger of repeating the mistakes of the past, whereby unsuitable forms of housing, combined with allocation policies and poor management, led to the decline of whole areas of our cities. Though a lot of these issues are out of our control, we wanted to see if we could design places and homes that would give a better chance of success.”

An interesting result was that four clear themes and pre-occupations emerged through the proposed designs; the need to maximise private external space, particularly for larger family units; the need to provide shared amenities either in the form of landscaped space or facilities for mothers and toddlers; the need for more storage space and the need to build in flexibility in both the short and long term use of the building.

Barry Munday added, “Designing for families at high densities does require a different approach and there are real difficulties of mixing tenure and the effects on value and management. The winning design sought to utilise building depth to the best advantage whilst other designs really sought to cater to new lifestyles, such as the increase in home working. The bottom line however is a common thread which ran throughout - the need for adequate space both indoors and outside, ironic when you realise that current space standards are actually being reduced. We want to take some of these new design concepts to our clients because the winning designs really show a balance between innovation and practical delivery.”

The brief was based on a real-life context of North Kensington, on an estate for which PRP had carried out some recent option appraisal work. It was based on a proposed city block site, measuring some 65m square. We set a height restriction of 4 to 6 storeys with the possibility of the building going higher on once corner and we set a target of 10,700 m2 of building and a 50/50 mix of affordable and private units in a range of sizes from 1 to 5 bedrooms. Whilst the site and its context were important, the judges were really looking for ideas that could be rolled out on a wider basis and in different types of location.

The judging panel included four directors from PRP, Ingrid Reynolds of Notting Hill Housing, Jeremy Melvin, architectural critic and writer and Lee Mallett, of Regeneration and Communication.

Ingrid Reynolds, said, “I was amazed by the energy and enthusiasm shown by those who entered the competition. Family housing is a major issue that we as a housing association must deal with. This competition is a great way to generate new ideas, which we can consider in real life contexts and it has certainly inspired me to try and identify a site to take these ideas forward.”

For more detailed information on the new design concepts or for high res images, please contact Vanessa Clarke (vanessa.clarke@prparchitects.co.uk) to arrange a viewing.