Housing Design in the Private Sector

Hawkesworth RIBA Rex

Description

Never before has house design been a science; it has always been a subjective desire of a rich person who can throw money away to achieve a personal satisfaction of something for him or her. At the opposite end of scale, i.e., housing for ordinary people, you only have to look at Victorian slums to see the outcome - profit. It is not normal for householders to consider the buyer much more than a chance of bathroom or kitchen fittings. Smaller developers are more liable to consider the buyer, provided, of course, the design is straightforward and economical. If densities are met, the architect can probably plot his or her artistic thoughts even more. Therefore, modern housing generally has a traditional look about it. Beyond that, design initiatives are hidden or subtly designed so that the client's vision is not interfered with; a greater depth of understanding is produced if adjoining sites or buildings are taken into account to add sensibility or satisfaction to the design, but this can only be achieved in individual designs and not estates. This is what this book is all about: making the most of the site and its neighbours.

Sujets

• Residential area

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 28 février 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528947879
• Langue: English

Extrait

About the Author



The author joined Southampton-based W H Saunders & Son, in 1956, at their Portsmouth office as an office boy, since full-time at the Portsmouth School of Architecture was not possible.

He stayed there for nearly nine years and left nearly qualified, just waiting for his Professional Practice year to finish.

R W Leggett, his boss, was extremely helpful to him for which he is extremely grateful; he experienced the war and was aware of the circumstance at the time.

After five jobs in seven years, which produced a variety in architectural terms, with three years at Hedley Greentree’s and three with Leslie Chandler’s office, he started his own practice at home in 1972, where he has been ever since.

This book was started in 1976 and completed in 2016 when his last job finished. He stopped practising, but has maintained his architectural qualification, however.
Dedication




My wife, Pauline, who provided a typing service throughout my practising years, also before and after, over and above the normal difficulties of working from home and bringing up our two daughters, Ruth and Lee.




Rex Hawkesworth RIBA


Housing Design in the Private Sector



Character Assessment in Planning

























Copyright Information

Copyright © Rex Hawkesworth RIBA (2019)

The right of Rex Hawkesworth RIBA to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528903271 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528903288 (E-Book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ





Introduction



Architectural education is the longest by far of any current profession that I know of, and a student may qualify after a minimum of seven years’ study at school, which includes a year out in employment at any architectural practice, which may include a local authority, and a short study of legal practising procedure which may last a minimum of one year.
On qualifying, you could say that a regrouping of the whole spectrum of education arises around current prejudices, practices, economics and changing technology that seems to be a way of life to the modern-day architect.
From my experience, all but the very dedicated or skilled suffer confusion or loss of objective when confronted with modern practice and although, to some, this cloud will pass; to others, the magic of architecture is never the same again. It is almost as if the realities of schooling are never reached, but rather it is the realities of practise that are never fully considered at school and the full effects implemented into the design course.
It may be argued that school must foster creativeness and this must not be impaired by excessive reliance on practise or reality. In my view, creativeness can be effectively employed by the true awareness of practical requirements or restrictions that exist and understanding of these at an early stage in schooling can lead to acceptance of the problems in youth rather than reluctance to accept the facts when given in adulthood.
It is towards this belief that an understanding of the full range of requirements, however sapping in creative talent it may appear, is urged at an early stage in development so that design work can develop objectively and creative talent nurtured to develop along less disruptive paths than at present.
It may be that education must be geared to more modern practice than in the immediate past. It must be remembered that in days long past before modern schooling was founded, architecture was handed down and principles generally accepted without due question. Building technology was slow to develop to such a degree that aesthetics could be applied almost cosmetically.
By a greater understanding of current practices, initially creativity may be applied in a different form than at present. To do this, some link or relationship must be made nationally known to all students at an early opportunity in their studies in order that a common grounding be established. When a dialogue is established, it would be a commonly understood basis for creative development, at least a language for all to converse with equal understanding, if not equal agreement.
It could be argued that buildings designed in this way would be better understood, although this is not the main objective, however desirable. Eventually, the creative process would develop over a longer period after initial grounding but this development would be continuous and I cannot see it would be less creative than at present. It may be that some form of order would be established which is lacking somewhat in present-day architecture.
With the advent of future technologies and materials, no doubt, the yet unfamiliar will have to be embodied in the design process as the more recent technologies have been. The design process which follows allows for such occurrences to be incorporated.




What Is Designing?



Designing buildings involves combining a great number of sciences, some complex, which in themselves are almost endless in their own application. These sciences, for want of a better word, are the total requirements, however fixed or unfixed, and are liable to change over the years and become more sophisticated as the country becomes more developed and technologically dependent.
Some of these sciences are less sophisticated and require a broader understanding and because they are so broad in their interpretation, it is difficult to give any priority to their incorporation into the building from.
Bearing in mind that buildings mean different things to different people, the architect or student must be able to put each in its context to see it against other less or more important priorities and establish a relationship or hierarchy of all the restraints that exist in designing.
Once establishing an understanding, one must, therefore, relate these requirements to building forms or sites and relate the characteristics that they offer and fuse the whole mass together into an intelligible or practical form that can be given aesthetical consideration.
Aesthetical priority is not considered directly here with emphasis on local character, as the object is to clarify all matter leading to aesthetic consideration. Any relationship or reference to it is merely by way of examples or clarification, especially in defining scale and the application of acceptable planning guidelines. The guidelines are the broader requirements mentioned earlier and are less technical and considered difficult to place in priority.
To the more skilled, aesthetic consideration may be embodied at an earlier stage against practical consideration but unless the whole range of requirements are studied, how can anyone be ignored against aesthetics?
To make an understanding more complete, it must be appreciated what buildings are, and I am not talking of building types but rather of a particular relationship that a building has with its site or surroundings and this may place a particular requirement or priority on a building subsequently.
To categorise the whole family of buildings into types, it is only necessary to understand what characteristics your building mainly has to follow and only this interpretation in the design context is prioritised.
Of course the list could be so long as to isolate each type with a characteristic, but as buildings are combinations of many requirements, it is only necessary to select these requirements which give an immediate visual assessment of what their type is.
What this list enables the designer to establish is not the degree of technical efficiency required but rather what and how aesthetic considerations will be considered later with the building. Once its volume, size or shape is formed, it may be that the aesthetic consideration may be so strong as to be the major determinant, one would then have to determine the building along with this other requirement and regroup one’s priorities accordingly.
What is called science in the first paragraph now includes all relevant factors from, say, daylight, which is measurable to perhaps typography in the more accepted planning sense, which can be subjectively categorised. The comparison between factors is extremely wide and even precise requirements of daylight can be varied depending on local standards and typography can be so strong as to reverse one’s consideration of them so that the precise becomes imprecise and vice versa just to make the mixture more difficult to segregate.
However, one must not be confused or dismayed by the complexity of the subject and my experience has shown that the more a situation becomes complex by more thought, a greater understanding is built up. The more difficult and intense one’s thought becomes, the more the less relevant is disregarded to the favour of the relevant.
By this process, one’s priorities are established and it must be understood, however, that it is not possible to make a list of priorities in a specific sequence and apply it to every building. Each new building on site requires different priorities and it may be that some comparisons may be made with similar buildings on similar sites.