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  • HPH374: Building for People – with Mike Eliason

    HPH374: Building for People – with Mike Eliason

    Mike Eliason talks about his book, Building for People, and the massive opportunity we have to create better places through being more intentional and thoughtful.

    Mike Eliason (photo credit Heather Eliason)

    Interview with Mike Eliason

    Mike Eliason is a researcher, writer, urbanist and architect. He is also the founder and principal of Larch Lab, a socially responsible firm working at the intersection of the climate and housing crises. Based in Seattle, Mike is the author of Building for People: Designing Livable, Affordable, Low-carbon Communities.

    A year working in Germany laid a foundation for Mike’s career

    Based in Freiburg, Mike was part of a wide variety of projects: detached houses, multi-family housing, some public work, some laboratory work. He lived in a suburb that was heavily pedestrianised, and which he describes as, “the quietest place I’ve ever lived.” And he got to know the districts of Vauban and Rieselfeld, where self-build, multi-family housing, Passivhaus and mass timber construction were all present.

    The concept of Baugruppen (“group build”; involving residents in decisions to foster community) was also well underway. Even though Mike was not absorbing these ideas fully, he felt a desire to take them back to the USA. Many of those memories have come to the forefront for him in the years since – and the ideas are finally starting to become more mainstream, two decades after he was first exposed to them.

    New development needs a rethink to shift its priorities

    Mike’s work started by advocating for better multi-family housing, similar to what he found in Germany. That connected him with a broad network of advocates and politicians who want to achieve better housing and public developments. But they don’t have resources they can show to elected officials and say, “This is how things can be different.”

    The book aims to ‘formalise’ what good looks like, and support advocacy work by adding to the broader discussion of how development in the USA needs a fundamental rethink to prioritise public health, community, affordability and sustainability.

    He sees the problem playing out in Seattle, where transit infrastructure is being redeveloped without open space, without affordable housing, and without features to mitigate the urban heat island effect or deal with storm deluges.

    Housing in the USA is not fit for purpose

    There is little variation in housing, with no real breadth of options between townhouses and large multi-family apartment buildings. Compared to the rest of the world, Mike describes the USA and Canada as “an anomaly” in this regard.

    He believes that often it’s like living in a hotel: corridors down the middle of large buildings, with units either side. The units are really deep with a window at only one end (“like living in a bowling alley”), unless you’re fortunate and live on a corner. The buildings are not climate adaptive – there’s no opportunity for cross-ventilation, and solar protection is not a common feature.

    The units tend to be large, which makes them unaffordable, but with only enough space to fit two bedrooms. If the designs tried to accommodate a third bedroom, it would have no window. “Really, they’re designed for roommates rather than families,” says Mike.

    Floor plan for Larix, a proposed six story Point Access Block, allowing for family-sized homes, units that cross ventilate, and bedrooms positioned on the quiet side of the building (Credit: Michael Eliason/Larch Lab)

    Achieving better outcomes starts with a better vocabulary

    Mike describes the lexicon that people have for talking about housing and buildings in the USA as “stunted.” Feedback about his book often centres on how it has opened the reader’s eyes to certain concepts, which he attributes to expanding the vocabulary people can draw on in those conversations.

    In structuring the book, Mike pulled together concepts he was already researching and writing about, in a way that tried to make sense of them all. That led him to including topics like low carbon housing, eco district design, human centred places, and nature and open space.

    Proving concepts can start with a single home

    While the aspiration is to apply the concepts to large developments and entire districts, they can be just as readily pulled together in a single development – even just one house.

    Development in the USA is antithetical to outcomes like being community-oriented, being adaptable and climate resilient, and providing comfort and protection. While that remains the case, it’s important to highlight the differences compared to European housing as a way to explain why the outcomes are so different.

    Passivhaus and mass timber have demonstrated that change can happen

    People in North America talked about Passivhaus for years. But until there was a tangible project to use as an example for politicians, architects and developers, it was hard to show why it was better than the status quo. Mike has experienced the same with mass timber, for which he is a big advocate. Now mass timber projects have been constructed, others can see and feel the difference.

    Freiburg’s car-light Vauban ecodistrict is filled with numerous Baugruppen (photo credit: Payton Chung)

    Ecology, affordability and community are at the heart of eco districts

    The concept of an eco district is about developing places where people can live a low carbon lifestyle and thrive. Often, they are developed on brownfield sites (Vauban was a former military base, for example).

    At its simplest, an eco district is a place where you don’t need to drive to accomplish daily tasks – they are walkable and bikeable, with low-traffic streets. They prioritise green and open space, there is more opportunity for community, and they are low stress. “Imagine an entire neighbourhood that isn’t prioritising the car?” says Mike. “It doesn’t really exist in much of the USA.”

    Another common feature is a higher level of affordability, to create a good social and economic mix. In the USA, there are token affordable housing projects but it is mostly market-rate housing.

    US arterials and highways are the types of streets where dense affordable housing is legal (photo credit: Michael Eliason)

    Planning around cars is not conducive to people-friendly places

    Often, developers in North American cities will just build parking because they think it’s what the market requires. Even transit-oriented development contributes to the problem. Districts then become very car-centric, and public health, open space, nature and community are not priorities.

    There is some connection between reducing the number of cars and enabling places to be a little better, but it’s quite a ‘chicken and egg’ scenario. Mike feels it needs a developer to say they want to do a district with no cars, then prove that the model for a car-light place is possible.

    One developer in the USA, Culdesac, is building multi-family developments that don’t require parking. Instead, they provide spaces for the community to walk in – pedestrianised streets or alleys, places where cafes can spill out, where community events can be held, or you can just run into your neighbours. It’s harkening back to a way of life before cars became the overwhelming mode of transportation.

    Creativity should be at the heart of regulations

    Regulations can either be written more creatively, so they permit or incentivise new ideas rather than block them. Or they can be written in a way that encourages people to respond to them more creatively. Mike sees this creativity as essential.

    “If we’re just pumping out the same thing over and over again … okay, we know how to do it, and we can maybe do it well, but it might not be the right thing for somebody else. We need places that offer more variability.”

    In the USA, for example, most cities have residential zoning that only allows detached houses. Multi-family housing is impossible, because it’s illegal! By contrast, Brussels has a regulation requiring Passivhaus, and provided incentives and support before the requirement became effective. And France has a 50% bio materials mandate for new construction, which is driving more straw panel and mass timber buildings.

    There are so many solutions to improving housing affordability

    The Netherlands does small districts of self-build housing with around 15 to 30 lots. The cost of infrastructure and management is lower because they’re paying the city rather than a developer, and the city is not seeking a profit. The houses are all designed and built by different people and, in Mike’s words, “the neighbourhoods are amazing. They’re incredible. We should be doing more of that in the USA.”

    The Baugruppen model is a hybrid between market-rate development and cooperatives or even social housing.

    Mike is a fan of cooperatives, especially the Swiss model for them. It uses a cost-based rent that has created some of “the most fascinating and innovative housing” that he has ever seen.

    The Mietshäuser Syndikat – the rental house syndicate – came out of Freiburg while Mike was living there. An umbrella organisation effectively co-buys multi-family property with the tenants and owns it in common. The building then can’t be sold without everyone coming to an agreement, because it’s a 51/49 ownership split. Everything is managed by the residents, who contribute to a solidarity fund to help grow the organisation and help other entities develop projects.

    However, the lack of variability in the USA – with very little public housing, cohousing or cooperatives – means it’s going to take a lot of support to grow that ecosystem.

    Operable exterior shutters prevent unwanted solar gain in summer, and provide additional privacy year round (photo credit: Michael Eliason)

    Housing that responds to climate change is essential

    Understanding the impacts of a changing climate is essential. How do we deal with the sun and overheating? Wildfires and smoke? Rain and floods. For this reason, Passivhaus is the starting point for any project that Mike works on. He loves Passivhaus because it’s comfortable and balances high tech and low tech. If you need heating or cooling, it’s the smallest amount possible.

    Gaskets and tape help to keep out cold drafts, moisture, and wildfire smoke.  (Photo credit: 475 High Performance Building Supply)

    More rain will lead to more mould in properties, and Passivhaus de-risks mould to a greater extent. In extremes of heat and cold when you lose power and can’t run cooling or heating systems, Passivhaus increases survivability. Mike cites studies in the USA where buildings designed to the minimum standard of regulations were only habitable in a deep freeze situation for half a day at most. After that, pipes started to burst. Whereas a Passivhaus was relatively warm and habitable for several days.

    The climate is an issue whether you live in a bespoke, detached house, or a multi-family building. All of these things are going to affect people, so understanding the most optimal ways to adapt or mitigate the effects is really crucial.

    A people-first street in Vienna’s Seestadt (photo credit: Lukasz Karnas)

    Better housing can also help to address social isolation

    The IPCC has previously talked about the benefits of cohousing and other forms of community-oriented housing. It’s not just that you know everybody in your building, though that day-to-day social connection is important. If you’re also designing a building together then you have similar values and things that you’re prioritising.

    There’s a fundamental difference between developing huge, anonymous buildings with 200 or 300 units and smaller buildings. It’s easier to know people and easier to ensure that people are okay if there’s a climate event. Many people who died in the heat dome event in the Pacific Northwest were elderly residents who didn’t have a social network, who didn’t have people who could check on them.

    We don’t need to reinvent the future

    We already have what we need to create better places. Active solar protection, Passivhaus buildings, low carbon construction all exist in the world. Mike’s message is that, “we can use our imagination to reconfigure them to the condition, spaces or places that we would like, but we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Everything that we need to build low carbon places already exists. We just have to really prioritise them.”

    There’s a huge network of people who already know how to do so many of these things, who talk about different ways of building and living. Finding ways to tap into each other’s knowledge and experience is crucial. Then, we can start to change the status quo bias, and the attitude of, ‘things have been this way forever, so why change it?’ By spreading the knowledge about what is possible, we can provide shelter that is moderately affordable, so that, as a society, we can stay connected and stay in the community.

    Find out more

    Larch Lab

    Mike Eliason on LinkedIn

    Buy Building for People: Designing Livable, Affordable, Low-carbon Communities

    Transcript

    Download a transcript of this episode.

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    Subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts

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  • HPH270 : What is the WELL Building Standard? – with Olga Turner Baker from Ekkist

    HPH270 : What is the WELL Building Standard? – with Olga Turner Baker from Ekkist

    Olga Turner Baker describes the WELL Building Standard and explains how the principles can be applied to improve health and well-being on individual projects.

    Interview with Olga Turner Baker

    Olga is a chartered surveyor by training. She first came across the WELL Building Standard back in 2016, and was surprised to find it wasn’t being adopted more widely in the UK. She quickly became passionate about it and started her own business, Ekkist, to specialise in design-led buildings, with a specific focus on health and well-being within.

    Ori House

    The WELL Building Standard is based on medical research

    Launching in the United States in 2014, the WELL Building Standard took all the medical research that had taken place around the world that looked at how buildings impact our health, collated it over a seven year period and turned it into a building code.

    Olga explains it as being a review of all the best practice and best guidance, of all the different components of building design. It covers the best guidance on air quality, water filtration, the safe use of building materials, and even through to management of buildings and how to operate them. It also touches on things like mental health and sense of community.

    While there are criteria that must be met in order to achieve the minimum certification, there are also optimisations which are points that can be earned to get to a higher level.

    Olga describes it as a very technical standard, where you submit documentation and are also tested in practice through performance verification testing. It is a robust procedure which assesses the building in use as well as in design.

    There are ten core areas of buildings that the standard covers:

    Air

    This looks at air filtration and ventilation, keeping the worst of the chemicals and particulate matter and dust out of the buildings, so as not to exacerbate things like allergens or asthma.

    Water

    In much the same way as air filtration, this is to keep out anything that could be harmful, such as coliforms, public water additives, agricultural contaminants, and by-products of disinfectants. It’s about ensuring that the water has been filtered to a high quality, which can be through a carbon filtration system or reverse osmosis.

    Nourishment

    Probably more relevant to buildings that have an operator providing food on site, but also adaptable to our own homes, this looks at the kind of food that is provided within a building. It considers portion sizes, allergen labelling, and reduction of added and refined sugars and any kinds of additives. It encourages healthy food messaging by promoting ethical sourcing of products and eating as much fruit and vegetables as possible.

    Light

    Ensuring we have the right light in buildings helps keep the circadian rhythm and body clock functioning as well as possible. The standard has guidance on sufficient distances from windows, making sure rooms aren’t too deep for the windows provided, and that the right colour quality is being used in relation to the time of day or night.

    Movement

    This thinks about how we encourage activity in the building to improve health. It can be about connection with the outdoors to make it easy for children to play, or in larger buildings it may be about ways of encouraging staircase use rather than lifts.

    Outside of the WELL Standard, but another idea that Olga suggests, is making outdoor space that is usable throughout the seasons, which will naturally encourage more outdoor activity for longer periods of the year.

    Thermal comfort

    Keeping buildings within comfortable thermal parameters is important for not aggravating conditions like asthma, eczema and stress, and making sure that our skin, eyes and organs function properly. Achieving this might be through shading and natural ventilation or mechanical cooling and ventilation systems.

    Sound

    Although not a mandatory part of the WELL Standard, acoustics make up an optimisation which far exceed UK building regulations.

    It looks at both transference of noise between rooms and also transference within a room. Olga says there are plenty of products on the market which can help absorb noise, and materials she particularly likes using for this are cork and clay plaster.

    Materials

    Firstly this looks to avoid materials that we know to be toxic, such as asbestos, mercury, lead and PCBs. In the optimisations of the standard it also considers VOCs and how they can be released from furniture, varnishes, paints and glues. When you’re designing a home you should be trying to reduce these levels by looking at natural sealants and products like sheep’s wool as a furnishing fabric and natural oils.

    As well as reading the specifications on the products, Olga suggests looking for external accreditation that any product you are using has been tested for a health component. Examples of these include Cradle to Cradle and Oeko-Tex.

    Mind

    This looks at how buildings impact our mental health, and what can be done to encourage better mental health through building design.

    Much of this can be down to access to nature, whether that be views across to green spaces or incorporating greenery in and around your rooms.

    Ori House

    And even using wood and other natural materials has been found to have calming effects.

    Community

    The WELL Standard looks at access to community services, community programmes, and how you’re incorporating the wider community as part of your building and initiative.

    Olga also recommends looking at the new NHS Social Prescribing Guidelines, which emphasise how our personal health can really gain from spending time with others, whether that be in group activities, gardening, etc.

    Innovation

    Olga describes innovation as being the most fun part of the WELL Standard. It is where you can be awarded points for coming up with new ideas that help increase health and wellbeing within buildings, that aren’t already covered by the standard. This could be anything like different lighting or having pets on site, as long as there is medical research to support the benefits.

    WELL Standard principles can be applied to individual projects

    While it is not possible to certify a single building, (there must be a minimum of five units and they have to have a common structural element) the principles and good design practice can be applied to individual projects.

    While some designers might be doing these things intuitively anyway as good design practice, for others the standard can just push them a bit further and support them with the scientific research.

    Ori House applies the principles

    Ekkist have worked on a conceptual standalone dwelling, Ori House, where they have applied the principles and taken on the parts that really resonate to homeowners, such as the daylight, air quality, water filtration, and using space better for social interaction but also to encourage privacy within the home.

    “We’ve tried to really think about that and create our own version of what it means to be a community but on an individual building level.”

    Ekkist are currently looking for sites to build this on, and are also working on an urban version, which Olga sees as being important as cities become ever more urbanised.

    “We want the quality and the health benefits of a rural home delivered in an urban environment. That’s our next big goal.”

    Find out more

    Visit the website of Ekkist

    Follow Ekkist on Twitter

    Find out more about the WELL Building Standard

    Check out our episode with Elinor Elisa about how she created a healthy home for her family.

    Transcript

    Download a transcript of the interview with Olga Turner Baker

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  • HPH192 : How ‘Right to Build’ can help custom and self-builders find land – with Michael Holmes from NaCSBA

    HPH192 : How ‘Right to Build’ can help custom and self-builders find land – with Michael Holmes from NaCSBA

    Michael Holmes from NaCSBA explains the Right to Build initiative and how it will impact on the future of custom and self-builds.

    Interview with Michael Holmes

    Michael Holmes’ work in the housing sector began in 1990 when he was responsible for the PR and marketing campaign for the first ever Self-build Home Show. He is now Chairman of The National Custom and Self-build Association (NaCSBA), has presented television property shows and is a director of Centaur Media, responsible for property magazines (Homebuilding & Renovating and others) as well as the Plotfinder website and the Homebuilding & Renovating Shows.

    “It is utterly empowering, building your own home”

    Having completed his own self-builds and renovation projects, Michael fully advocates self-building. The best people to design a house are the ones who will live in it and a bespoke property can even save money. Yet the UK has fewer than average self-builds despite the clear advantages.

    Only 8% of UK homes are commissioned by the owners, compared with about 39% across the rest of the developed world. Michael thinks this is partly because people underestimate their abilities, but the main problem is limited land ownership – 90% of the land in the UK is owned by 10% of the people.

    Owner-commissioned housing leads to individuality and variety

    Popular home ownership is a relatively new concept in this country, although a century or two ago, almost every house was built by the owners. Over time we lost owner-commissioned housing and Michael thinks we may have lost a lot more besides.

    Many of our towns and villages were built on an individual basis, which he says led to “that variety that makes up the character of our towns and villages that we so value, rather than the characterless homogenous housing that is mass-built at the moment.”

    Custom and self-builds can help solve our housing crisis

    Our house-building culture has evolved in response to historic needs. Large-scale public house building started by the state after WW1 was gradually taken over by the private sector.

    Today, it remains easier for local authorities to meet housing demand by granting planning permission for the development of large, strategic sites, than on thousands of individual plots. However this approach hasn’t solved the UK’s housing crisis.

    Michael comments, “It’s quite remarkable that as one of the wealthiest and most advanced countries in the world, we can’t build enough houses to meet demand.” He believes custom and self-builds are part of the solution and wants aspiring self-builders to know how the Right to Build initiative can help.

    Right to Build obliges local authorities to meet demand for plots

    The Right to Build, which was launched on 1st April 2016, is a legal duty on every local authority in England to maintain a register of people who are looking for a serviced plot to build their own home and to grant sufficient development permissions to meet that demand within three years.

    Michael says the scheme is aimed at a broad spectrum, not just one-off “Grand Designs” houses. Group self-builders, community-led housing, and people looking to rent or share ownership could all benefit.

    Though authorities will have to match demand, it doesn’t mean permission will be granted on a plot that perfectly suits your particular needs.

    Serviced plots can help meet the demand for self-build

    Between the 80s and the early noughties, 15-17,000 self-builds, mostly in-fill sites and replacement dwellings, were constructed each year in the UK. Following the credit crunch, that number dropped to about 10-11,000. But the self-build market is now growing, at just over 6% per year, and the government aims to double the sector by 2020. This looks unachievable if the houses are built on individual plots.

    Serviced plots, popular abroad, could offer new opportunities, not only for self-build but for custom build projects where people are willing to pay for a bespoke home but don’t have the time to self-build. They are also less risky and easier to access for the majority of people, as two difficult elements of any self-build – foundations and services – have been dealt with.

    The market already exists for serviced plots

    One-off plots with amazing views are appealing but will always be expensive, whereas serviced plots can facilitate bespoke homes at affordable prices.

    Evidence suggests that many self-builders would like to be part of a community and would happily live alongside other house builders or “spec built houses” on a multi-plot site.

    Graven Hill at Cherwell aims to provide 1,900 serviced custom and self-build plots. Describing it as a “fantastic, ambitious project”, Michael admires their objective of building a custom and self-build community.

    Demand for self-build opportunities is growing

    In 2016 there was a 24% increase in planning applications for individual new dwellings. And 18,000 people signed up to the Right to Build scheme in the seven months following its launch. NaCSBA’s Right to Build Portal links to every local authority’s demand register so you can see the demand for each of those authorities. Michael is seeing a response to demand with an increasing number of plots coming to market.

    Registering interest does not commit you to anything

    Local authorities have the right to charge for entry on the register although Michael discourages this, believing it will impact on the numbers of people signing up.

    Other than paying a fee, you’re not actually making any commitment. You’re just signing up to be counted in the local authority’s demand assessment.

    Your data is not available in the public domain and you can ask for your name to be removed from the register at any time.

    Local authorities have to take your interest into account

    Each local authority decides the particulars of their register. One part, open to everybody in the EU, assesses the demand. A second part can ask further questions such as a financial affordability test or a local connection test that may grant priority.

    Michael stresses that neither of these prevents you going on part one of the register and having your demand counted.

    Registering is a win-win situation

    If local authorities fail to meet a demonstrated demand within three years, Michael thinks planning permission could be granted on pieces of land that might not ordinarily have received it, such as plots just outside settlement boundaries.

    Although it remains to be seen how inspectors interpret the Self-Build and Custom House Building Act, Michael says, “We expect it to have weight in those planning decisions.”

    Local authorities are being given support to meet demand

    Michael says there’s a great deal of understanding and interest in custom and self-builds on the part of local authorities, but what they lack is expertise.

    The Right to Build Taskforce will play an important role through the Right to Build Toolkit, sharing ideas and policies that will help individual authorities bring forward land. Solutions include working with developers or housing associations to make custom and self-build part of their housing mix or even local authorities creating serviced plots themselves.

    NaCSBA are working to ensure serviced plots, builders, custom build providers and finance products are all in place. In addition, Michael explains they are working with the UK government and those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to boost house building.

    “It’s about democratising house building,” says Michael. “It’s about putting people in charge of house building to meet their own needs.”

    Find out more

    Visit the website of NaCSBA

    Visit the Right To Build portal

    Follow NaCSBA on Twitter

    Transcript

    Download a transcript of the interview with Michael Holmes

    Please connect with me

  • HPH169 : Embracing contemporary vernacular design – with Clare Nash

    HPH169 : Embracing contemporary vernacular design – with Clare Nash

    Clare Nash from Clare Nash Architecture talks about various responses by small developers in the UK and abroad to the challenges of creating modern communities through better design.

    Interview with Clare Nash

    Clare Nash set up Clare Nash Architecture six years ago. The team operate differently to other architects, working remotely or in co-working spaces and meeting up once a week. Her book, Contemporary Vernacular Design, How British Housing can Rediscover its Soul, naturally followed on from her Masters thesis where she researched the uses of vernacular materials and technologies in modern, sustainable housing in the UK and abroad.

    In the past, houses were inherently green

    Clare says, “Vernacular [design], I think, doesn’t really exist anymore, apart from in developing countries where people are literally just self-building.” Buildings used to be sustainable and varied in their design, using local materials and low energy out of necessity. She adds, “We seem to have lost all these really good ideas in modern housing design.”

    In the UK, there are a few exceptions including Ashley Vale where a group of self-builders actually got hands-on and developed such a strong community that others really want to live there.

    Contemporary vernacular design is a hybrid of old and new

    Clare likens contemporary vernacular design to being a mixture of the best of the old and the best of the new. She cites an architectural ‘taste test’ that was carried out in Holland, where members of the public, architects and design professionals all found this ‘third way’ preferable to super modern or a pastiche of the old.

    The residents Clare interviewed in Europe abroad unanimously liked modern homes, whereas she found people in this country quite suspicious of them. She believes this is because they tend to think of the poor quality housing stock built in the post-war period.

    Incorporating good landscaping encourages people to talk to each other

    Clare talks about contemporary vernacular design as a way to have mass produced housing that retains a sense of identity through the varied design of the homes and getting the landscaping right.

    She cites an example in Holland where a group of architects took inspiration from a Mondrian painting to create different types of good-quality houses dotted around bisecting canals and green spaces. Clare compares how this development felt like home, whereas the new build houses local to her in the UK feel like a toy town, soulless, hence the subtitle of her book.

    Faro Architekten project in Biesland, Holland

    Another case study in Wales had open-ended gardens that led to a lake at the back where residents got to know each other because they often walked there. The design further encouraged interaction by incorporating a shared garage rather than individual drives.

    Great House Farm project in Wales

    Only residents really know whether housing design works

    As well as interviewing architects, designers, housing associations and property developers, Clare made sure to speak to a good selection of the residents at each housing scheme to find out what actually worked.

    While she often heard about teething problems, these resolved themselves and some of the small developers even had the foresight to anticipate and make provision for them. Resident feedback was summarised into four categories:

    1) Comfort – is it warm enough and is it light enough?

    Clare found the levels of insulation and daylighting were better than building regulations dictate. She comments that it’s really important to have bigger windows because seasonal affected disorder could be caused by being inside so much of the time.

    2) Appropriateness – how appropriate is the scheme for the area?

    Good design takes into account culture and context (i.e. the surrounding buildings and landscape, local materials and craftspeople). Therefore you need different types of housing for different types of area. Clare gives the example of a Norfolk development where they rejected the aesthetic of individual suburban plots; the site meant the front gardens were south facing and the architects chose to only separate them minimally with green wire fencing. The result was like a barn in a landscape.

    3) Sustainability – does the design consider the embodied energy as well as the cost of running the home?

    The focus in the UK is to save on energy bills but materials should matter too. Clare found examples such as Sieben Linden in Germany where they built everything out of straw bales and timber frame.

    Sieben Linden eco village in Germany

    4) Improvement – is the housing an improvement on what is currently built locally?

    Clare deliberately sought out developments that she felt did better than the status quo, and found that on the whole residents were really happy with the quality of life afforded by the housing and sense of community. “They were just very happy to live where they lived and they didn’t want to move. Which I think says it all really.”

    The current dominant building culture in the UK restricts progress

    Clare was really excited to meet some progressive and interesting developers who are trying to do things differently with their residents and the planet in mind, but notes that the existing culture prevents widespread expansion of such practices.

    She observes that in the UK six big housebuilders are dominating the landscape and what the edges of our towns and cities look like, adding that everyone she talks to seems equally frustrated with what she calls ‘the standard redbrick box plonked everywhere’. Clare compares this with Europe where individual developments respond to local demand.

    European governments regulate development differently

    In Sweden, no more than 100 houses can be built by any one developer in any one area, which creates a diversity in housing. And in Vorarlberg in Austria, anyone who owns a piece of land can build on it as long as the design (which can be modern) is considered appropriate for the region.

    There are cultural differences on the continent as well. In Germany, people often build together in ‘baugruppen’, and they think long-term so they build very good quality homes typically passed on to the next generation.

    UK decision makers are beginning to value ‘community’

    Historically, councils have gone with the highest bidder when selling land for housing development, and the big companies can outbid the smaller ones. However, councils are now starting to see that a slightly lower bidder can deliver much higher long-term benefits. For example, mixed-use schemes improve the sense of community, making people want to stay and resulting in less maintenance and increasing the scheme’s longevity.

    Gavin Barwell, Minister of State for Housing & Planning, has said that the government is going to make it easier for smaller developers to get land and to start developing. Clare finds this encouraging and hopes it will become easier for self-builders too.

    Self-builders need to register their interest

    At the moment, planning authorities have to find out if there is a need for self-build land and then if there is, they have to provide it. In some cases it’s proving difficult to actually get councils to follow through, but Clare thinks the housing white paper will help to move things forward, saying: “I think it’s quite exciting times now. I’m really hopeful for the future of housing and house building in Britain.”

    Find out more

    Visit the website of Clare Nash Architecture

    Follow Clare Nash on Twitter

    Transcript

    Download a transcript of the interview with Clare Nash

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  • Encore episode : How big should your new house be?

    Encore episode : How big should your new house be?

    We re-run an interview from 2013 with architect and author Sarah Susanka on the importance of scale. We discuss how much space we really need when we build a new home.

    Sarah-Susanka

    Interview with Sarah Susanka

    In 1971, at the age of fourteen, Sarah moved with her family to Los Angeles from a little village in Kent with a population of a thousand people. Her new high school was three times the size of the village where she’d grown up. Having lived in both the UK and the US, Sarah’s perspective enables her to comment on the American house and American development habits and how to build differently.

     

    The feeling of ‘home’ comes from the qualities it possesses, not its size

    Recent hard economic times have woken people up to the recognition that they want something that looks nice and feels nice to live in, but they don’t need as much stuff and space as they thought they did.

    Sarah bases her approach on the principle that it is the qualities of a home that really make us feel inspired. Her advice is to shape the whole space not just the floor plan. She mentions ‘A Pattern Language’ by Christopher Alexander, which is a good reminder for self-builders that they already have inside them an understanding of building and architecture.

    Sarah describes using a set of tools to think about space. Her fourth book ‘Home by Design’, dedicated to Christopher Alexander, helps homeowners to absorb and then apply these principles, with illustrations that readers would be familiar with. These archetypes for designing and building include many features known to British homeowners, such as nooks and crannies or window seats within thick walls. Alcoves such as these satisfy a human desire to be in a smaller space, looking into a larger room.

     

    Build the square footage you need, rather than all kinds of spaces that get used very rarely

    People build bigger and bigger houses thinking that somehow this is going to get them the sense of home they are looking for. However, referencing the sensibility of the Arts and Crafts movement, Sarah promotes the idea that less can sometimes be more.

    Some people go wrong because they don’t know how to ask for a well-designed house where every square foot can be used every day.

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    A poor little house is trapped between two mansions!

    Rooms can serve more than one purpose

    The best way is to build informal spaces that are used every day. For example:

    • With clever lighting design you can adjust the lighting in a living room to make it more suitable for entertaining
    • A dining area can be your everyday space but can also be a formal space when you need it to be
    • A guest bedroom can double up as an in-home office

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    When Sarah designs a house, she tries to make sure it has a workspace in it that can be the in-home office allowing people to work virtually. We no longer need to meet and work in one place, since technology allows us to talk to each other so easily. As Sarah works with architects in several different states, she has seen how working remotely is becoming far more acceptable. Moreover, working from home is another way to save a lot of energy.

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    Ultimately the amount of space depends on the individual who is building a house. Sarah encourages them to make decisions in a way that really benefits their lifestyle.

    Make your house personal because that’s what will make you fall in love with it

    The way to make your house really feel as though it fits you is to start by looking at what it is that you like. Don’t be afraid to make your house your own just because you’ve been told it will make it harder to sell later.

    Human beings respond to beauty. If we create something that we’re proud of, that is beautiful, we tend to look after it. Therefore beauty has to be at the core of any really sustainable home.

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    Sustainability is about creating something that is going to last for a very long time

    Whether you call it sustainability, or green design or energy efficient design, building your own home not only needs to look after you and your family, but also the community, the neighbourhood and the planet as a whole.

    Good design will help you build a home that gives you what you want while needing the minimum amount of resources for heating, cooling and maintenance. Sarah designs all her houses to be energy efficient and well insulated and have good indoor air quality.

    Not So Big House

    Everyday exchanges are vital to feeling connected to one another, fostering a sense of community

    Sarah recalls how there was no need to walk anywhere after the move to Los Angeles. But when you pass people in a car you don’t get to talk to them; you don’t get to stop and ask how they are doing. This phenomenon is typical of America as a lot of the country was developed after the advent of the automobile. Comparing the US and the UK, she comments: “There’s such a wonderful sense of community in so many of the towns and villages in England that is largely absent in this country”.

    Los Angeles Freeway

    Sarah is now seeing that the millennial and baby boomer generations are both really interested in downsizing and living closer to a town centre or in a place that is walkable.

    Find out more about Sarah Susanka

    The Not So Big House

    The Not So Big Life

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    Old Holloway Passivhaus Blog

    Juraj Mikurcik is building his own home in Herefordshire and is documenting the process as he goes.

    The house is built with Ecococon straw bale panels and is clad in charred cedar. There is also a tin roof.

    Juraj is a great photographer and that really helps this blog come to life.

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  • HPH137 : Opportunities to self build at Graven Hill – with Philip Singleton

    HPH137 : Opportunities to self build at Graven Hill – with Philip Singleton

    Philip Singleton, Managing Director of the Graven Hill Village Development Company, talks us through what will be the UK’s largest self build housing project.

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    Interview with Philip Singleton

    Philip Singleton has a 14 year background in architecture followed by a further 14 years in management roles, covering delivery of projects, town regeneration and town planning.

    Since January 2016, Philip has been responsible for leading the delivery of the UK’s largest self build housing project, which is at Graven Hill, near to Bicester.

     

    A coming together of 2 public sector opportunities

    The project began a few years ago thanks to the political engagement and ambition of Cherwell District Council. They had been looking for an opportunity, which they found with the Ministry of Defence’s decision to sell a 188 hectare piece of land which had previously been a substantial distribution and storage space for military equipment.

    Cherwell District Council created a private company, the Graven Hill Village Development Company, to buy the land at market value, fund it over a 10 year period, and look for a return on its investment. The company has the freehold on the land that they are acquiring over a period of years, in phases, from the MoD.

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    “So the background was that there’s a vision, there’s a site opportunity, there’s a growth in the town, a great location, and then invest and set up in what’s been a small and growing private development company to execute and deliver the idea over a 10 year programme.”

     

    There will be heavy investment in the social, economic and physical infrastructure

    With millions of pounds already invested and continuing for a few years, it will be 2 or 3 years before the company see any return on that investment. They are spending money on the road infrastructure within, on the edge and beyond the site, the services and drainage, creating a primary school, a community centre, allotments and an orchard. And as well as providing individual plot opportunities they are also creating 30% of all the homes.

     

    It provides an opportunity for enterprising people

    The first release of plots is scheduled for 22 August 2016. The infrastructure will then start being rolled out in the autumn and those who have reserved plots can access them from August 2017. The land will come with foundations (as designed for the individual’s proposal) and services in place. Philip explains the time in between can be put to good use in terms of working with an architect on design development, perhaps looking at custom build opportunities as well as managing costs.

    While it is a long customer journey compared to buying from a volume house builder, it is enabling people to “really have the opportunity to build what they want, not what they’ve always had to buy.” They have recently appointed a sales team who will be working closely with the delivery team. They will be able to communicate with customers about their individual situations, finances and timescales, and make sure they have the ability to buy at the time required.

    With the market value of similar 3 bed detached properties in the area being around £375,000 and estimates for developing your own self build or custom build on the site for closer to £300,000, it is clear there are opportunities for owners to make a profit in the process. However, Philip is clear that they intend to sell to individuals, and not people wanting to use it as their own development opportunity. While there might be families, or people that want to group build and have an association of interest, they have systems in place to wheedle out those who are using it purely as an opportunity to make a financial gain.

     

    It is intended there will be less risk than for a normal self build

    The original masterplan for the site was created by the MoD. There is also a design code which sets out how the overall mass of a house can look relative to its neighbours, its position on the site and the pallet of materials that can be used according to the site position. The masterplan and design code gave comfort to the local planning authority so with such criteria already being outlined, they have been put into a Local Development Order and are able to say that if these criteria are met planning approval will be granted within 7-28 days.

    Putting in the foundations can be a risky part of a self build, but these plots are being sold with the foundations already put in place for the customer.

    Removing the planning and foundation risks can be an advantage when it comes to securing finance from a lender.

     

    There will be a diversity of choice

    The company are providing a number of options to customers. As well as the “golden brick detached” option of the plot with foundations pre-laid to the customer’s requirements, they are also offering a “tailor finished product”. They are developing terraced apartment blocks and giving people the option to work from a menu to decide how the interior of their home might look, including number of bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom type, etc. They will then be handed the keys to their home that has been designed to their own internal specification.

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    It is hoped a micro economy will be created

    The site is in a great location with Bicester being a growth town with 2 stations connecting it to Marylebone, Birmingham, Oxford and in a few years time, Cambridge. It also has useful links by way of the M40.

    Philip explains that in addition to being well connected to other areas he is hoping that there will be a diverse micro-economy of people that have built their homes and also want to work from the area too. The apartment blocks will be at the centre of the village, with the ground floors being dedicated to retail and to live/work space.

    “Graven Hill is all about a community of builders building a community. Because I think the purpose and interest is very common between all those self builders before they’ve even moved in.”

     

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    Transcript

    Download a transcript of the interview with Philip Singleton

     

    Find out more

    Visit the website of Graven Hill

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  • HPH057 : Low Impact Living Affordable Community (LILAC) – with Joe Atkinson

    Joe Atkinson explains how the LILAC cohousing community came together and why their project is affordable for everyone.

    Joe-Atkinson

    Interview with Joe Atkinson

    Around 2005, Joe got quite interested in fuel depletion and climate change. At the time, Joe had a nice job in IT and was getting paid well but felt that his life wasn’t very  fulfilling. He was looking to get involved in something that would provide this fulfillment, and be in line with his ethics.

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    Eco-building Can be Really Simple

    Joe did a Masters in Architecture at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, at Machynlleth which he found absolutely fascinating.  Being a bit of a techie, he really liked the technical side of the course and the physics behind how buildings work.  This got him really interested in eco-building and he feels that a lot of it is actually really simple and backed by common sense. Instead of constructing thermally leaky buildings, we should be building sensibly.

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    How Joe Got Involved in LILAC

    Joe went to an event where some of the members of LILAC (it was previously known as Leeds Eco Village) had a stall and were trying to recruit new members. Joe was at a point in his life where he was looking for somewhere to live. LILAC appealed to him as it was community of people who were building eco-houses that he would be able to afford. It was a no-brainer for him from that perspective and he got involved.

    Being on the Board

    When Joe joined, the group was really keen to recruit people on to the board.  As Joe is the kind of person who commits totally to something new that he gets excited about, he decided to join the board.

    Being on the board meant taking legal and financial responsibility for the project collectively with the other board members. Once Joe joined, he found his own little niche as the person who is a good team-builder. The board at the time was populated by lots of people who were really dynamic and making stuff happen, and his supportive role on the board really helped things along and played to his strengths.

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    Making Community Decisions

    The board needed to think about how the whole community functioned and to avoid a two tier decision making system between the board and non-board members of the community. To address this concern they had an away weekend where an external facilitator came in and they did a whole community visioning and strategic planning exercise. They discussed the whole community’s goals and looked at different options for how to get there.  Smaller task teams were set up to look at particular aspects of the project such as their relationship with the existing community, recruiting members, publicity and so on.

    Joe joined the group that was to liaise with the professional team- the quantity surveyor, the project manager and the main contractor.  The group went through a tender process to appoint a contractor.

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    Developing a Relationship with Leeds City Council and the Existing Community

    The group had been in discussions with the Asset Management Team at Leeds City Council about various sites around the city and looked at two that were very suitable. It took the group a while to develop a relationship with the Council because when they first approached them, they probably came across as a bit of a rag-tag bunch of optimistic, well-meaning do-gooders who wanted to build some eco-topia.  It wasn’t until they came back to them with a project manager and a serious business plan that the Council started to really take them seriously as a credible group who they could sell the land to.

    They ended up choosing the site in Bramley, where they did a community consultation with the local residents. The community really liked the idea of what they were trying to do which gave the group a really good feeling about choosing that site.

    Lilac-Joe-on-site

    LILAC- (L)ow (I)mpact (L)iving, (A)ffordable, (C)ommunity

    LILAC is an acronym and stands for three main elements- Low Impact Living, Affordable and Community. The Low Impact Living element comprises of buildings built using the fabric first approach, an airtight construction with mechanical ventilation with heat recovery and the use of renewable materials such as timber, straw bale, lime render and lime plaster and triple-glazed windows. There is solar PV on the roof and solar thermal for the houses but not for the flats.  They have used the Passivhaus approach, and are not far off from it, but haven’t spent the extra money to get the accreditation. They also have fewer car parking spaces- there is half a car parking space per home and two secure bike parking spaces. They have also set up community agreements for lots of other different aspects like sub-letting agreements, the car policy and the installation of electric car charging points.

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    The LILAC Mutual Home Ownership Society

    Joe explains how the affordability model of LILAC is achieved through their legal and financial structure which is called The Mutual Home Ownership Society. It is essentially a housing co-operative and it uses a new financing model unique to Britain, as each member is effectively buying shares in LILAC Mutual Home Ownership Society Limited.

    The total project cost is divided proportionally between each of the twenty homes, with each home representing the notional build cost for each unit, e.g. where the four bedroom units are more expensive to build than the three, two and one bedroom units. The amount that people pay to live there is related to their earnings.  So all the members pay thirty five percent of their net income and the amount that relates to determines the exact size of their home size.

    Once the debt associated with your flat or house has been paid off, you drop down to just paying ten percent of your net income.  At that point you’re just paying a small amount as a service charge or ground rent.  If you had a normal leasehold, you’d always be paying a small amount for things like insurance and management fees, etc.

    The group is decoupling the value of the homes from the housing market, and that’s intended to keep these homes affordable in perpetuity.  So they will always have the same ratio to earnings. Living at LILAC isn’t about investing in property; it’s about creating affordable housing as a legacy of the project and about buying the service of a home.  It’s about homes as shelter, not as a nest egg or an investment.

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    LILAC is about Creating Good Quality Affordable Housing

    According to Joe the process has worked so far and they are keen to support other groups who are interested in this model.  At LILAC, they are not creating social housing, but affordable good quality housing. Joe can’t imagine anywhere else where you can get to live in an eco-house with all this amazing community and it’s affordable and you get to own it. This is potentially a model for anyone who is excluded from home ownership for whatever reason.

    They have an active waiting list and they are receiving new applications all the time. This gives the current members an added level of security. If a member were to lose their job and couldn’t afford to live there anymore, there’s a whole process that takes place before they have to move out. And if at the end of that process they still have to move out, there is a waiting list of people that already want to buy your shares and move in.

    Membership by Consensus

    Everyone who lives at LILAC- apart from a couple of the very early founders – has had to apply to join. Because the group operates a consensus decision making model, everyone in LILAC has the right to veto someone applying.  When Joe’s partner moved in, she had to write an application too and there was a period when somebody could’ve voted against her moving in. She sailed through with flying colours, recounts Joe happily.

    Living in Cohousing Comes with its Own Challenges

    Joe feels that it has been quite interesting going through a process where you have to prove that you can afford to live at LILAC because the affordability model relies on everyone declaring their financial situation. Although they now have a finance task team who look at all the finances, previously applicants had to submit their application with their financial information to their future neighbours which could be quite uncomfortable.

    Living in an intensive cohousing community requires you to adapt and change the way you think. It can be really nice and sociable, but at times overwhelming.  One of the real strengths of the cohousing design is that you have got your own place and you can retreat to it if you need to.  But when you’re ready to come out, you’ve got a whole community there waiting.

    Everyone at LILAC has been very supportive and open minded and have a real willingness to learn about living in a community and to learn about themselves as well.  Living in cohousing challenges you in ways that you might not expect- it is a bit different to living in a traditional street in Britain. Joe admits that there have been a lot of challenges so far and there are likely to be more in the future, but they look forward to them.

    Find Out More

    LILAC’s website

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  • Can You Retrofit Cohousing into an Existing Neighbourhood?

    Can You Retrofit Cohousing into an Existing Neighbourhood?

    Would you like a stronger sense of community where you live?

    How could you embrace the cohousing model and retrofit an existing neighbourhood?

    This article is a case study of N Street Cohousing in Davis, California, where they did exactly this. Kevin Wolf, the co-founder shares some of the lessons they have learned.

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    N Street Cohousing Came Together Over a Number of Years

    Initially Kevin Wolf lived in a co-op house. As such he would share dinners with the other housemates, share chores and do all the things that a family would do (as opposed to five separate people all living separate lives). They had clear rules of how they wanted to live together and Kevin says that it worked really well. After 4 or 5 years Kevin got married, and he and his wife decided to buy the property next door!

    At that point they tore down the fences and two houses ended up being better than one. Soon one of the other neighbours wanted to join in and so the community grew. This type of growth continued for the next 15 years!

    N Street Cohousing currently consists of about 21 houses on the block.

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    Houses Were Acquired on a Win Win Basis

    The growth of N Street Cohousing was very natural but there was a certain amount of planning. They made it clear to neighbouring homeowners in the area that should they want to sell their houses, someone from N Street Cohousing would be interested in buying. Not only would this cut out a lot of the work around selling a house but it could also avoid engaging the services of a real estate agent and thus the savings from not having the 6% commission would be split between both parties.

     

    Other Houses Were Leased

    N Street Cohousing was in a neighbourhood where lots of absentee landlords owned properties. So where possible they also took over leases of neighbouring houses.

    Absentee landlords were quick to figure out that they made very good tenants, who looked after the properties. As the cohousing community had the skills they eventually ended up managing a number of these houses, benefitting both landlords and tenants.

     

    New Community Members Often Rent a Room First

    One interesting aspect of N Street Cohousing is that there’s a flow between houses! Kevin Wolf explains: “Most people come into the community because people are renting rooms in their houses and they come into that house, but it ends up being that they have a partner, and then with the partner they end up having kids and then they want to move into their own house or buy their own house.”

    For example, someone who has been part of N Street Cohousing for 10 years might have lived in three or four different houses.

    So it provides an opportunity for those on lower incomes to be part of the community and gradually work their way towards renting or buying a house (as required).

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    You Can Retrofit a Cohousing Community Almost Anywhere But . . .

    While a cohousing community could be retrofitted anywhere there are some factors that will make it work better. The right area ideally includes:

    1. Houses where the kitchens or living rooms face the back yard

    This goes back to standard cohousing design because people are more likely to interact in these rooms if they see other neighbours walking by. Having bedrooms at the back of the house would not be so good. So if you can have this element of design, whereby the key rooms such as the kitchen back onto a common space then this is preferable.

    2. Good schools nearby

    A lack of good schools nearby will deter people with families from moving in. They always want the best for their children and while they may be prepared to take poor housing, education is very important to them.

    3. Low income rental properties

    Choosing somewhere that is rundown and has lower income rental houses has benefits. In a high income area, people do not move very often and there are also fewer rental opportunities. A lower income area where there are more properties to rent means that the community can grow more quickly. Plus the houses can be fixed up and improved over time (getting the landlord on board). This also allows you to bring in people who are more idealistic but don’t have the money for expensive houses.

    While renters may not live there very long, Kevin says they often make wonderful community members. Many graduate students from UC Davis have been part of N Street Cohousing.

     

    The Common House Must Serve the Needs of the Growing Community

    The common house is again a key component of cohousing design but, as with the rest of the community, it can grow at the same time. At N Street initially they ate round at each others’ houses, before taking over a garage for a couple of years and then finally adapting a larger house to suit their needs.

    Common-house-inside-kitchen-(550) N Street Cohousing’s common house

    Houses do Not Have to be Contiguous

    The term ‘retrofit cohousing’ may not be a broad enough description of what is going on as it perhaps implies that all houses eventually need to be side by side. However, this does not always have to be the case and certainly won’t be that way while the community is growing. So the houses can be spread out across the street or even a block or two away.

    Kevin says: “It can be a long time before you take over a block. It can be 10 to 20 years before you have all the houses on the block all together so in the meantime you might have houses that are non contiguous or they may be in the neighbourhood but they eventually maybe have one common house, that they have the shared tools in, they have shared meals in, they have their guest bedrooms in but it doesn’t have to be contiguous to everybody else’s house in the neighbourhood so it broadens the vision of what we’re really talking about.”

    It’s almost neighbourhood cohousing.

     

    Retrofitting Cohousing has Advantages over a Built Cohousing Community

    Creating a built cohousing community where land is developed or where an old building is bought and retrofitted from scratch can be costly and difficult. Not only is it a time-consuming, multi-year process but in many desirable locations finding land is difficult and expensive.

    So retrofitting a community can be less stressful and can just be about seizing the opportunities as they arise.

     

    You Can’t Please Everyone

    While it might seem like a cohousing community arrives one day and begins to take over an area, the reality is that there may be an influx of people who want to make that area better!

    Kevin says how they were quick to become part of the Neighbourhood Association and help out in a variety of ways.

    However, there will always be people who don’t want to get involved as Kevin explains: “In our community we have a neighbour who has lived there since the houses were built in the 1950s. She’s in her late 70s, 80s. She thinks we’re a bunch of hippies! She doesn’t want to take her fence down but we’re good neighbours to her. We talk to her. We’re one of the people that she talks to the most in the neighbourhood.”

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    We must say a big thank you to our friends at the UK Cohousing Network. Kevin was recently speaking at one of their events and caught up with us afterwards.

  • HPH028 : How Cohousing Helps Build a Community – with Mark Westcombe from Lancaster Cohousing

    HPH028 : How Cohousing Helps Build a Community – with Mark Westcombe from Lancaster Cohousing

    Mark Westcombe, one of the founding members of Lancaster Cohousing, explains the cohousing concept and why creating an intentional community like this has many benefits.

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    Interview with Mark Westcombe

    Mark Westcombe is one of the founders of Lancaster Cohousing, an intergenerational cohousing community where all the houses are build to Passivhaus standard. It started out as a group of friends who wanted to live together. As they made plans for how they could best live together a builder, who they had called in for advice, thought they were creating a cohousing project! Serendipity led to them to learn much more about the concept.

     

    Everyone Has a Private Home But Also Benefits From Some Shared Facilities

    Mark describes cohousing as a form of communal living. It is different from communes in that everyone has their own home – with a kitchen, living room, bathroom and bedrooms – but there are shared facilities on top of that. In the case of Lancaster Cohousing this includes things like a small village hall, guest rooms, a laundry facility, a children’s room and shared outdoor space.

     

    Sharing Makes Sense and Saves Money

    Having communal guest rooms, for example, means that the houses can be smaller, with smaller mortgages too. It is a much more efficient use of space.

     

    The Design Facilitates Spontaneous Interaction Between Residents

    The concept originated from Denmark in the 1960s. It optimises the design of the housing to encourage interaction while respecting those times when we desire privacy. For example, the Danes understood that when people were sitting in their living rooms they are less willing to converse than when they were in their kitchens. Therefore the kitchens abut the main pedestrianised street whereas the living rooms are located at the back of the houses. There are many other facets of the design that integrate opportunities for incidental interaction.

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    The Cul De Sac is a Safe Place for Kids to Play

    There are no cars on site and the street really is given over to pedestrians and children. This creates a safe place, which is almost an outdoor room and somewhere that people can feel relaxed to chat. People can interact as much or as little as they choose.

     

    The Village Hall is a Central Meeting Point

    Residents come together to manage the community and the common room provides the perfect space for this. At Lancaster Cohousing, there are four shared meals a week. Mark says that he is on duty in the kitchen once a month.

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    Lancaster Cohousing Came To Fruition Over 7 Years

    Mark tells the story of how he and four friends had been moving towards cohousing without even realising it. After reading more on the topic he considered how fractured society was becoming and that, living some distance from his own family, he had very little in the way of a support network. Amongst a cohousing community he could mix with both young and old, and gradually build up this social capital.

     

    A Cohousing Development can be Funded in a Variety of Ways

    Lancaster Cohousing is a privately funded development but it is possible to have mixed tenure. The Threshold Centre in Dorset not only has privately funded homes but shared ownership houses (financed by Synergy housing association) and some fully rented accommodation. LILAC in Leeds have mutual home ownership, which means that the community owns all the property and you buy into the company that owns the property.

     

    Housing Associations Are Becoming Increasingly Interested in Cohousing

    Mark says that housing associations such as Hanover are working on mixed tenure projects and that recent UK government funding via Community Right to Build has meant that about £35,000 per community is available for supporting the business plan, doing some initial site design and getting to a point where a group could option a piece of land.

     

    Financing Lancaster Cohousing Required Others to Buy into the Idea

    Once committed, Mark and four others worked solidly for 6 months as a project team and put together a business plan and proposal. The land alone cost £600,000 and even with their combined resources, they needed other people to join them. So, they sold the concept to further households in order to pay the fees for architects, lawyers, accountants, etc. An entrepreneurial spirit was essential.

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    Careful Cash Flow Got Them to a Point Where a Bank Agreed on a Loan

    After raising funds themselves they were able to finish some houses and then sell them to get money for the next phase of development. It also got to a point where a bank was willing to lend them £3 million.

     

    The Early Adopters Take on More of the Risk

    The cohousing community grows over time. Clearly the early joiners are the risk-takers but then the risks diminish as each phase is completed. Selling finished buildings is a much easier proposition than just the ideas. Mark had his life’s savings tied up in this project and he says that they came close to buying a £1 million plot just as the world economy collapsed. Luckily they were able to pull back with two weeks to go! If they had bought it, constructing the houses may not have been financially viable.

     

    The Plot was an Opportunity

    Lancaster Cohousing is located on the River Lune. The plot was up for redevelopment into 60 houses and a multi storey car park, but the company intending to carry out the work went bankrupt. So, the Lancaster Cohousing group quickly put in an offer for the 5-acre pencil thin site, which also had fantastic solar access to The South.

     

    About 12 Architectural Practices Were Invited to Tender

    After exploring a number of architectural practices that were either doing something ecological or social, they then invited a dozen to tender. From this, they made a shortlist of four architects and interviewed each of these architects for half a day. Mark says Eco Arc stood out a mile, because of their skills and experience. They also had won many awards for their work, they were very interested in cohousing and had lived in Findhorn Eco Village. Mark describes it as a ‘match made in heaven.’

     

    Design Workshops Helped Make This a Collaborative Process

    Eco Arc ran workshops with the group of 40 adults, suggesting ideas and listening to feedback. They would then return a couple of weeks later with new or revised designs and the group would have to come to a consensus. Although there are 41 houses, there are essentially four designs with no individualisation.

     

    Building Small Houses is Best for the Environment

    One of the easiest ways to lessen one’s impact on the environment is to keep homes down to a sensible size. Mark’s house with three bedrooms has a total floor area of 78m2. It’s open plan and has very little wasted space such as corridors. Built to the Passivhaus standard there is only a need for one radiator in the house and this makes the rooms far more flexible (a bed can go up against any wall, for example).

     

    Some of the Benefits of Living in a Passivhaus Include Having a Warm Bathroom at Night!

    Mark describes the North West of England as being very damp and so having laundry that dries in 4 hours is ‘just incredible’. There’s also never any condensation on the windows of the house. He says it’s a delight to get up in the middle of the night and go into a warm bathroom! As the mechanical ventilation with heat recovery filters the air, he has noticed that his breathing is better and that he’s more sensitive to the smell of food and wine!

     

    There’s No Vetting Process For Potential New Residents

    If people want to buy a property they must go through an integration process, which gives them a clearer understanding of what they might be letting themselves in for! Mark says that there is no formal vetting process but if they really felt they needed to they could choose not to sell someone a house (but this has not happened yet).

     

    People Have Relocated From Faraway to be Part of the Community

    While some people have been drawn to the project because of the cohousing side of things, there are also those who have been attracted to it because they want to live in a Passivhaus. Quite a few people have moved big distances – from the north of Scotland and the south coast of England, for instance – to live like this.

    LC-terrace

     

    Investing in Social Capital is Mark’s Pension Plan

    Instead of investing in financial savings Mark is investing in social capital – getting to know people. The community helps each other and this positive power allows residents to live for longer independently. In isolated circumstances there might be one thing that trips you up and means you have to go into a care home. Research in Denmark and the United States has shown that the people who live in cohousing delay that process. So the average time that cohousers spend in nursing homes is two weeks of their lives!

     

    Support Comes in Various Guises

    Mark explains that when he was ill one of his neighbours noticed that he was not around and came to offer help. Kids can go to school together, chaperoned by only one parent. Communal meals provide welcome respite for busy workers and so on and so forth.

     

    Cohousing is Awesome and Awful!

    Mark laughs to himself as he says: “The best thing about cohousing is the people and the worst thing about cohousing is the people!” On the downside, Mark believes decision-making can be a bit of a challenge. There was also a lot of work involved in realising the £8 million project and managing it all in spare time. This took its toll on some people during the process.

     

    The Cohousing Community is like a Family

    Mark compares cohousing to having a baby. It might be hard to conceive. There’s a long pregnancy. There’s giving birth. There are the terrible twos and there’s teenage years. However, through all this you wouldn’t want to be without your family.

     

    Cohousing has Grown Steadily in Denmark Since its Conception

    Recently 10% of new build in Denmark was cohousing. That means that 2% of the population in Denmark now live in cohousing. Research carried out by the UK Cohousing Network indicates that about 50% of the population are interested in living in a context that is similar to cohousing, so there are definitely strong signs of growth.

     

    The UK Needs More Developers Who Specialise in Cohousing

    Mark says you need to be super-human to manage the process. The UK needs to follow countries like Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and the US in having commercial developers and housing associations that understand cohousing.

     

    Watch a Video on the Award-Winning Lancaster Cohousing

     

    Ask Your Questions or Share Your Feedback

     

    Thank You to Tanisha Raffiuddin for Letting us Use Her Photos

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    Transcript

    Download a transcript of the interview with Mark Westcombe.

     

    Ben’s eBook – the End of Year 1

    Ben has now completed one year of research on what houses we should be building in the 21st century and wants to write an eBook about what he has learnt so far. Please help him research this project by answering 4 simple questions. Thank you.

     

    This Week’s Question for the Show Notes

    Can you imagine yourself living in a cohousing community? What would be the main draw for you?

     

    Please Connect With Me

  • 6 Reasons Cohousing Will Increase in Popularity

    6 Reasons Cohousing Will Increase in Popularity

    Cohousing is still a relatively new concept to me. It seems funny to think that a few months ago I would have had no idea what it was all about, yet now I see it as something that’s important. As part of my research into what houses we should be building in the 21st century I am becoming more and more aware that a lot of solutions already exist to some of our most pressing problems. It is getting these solutions into the mainstream that seems to be where we struggle.

    Cohousing is nothing new. Its origins date back to Denmark in the 1960s where young families were looking into sharing resources, particularly when it came to childminding.

    Nearly 50 years later and cohousing developments have sprung up all around the world, but I would argue that their time is still to come.

    I was recently lucky enough to visit the award-winning Lancaster Cohousing project, which brings together cohousing and Passivhaus.

    Seeing what it’s all about first hand has really crystallised in my mind 6 key reasons why cohousing is going to grow.

    1. There’s a Greater Sense of Community

    Yes, this is obvious as cohousing is about designing houses which stimulate spontaneous interaction amongst those that live there. However, I do think community is something the majority of us desire, even if we don’t realise it’s missing.

    I live on a dead-end street where we do have a good sense of community but this only really came about after we had a street party! Perhaps before that we always had a sense of who lived down the street. Now, we know.

    In a cohousing development, the community is much more intentional. The individual also can get involved to a greater or less degree, depending on what that person wants.

     

    2. Safety

    We all value safety. Of course there’s no out and out guarantee that a neighbourhood is safe, but knowing who is around you and keeping an eye out for your neighbours is better than any burglar alarm. I got a sense of this at Lancaster Cohousing – it was very obvious that I was an unfamiliar face! More than one member of the group asked if I needed help. Hopefully I don’t look too dodgy?

    As these communities are not materialistic there is less property of material worth anyway.

     

    3. It Adds up Financially

    In today’s tough economic climate our finances may not stretch as far as we would like. One way we can ease that burden is to share resources and that is at the heart of a cohousing development. The houses themselves often have a much smaller floor area because there are communal facilities including a village hall, guest bedrooms, a laundry room, etc. Also, parents can take it in turns to look after each others’ kids.

     

    4. The Homes Tend to be Built to a Higher Standard

    Although not all cohousing schemes meet the rigorous Passivhaus standard, cohousing projects often focus on energy efficiency and sustainability. As such you are not only saving money but also reaching higher levels of comfort in many cases, too.

    Lancaster-Cohousing-(looking-down)

    Lancaster Cohousing – photo by Tanisha Raffiuddin

    5. Cohousers Can Claw Back Some Time!

    Due to the factors above – saving money, having that community support, etc. – there is a chance to free up some time. In our increasingly busy world time is more and more precious and so this should not be overlooked.

     

    6. There’s a Sense of Pride in Realising a Cohousing Development

    Nobody said this would be easy. As with any project there will be challenges to overcome but when the hard work is behind you, there is a real sense of satisfaction over what has been achieved, and rightly so. This buy-in has an on-going role in keeping the community bonded and the neighbourhood well maintained.

     

    8% of Danish Households are Now Estimated to be Cohousing

    With relatively few cohousing schemes around the world and a growing interest, it’s almost a given that cohousing will continue to grow. If Denmark’s experience is anything to go by, then considerable growth could lie ahead.

    In episode 28 of the House Planning Help Podcast I spoke to Mark Westcombe, one of the founders of Lancaster Cohousing. He has many fascinating stories about their journey but one aspect that caught my attention was that people have travelled from all over the UK to live like this, some drawn to the cohousing lifestyle, some wanting to live in a Passivhaus. Bringing these two concepts together is an amazing achievement and I daresay it will become a lot more commonplace.

    Lancaster-Cohousing-(near-village-hall) Lancaster Cohousing – photo by Tanisha Raffiuddin