Thinking about Architecture

Victory is ours! We recieved a positive decision from the Planning Inspectorate on our client’s appeal against refusal of planning permission for this humble infill building:

the two storey bit in the centre is ours…

After a planning process that was handled with a distressing mixture of deliberate vagueness coupled with an intense desire to control, we have won through – albeit at a cost of 7 months delay and additional fees from our client – the London Jewish Cultural Centre, for whom the new building will form the basis of a much needed  activity centre for local youth.

Once again, the combination of paranoid desire for power, coupled with second rate thinking and institutional incompetence has been the dominant theme in our interaction with the public planning system.

Knowing that although this seems to be the depressing norm, the process can be attended by rationality, good humour and shared concerns for the public good, as other (rare) experiences have proved, only makes it more galling to go through.

[UPDATE: article in the Hampstead annd Highgate Express, 4 Feb]

During 2002, we had an intriguing enquiry from a chap who said he had a site in the Cotswolds, on which he wanted to build a serious eco-house. Were we interested? Yes, we were!

He told me he wanted to build a large house, and about his hopes that it could be ‘off grid’. Clients who are deeply committed to building something sustainable are rare and wonderful – many of our clients have certainly been sympathetic, but have had other pressing needs and calls on their budget, and generally some sort of balance has to be struck. It was clear that the enquiry was serious – he had done a fair amount of research before talking to architects, and knew what he was letting himself in for.

But there was something about his idea that was strange to me. He wanted a VERY large eco-house – one with six bedrooms, all with en-suite bathrooms. And a three car garage.

It took me a while to get my head around this. The typical person who is self-building an eco-house is someone with a ‘small is beautiful’ ethos, generally looking to reduce their ecological footprint in many ways.

I wasn’t sure whether we should get involved – had I misjudged the client’s seriousness? The proposal required exceptional planning support to succeed, as it was significantly larger than the existing house it would replace – was the ‘eco’ angle just greenwash for the planners? At last, I remembered something Christopher Alexander had said when asked whether he shouldn’t be designing cars out of a new town project he was working on.

“You see,” he said, “we take the way people say they want to live rather seriously.”

And I realised that if all the eco-houses which got published were either hair-shirt, humble places (or  billionaire’s showcase holiday pads), that it would be hard for most people to understand that this was a way of living they could look forward to.

So I went to visit the site, put together some proposals (which I thought rather good, you may not be surprised to hear), and did a short presentation.

And … we didn’t get the job. I had a brief, friendly note, saying that they had chosen a local architect on the basis of his greater experience with the local planners, and we heard no more. We had explored some interesting ideas working it up; chalk it up to experience – that’s it. I thought no more about it, until a few months ago, I was idly looking at one of the many magazines we get full of adverts for building products.

There was a picture of an interesting looking building, set into pleasant countryside, and I was feeling faintly jealous – it was described as ‘a luxury eco-house in the cotswolds’ – why don’t we get those jobs? And then I remembered; was this it? Had he really built it?

A little research told me that he had, and led me to the Moonstone Project  Website , which is an interesting read covering the first part of the process of getting an ambitious self-build project under-way, although it seems clear that the process of building the house has taken over from building the website at a certain point.

It’s a fairly heroic story, as John (John Croft and Leigh Grainger are the heroes) has obviously driven the project forward all the way through two changes of architect, a complete reversal of opinion in the planning department, doing his own production drawings, and running the job on site.

And when I ‘phoned him up to congratulate him, he still sounded borderline sane! We’re hoping to find time to take him up on his offer of a guided tour.

To cap it all, he has said some remarkably nice things about us on his site (which of course I’d just love you to read), not to mention quoting us most gratifyingly and linking to our website!