potemkin villages

Residential architecture has become so out of step of how people live, work, and socialise. This was fine when the interest rates were low and demand outstripped supply, but with a more challenging development landscape, developers need to up their game to attract the best tenants and buyers.

So how are residential new-build developments typically designed in London?

1️⃣ The footprint is extruded to the maximum allowable exploitation factor, then refined further by a series of planning pre-apps and a planning application, so massing is determined by the site and the planners.
2️⃣ Ditto for the facades.
3️⃣ Architects then inherit (from themselves) an awkward footprint that they need to make work, so the cores and circulation are decided according to fire codes, leaving a left-over zone of net sellable areas to populate, usually around the perimeter.
4️⃣ Then architects collate a unit mix of coloured rectangles based on minimum housing standard dimensions, all vying for single-aspect windows. Only at the end are these “units” laid out.

To design a layout, it’s not enough to look at a floorplan and decide, as a default, on an open-plan kitchen and no circulation to give the illusion of space. People don’t live that way, looking at plans and measuring dimensions. Whether we are designing units for rental (flat share or student housing) or whether we’re designing homes for single people, or couples or families, we need to factor in how people live. Are flat sharers best served by an open-plan kitchen? What if they have different schedules? What is one flatmate is entertaining and the other flatmate wants some peace and quiet? What if one flatmate wants to cook dinner whilst the other has already eaten and wants to watch TV? What if someone had a bad day and doesn’t want to have small talk? Would an open-plan living room without any designated corridor to the bedrooms be ideal? The same applies to couples and families. What if family members had a fight and are not on speaking terms, needing time to cool down and to slip in and out of their rooms?

What we end up with is not housing but Potemkin villages, designed from the outside in like objects or artifacts rather than spaces, and catering to no one in particular, throwing “people first” out the window - metaphorically thankfully.

Architects have failed people by designing inadequate homes that don’t relate to how people live, and architects have failed developers by lacking imagination and acumen to design products that make developers stand out in an increasingly challenging and competitive landscape.

We want to change this, to leave behind Potemkin villages and occupiers, and embrace homes and workspaces that cater to how consumers live, work and socialise.