HOME ECONOMICS Five new models for domestic life

Months Years

Hours

Days Decades THE HOUSE IS A MACHINE FOR CAPITAL ACCUMULATION

British Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale 2016 IN ALL STATISTICAL PROBABILITY IN ORDER TO FEEL ADEQUATE YOU WILL NEVER OWN A HOME YOU CANNOT STOP CONSUMING SHORT-TERM PROFIT TRUMPS CLOSING THE FRONT DOOR LONG-TERM INVESTMENT HAS BECOME A SYMBOLIC ACT NOTHING EXISTS OUTSIDE WITHOUT UNPAID DOMESTIC LABOUR THE SPHERE OF CAPITALISM THE FAMILY CEASES TO EXIST THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE STANDARD ALGORITHMS PRODUCE TO THE MORTGAGE STANDARDISED PEOPLE THE SHARED HOME PROMOTES IT IS MORE EXPENSIVE AGGRESSIVE ECONOMIC COMPETITION TO BE POOR THAN RICH ENDLESS ACTIVITY DISGUISES WE ARE ALWAYS CONNECTED ITS OWN MEANINGLESSNESS YET FOREVER APART YOUR IDENTITY IS THE SUM OF YOUR THE HOME IS A FACTORY ACCESS TO INFORMATION FOR NEW CONSUMERS HOME ECONOMICS Five new models for domestic life

FINANCIAL CRISIS IS THE NEW NORMAL

British Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale 2016 Home Economics #1–16, 210×297mm, OK-RM and Matthieu Lavanchy, 2016 HOME ECONOMICS proposes new models for the front line of British architecture: the home.

HOME ECONOMICS is the science of household management. It intervenes directly in the architecture of the home, responding to changes in life and social norms through the design of the everyday.

HOME ECONOMICS asks urgent questions about the role of housing and domestic space in the material reality of familial life.

HOME ECONOMICS is a truly collaborative proposal challenging financial models, categories of ownership, forms of life, social and gender power relations.

HOME ECONOMICS understands that in housing there can be no metaphors. Home Economics presents five new All these factors, and others, have put models for domestic life curated immense pressure on the British home. through five periods of time. Each model in Home Economics is a These timescales!–!Hours, Days, proposition driven by the conditions Months, Years and Decades!–! imposed on domestic life by varying correspond to how long each model periods of occupancy. They each is to be called ‘home’. The projects address diferent facets of how we live appear as full-scale 1:1 interiors today!–!from whether we can prevent in the British Pavilion, displaying property speculation, to whether architectural proposals as a direct sharing can be a form of luxury rather spatial experience. than a compromise.

The front line for architecture in These models have been developed Britain today is not only a crisis of in an intensely pragmatic way, housing, but a crisis of how we live. working with architects, developers, Over the past decades our patterns artists, photographers, writers, of life have changed profoundly. fashion designers, and financial These include new social power institutions. It is the first exhibition relations, family structures and gender on architecture to be curated through roles, as well as the consequences time spent in the home, and is of rising wealth inequality, mass dedicated to exploring alternatives migration and an ageing population. to conventional domestic architecture. New technologies have displaced how, where, and when we work and play, while prompting questions about Life is changing; surveillance and privacy. we must design for it. FOREWORD PREFACE The Spaces is proud to be the publisher This book is published alongside the of Home Economics, a book that asks exhibition Home Economics, commissioned us to reimagine our cities, and consider by the British Council for the 15th Venice the spaces we inhabit in relation to the Architecture Biennale. In recent years time spent there!–!rather than their we have treated the British Pavilion as an socioeconomic status or proximity to opportunity for research and for creating an urban centre. debate that might influence the future Exploring new ways to live and work is course of British architecture. Since 2012 the the driving impetus behind The Spaces, exhibition has been commissioned through an a digital publication that showcases open competition, and in 2014 we created the those spaces around the world that are Venice Fellowships!–!opportunities for young pushing boundaries!–!and the people who architects and students to conduct research are changing how we live. Among these alongside the exhibition while spending a we would consider the talented trio of month in Venice during the Biennale. curators behind Home Economics. The subject of the design of the home, We share a common vision: that life is proposed by the curators Shumi Bose, Jack changing, and we must design for it. As Self and Finn Williams, is one of the most the curators state in their introduction, pressing and challenging of our time. Ofen “new technologies have displaced how, approached as a matter of function, lifestyle where and when we work and play.” or personal taste, the configuration and As a result, a brave new world of possibility interior architecture of the home is rarely for the frontline of British architecture treated as a serious design challenge. has emerged, posing questions such as, The curators have set out to re-write the brief “can sharing be a form of luxury rather for a home by considering the way we live than a compromise?” through the prism of time. Through a series This book, like the exhibition itself, is a of acute observations about changes to family truly collaborative work that engages with life, finance and technology they have the world beyond architecture!–!including arrived at an original way of re-thinking the contributions by artists, fashion designers, familiar. The result is a highly intelligent photographers and critical writers!–! and engaging exhibition, with a sense of to inspire us to reconsider the spaces we humour that belies the challenging nature spend time in, and our lives, anew. of the subject. The curators declare: ‘life is changing; we Mark Wadhwa must design for it’. Their approach easily Founder, The Spaces matches the aspirations of Biennale director Alejandro Aravena. His biennale theme, ‘Reporting from the Front,’ emphasises action over commentary; success stories rather than critiques of failure. Having selected a fascinating group of designers to respond to their brief of a home designed around time, the curators have tested the proposals on industry advisers from the development, leisure and finance sectors. In contrast to the low aspirations of much socially engaged architectural practice, which ofen dodges any sort of architectural proposition, the curators of Home Economics want the very best for the householders of the future. I salute them.

Vicky Richardson Commissioner, British Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale 2016 11 INTRODUCTION

23 HOMESICKNESS Eddie Blake 25 KEEPING UP APPEARANCES Tom Dyckof 28 THE HOUSING CRISIS IN ELEVEN GRAPHS Neal Hudson 34 IT DOESN’T PAY TO WORK Aditya Chakrabortty 38 THE HOUSE-HOME Mark Cousins 41 HOW IS THE HOME CHANGING 43 THE WAY WE LIVE Verity-Jane Keefe 50 BEYOND ERGONOMICS Martti Kalliala 52 HOUSING BY STANDARDS Finn Williams

55 EXHIBITION

95 107 MONTHS YEARS Dogma and Black Square Julia King

71 HOURS Jack Self with Finn Williams and Shumi Bose

83 119 DAYS DECADES Åyr Hesselbrand

131 ENDNOTES SUMMARY At least two thirds of new homes in the UK are not designed by an architect at all. (page 52) Homes in the south-east of England earn more money than most of the people who live At the current rate of house building it will in them. (page 23) take 700 years to replace London’s existing housing stock. (page 52) The feeling of disempowerment is palpable in the shared rented kitchens around Bureaucracy is the real architect of the the country. (page 24) contemporary British home. (page 54)

Land is a finite commodity!–!yet through its Our current economic model makes mass perpetual sale and resale it is able to produce ownership impossible in the long run. (page 81) infinite wealth. (page 26) The future is always forced to occupy the spaces The cost of renting means many households of the past, even if it refuses to acknowledge or need state assistance or to share with others to engage with them. (page 93) lower costs sufciently. (page 29) If London had the same density today as it Britain is being defined down, so that an did in 1815, it could accommodate nearly 35 entire national economy is reduced to little million people. (page 115) more than a bet on London. (page 34) 1 in 3 children born in Britain today will A city that doesn’t want to house so many of live to 100. (page 129) its people is an economy that has no home for them. (page 35)

Britain outperforms the rest of the G7 even while the average worker earns less in real terms than they did before the banking crash. (page 37)

The domestication of animals included the domestication of humans. (page 39)

Far from being ‘a haven from a heartless world’, the home has become the central basis for the administrative state. (page 40)

The home might be one our most meticulously maintained normalcy fields. (page 51) INTRODUCTION

At the core of Home Economics is the idea of the architectural model. This should not to be confused with a maquette (sometimes called a scale model), or the architectural project. While the project is conceived as a singular design for a specific location, the model is a template that can be used repeatedly to make an unlimited number of buildings. Depending on the precision of the design template, a model might produce nearly identical buildings (like the terrace house) or create something diferent every time (like the villa). The model is a set of instructions that generate typologies. It is the exemplar. The architectural project, as a unique work, is one interpretation of those instructions. It is the example. From the five Classical orders to Le Corbusier’s five points for a new architecture, the model is an attempt at the universal. Where the architectural project ofen strives to be unique, the successful model is ubiquitous!–!the more it is imitated the stronger it becomes. The power of the model when applied to housing is its ability to systemically alter the built environment, our familial structures, and forms of life.

Why do we want to redesign the home? What needs to change about how we live today? Our homes are the locus of all our personal and social desires, and the origin of social convention. The home is the very definition of the status quo, which makes it the atomic block for social change. To speak of the British home today is to speak of unafordable rent and an acute housing shortage. But it is also at the heart of national discussions about wage stagnation, crippling levels of personal debt, precarious living and working conditions, gender inequality, the impact of perpetual austerity, and the general rise of a low-paid workforce. Britain is a nation whose wealth is more polarised now than at any other time in its history, and this situation is tied closely to the state abdicating responsibility for housing to the private sector. Moreover, the housing shortage has fuelled a feedback loop of intense real estate speculation and capital accumulation that has endangered family formation and basic social security.

Britain is experiencing a period of intense change. New technologies continue to transform how we think about labour, identity, and privacy. A renewed public debate about social and gender equality is overturning traditional preconceptions about family structures and power roles. What remains of the home’s relationship to its local community has been severely weakened by migratory lifestyles (both voluntary and otherwise). Meanwhile, the UK’s political backdrop is one of reactionary factionalism, virulent nationalism and popular conservativism. This radical social change is as much concerned with a crisis in our forms of life as a crisis of our housing supply. The container for those forms of life

11 is the home. It must be said that this is not Britain’s first housing Home Economics!–!many of the instinctive judgements that accompany crisis, and it won’t be its last. Artificial shortfall in housing supply the dominance of space have been exposed and then rejected. An is an intrinsic quality of capitalist property systems. And while architect would normally design through categories like typology, the social changes taking place today are notably extreme, every tenure, location, cultural context, socioeconomic status of the end user. generation faces more or less the same obligation to reinvent society Instead, Home Economics is structured around five familiar time and its traditions afresh. In this sense, there is nothing specifically periods: hours, days, months, years, and decades. Looking through new about the world we have inherited!–!the front line of British the lens of time exposes the fundamental processes that lie behind architecture (and society in general) has always been the ideology the production of the home as a critical field for design. For example, of the home. property speculation could be a concern for any type of home. But capital appreciation in a home occupied for a lifetime is fundamentally Housing (as opposed to the home) is perpetually in short supply diferent from the popular narrative of ‘homes under the hammer’ because our economic system of ownership pursues two opposing being bought, renovated and flipped for a quick profit. Consequently, demands simultaneously. Capitalism seeks to drive down wages on speculation is best resisted through years rather than decades. the one hand, while maximising profit from rent and property appreciation on the other. Human societies cannot operate without Similarly, the issue of how to promote intergenerational communities a large source of inexpensive labour. Under feudalism this would has previously been approached through over- and under-occupancy have been primarily indentured, or free. Under capitalism, which of diferent typologies. There is a body of literature and statistics that attempts to monetise everything, this produced an industrial working reveal so-called ‘empty nesters’ with surplus capacity!–!ofen retired class of wage labourers. But now, under neoliberalism, this group or elderly couples still living within large family homes. At the other has been compelled into new forms of freelance and ‘gig’ employment. end of the spectrum there is a corresponding overcrowding, where As a class it encompasses a huge swathe of British society, from younger occupants are rammed into smaller properties!–!ofen students migratory and zero-hour workers to the well-educated ‘creative classes’. living in shared households in urban centres. This class expansion is commensurate with an aggressive wealth redistribution programme executed through the taxation system, Conventional wisdom is only able to address the problem by considering which acts to polarise society. Since land and property values are available space and land usage at any given moment in time. One based on rate of return, speculators have little incentive to consider outcome of this thinking is to solve the imbalance by relocating the the housing requirements of people on lower incomes. Where elderly (typically into retirement villages) to create more available space Home Economics difers from discussions of housing shortages and for the young. The obvious downside to this strategy is the separation class relations is in tackling housing needs through the design of the elderly from their community networks and the alienation of domestic life. The proposals of the exhibition acknowledge the this entails. When the same issue is approached through a filter of time, intractable nature of the housing crisis; though this does not mean it reveals that this condition is primarily a problem pertaining to the they abandon the struggle. question of durability and adaptability of use. Thus, the question becomes how to design homes to accommodate any age group or family Home Economics aspires to be at once timely and timeless. structure, eliminating the necessity for movement. When we design It strives to present an analysis of the era we live in, and expand the with time, we prioritise universal human needs. discourse of architecture. At the same time, any work that attempts to become too much of its own time will very quickly lose relevance. It is enough to ask: What does it mean to be at home for a few months? In order to make a proposal that has a lasting value, a rigorous And how does that difer from decades or hours? What does it mean understanding of the historical forces that have shaped this epoch to design first with time instead of space? The Western tradition of is vital. Home Economics is the first exhibition on architecture to be architecture has for the last century been trying to apply ideas of curated through time spent in the home. This involves inverting the industrial ergonomic efciency into the design of the home. When we conventional design relationship in which spatial dimensions are draw a plan we measure out every imagined activity and find a space always considered more important than temporal ones. This simple for it, inserting every piece of furniture as if all possible activities were move to preference time over space as the primary design driver has happening in the home at once. The main difculty with this way of had unprecedented implications for the architectural models in designing is its inevitable future inflexibility.

12 13 Functionalism is the design of space around specific ergonomic activities, How Britain spends time in the home each day and rationalism is the use of impartial spatial relationships to achieve general conditions of space. Through focusing on five distinct temporal Media usage* 14h7m Hobbies 30m periods, Home Economics has found that by designing through time, we Sleep 8h21m Childcare 24m can overturn the functionalist perspective in Western architecture and Employment 2h54m Reading 24m reinstate a rationalist understanding of the dwelling. Housework 2h22m Personal care 21m excl. childcare Cooking and washing up 20m The home is a subject that concerns everyone, not just architects. Social life 1h22m Study 16m And while the models and research underpinning Home Economics are Socialising with 50m Unspecified 14m most applicable to the world of architecture, from the beginning it was friends and family Washing clothes 8m essential that the subject matter be accessible and inclusive of a wider audience. Architectural drawings are specialised, professional forms of *Translates to 8h41m of media usage in real time, achieved through simultaneous delivery (‘second screens’). communication!–!not everyone can read a plan. Our ambition was to create Only 3h40m of this period is devoted to television (divided evenly between live TV, catch-up, digital and on-demand) a format that presented the domestic in a legible way. We recognise that our audience, on the whole, are not interested in complex explanations For example, the postwar galley kitchen – precisely delineated for the or theoretical arguments. Rather, we wanted to find a means to engage the optimisation of food preparation by a single person (most ofen the visitor directly, through their experience of the home. housewife) – is incapable of accommodating multiple people engaged in diverse, simultaneous activities. As social norms have shifed, with Like the plan, section, or elevation, the maquette (not to be confused with cooking now ofen treated as a shared leisure activity, this functionalist the architectural model mentioned above) is a tool for the representation approach to the kitchen leads to redundancy. Another example would of space. And like a sketch or a measured drawing, it can be either detailed be the dimensions of a standard double bedroom: half a century and complex, or rapid and schematic. In every case the maquette is a ago a married couple in twin beds would not have been considered miniaturisation, and the physical limitations of its scale demand some unusual. Today, the double bed has become so ubiquitous that any other abstraction. A maquette forces its maker to prioritise information; it is arrangement (except in elderly partnerships where reproduction is neither possible nor desirable to include every minute detail. assumed to no longer be a factor) appears odd; indeed, the double bed as the focus for the household is a requirement of UK bedroom space standards. The implicit moral assertion of this model is that the family Proportion of households Proportion of under-occupiers under-occupying by age group is by default comprised of two adults sharing a place to sleep. This gives the family little choice about how to arrange their furniture, or how to 57% 60 structure their interpersonal relationships, and it tacitly enforces a very particular power relation and social structure. 50

If we look beyond this Western conception of space as dominant over time, there are many alternatives. In Japan for example, building 40 plans are frequently drawn without including any furniture at all. 52% 48% 27% To a Western gaze these empty squares of enclosed space suggest 30 that nothing is programmed to take place in these environments. On the contrary, the Japanese room is conceived as containing 20

diferent activities through time, and it is not possible to draw a single Housing costs as % of income configuration. Lightweight furniture and ample storage transforms the room into a bedroom at night, a study during the day and a dining 10 room in the evening. None of these uses impose their form on any other; they exist in parallel and autonomously. This is the design of 0% Older person Other Older person households universal space, in which time takes primacy. households households Other households

14 15 The exhibition design of Home Economics is conceived as a life-size maquette, almost as if a paper and card study had been blown up to the scale of 1:1. The decision to present the show through a full-scale maquette also relates to the difculty of conveying space through images. When property developers produce commercial imagery their interiors ofen contain many objects whose only role is to convey ‘lifestyle’, rather than a form of life (a bowl of fruit jostles with artwork on the wall, barely visible behind an explosion of designer furniture, flat screen televisions and shiny fixtures). Sometimes these objects are so numerous and so crammed into the frame that the architecture (if it exists at all) becomes totally obscured. By contrast, Home Economics is pure architecture. When designing an exhibition of new models for how we might live, the act of reduction and enlargement allowed us to concentrate on only the most essential qualities. This is what we mean when we say there are no Donald Judd’s Cobb House interior is metaphors in housing: it simply is what it does. not based on optimised functions

The form of the full-scale exhibition interior first came to prominence in the 19th century, at events like the Great Exhibition of 1851. This coincided with a desire felt by architects to extend their influence over popular taste, and the form was quickly adopted throughout international exhibitions. By the 1920s, the full-scale model had expanded in application beyond just interior trendsetting. It was taken up by the early Modernists and transformed into an important genre for avant-garde architectural experimentation. Some of the most influential projects of the era, like Hannes Meyer’s Co-op Zimmer, existed only as exhibition installations. Equally, examples like Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion tested new construction techniques and spatial theories which were directly translated into his subsequent built work. By the 1950s the form had morphed into the ‘home of the future’ genre, and until recently it was hardly present in architecture at all (surviving almost exclusively within ‘better home’ expos). Since we were awarded the British Pavilion commission by the British Council in October 2015 there have been at least two notable full-scale exhibitions on the home. The form may be experiencing something of a renaissance. It may also point to a renewed attempt by architects to influence the ordinary and commonplace aspects of how we live. The first ergonomic kitchen, 1926 by Grete Schütte-Lihotzky Home Economics is concerned with the design of everyday life. As a subject, home economics is the so-called ‘science of the household’, invented to improve education for women in 19th century America. It evolved to encompass all domestic power relations, as well as labour conditions, technology, financial and political administration. No other subject had the capacity to intervene so directly in the material reality of The Japanese floor contains multiple the home; it claimed expertise on everything from how to boil an uses through time, rather than through egg to how to mend a shirt, and from how to decorate a room to how to the space of the plan

16 17 apply for a mortgage. When combined with the architectural model the result is a potentially powerful methodology. To design the space and operation of the normal is to propose fundamentally new social norms. This concentration on the banal and ordinary stands in strong opposition to a previous generation of architects principally concerned with ‘icons’ (building assets intended to be impossible to replicate except by the architects themselves).

Home Economics is an intensely collaborative work, developed in a collective way. The project began with a two-day workshop aimed at colliding the diverse range of participants with an equally broad pool of experts. Diferent kinds of architects and artists, many operating at the fringe of the discipline (including sole practitioners, firms, academics, and an artist collective with a background in architecture) exchanged ideas with developers, housing associations, and other advisors (themselves pushing the boundaries of their various industries). This was intended to provide a pragmatic context for the new models, as well as to expose those directly responsible for our built environment to experimental forms of architecture.

As the project progressed and other kinds of specialised knowledge were required, an open system of partnerships allowed the team to expand: financial institutions, design consultants, engineers (both of structure and light), fashion designers, and a record label all became The only image of Hannes Meyer’s Co-op nested within the project. We have been fortunate to work with people Zimmer exhibition interior, 1924 at the top of their industries and professions throughout all aspects of the show's production.

In our ambition to achieve a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk we commissioned cultural works outside architecture!–!amongst them art, photography, and critical writing!–!and we reframed the catalogue as a polemical proposition, not simply a record. In addition to the room participants and advisors, we also created an exhibition team structure not seen in previous years. The design studio OK-RM approached experience, identity, and communication in an integrated and sophisticated way, creating a scalelessness across the show and its ephemera (installation, pamphlet, catalogue, etc). The architectural firm Hesselbrand (also responsible for the Decades room) worked as exhibition designers, developing the maquette principle and elegantly integrating the participants’ works into the rather unforgiving spaces of the pavilion.

The Venice Architecture Biennale is one of the few places outside the academy where hypothetical projects are the norm, rather than the Mies van der Rohe’s full-scale exhibition Peter Behrens’ 1902 Wertheim dining exception. It is a rare chance to present original experimental works architecture, 1931 room interior and research in a context that has the power to shape the future of

18 19 Comparative Trends for Google Search Entries! architecture. The best-known example of this is perhaps the Biennale of 1979 under Aldo Rossi, which propelled postmodernism to the fore as the paradigmatic architecture of the next decade. In less dramatic years, the overwhelmingly theoretical approach of the pavilions has sometimes doomed their proposals to remain on paper, forgotten as soon as the exhibition is dismantled. For this reason, the legacy and realism of Home Economics has been a constant concern. As with all architectural projects, the visible result hardly conveys the colossal volume of work Home Ownership not immediately perceptible in the installation. The relationships formed during the course of this project have already produced promising results, Sharing Economy from corporate partnerships to a commercial furniture line. Meanwhile, there is a strong likelihood that certain collaborations will lead to built

Interest work, new financial protocols, and new types of architectural practice.

Aside from this, a final word must go to the British Council, the commissioners of Home Economics. Their commitment to an open competition process is a testament to their dedication to supporting provocative ideas and unconventional approaches to architecture. We are immensely grateful to the many dozens of people who committed their 2010 2015 expertise, skill, creative imagination, and energy into the communal project of Home Economics. The results in Venice, and our hope for its lasting impact in the UK, bear witness to the power of collective efort.

Airbnb Mortgage Interest

Page 8 The Time Use Survey, (London: Page 12 Hannes Meyer, “Die neue Welt” Ofce for National Statistics), 2014 in “Der Standard”, 1926 Copyright MoMA, Exterior view Page 9 Jenny Pannell, Hannah Aldridge from the Courtyard. Die Wohnung Unsurer & Peter Kenway, Market Assessment of Zeit Section. (Apartment for a married 2010 2015 Housing Options for Older People couple, Berlin 1931, by Mies van der Rohe.) (London: New Policy Institute, 2014), 52 Copyright Gregor Schuster, Peter Behrens Dining Room for the Page 11 Copyright Nick Tenwiggenhorn, Wertheim Department Store (1902), 2013 The Cobb House by Judd, 1996 Understanding how popular attitudes change over time can be severely limited by the nature, Various stills, Throne of Blood. Celluloid. Page 14 “Google Trends Search Results,” quality and consistency of available surveys. Google Trends, which maps the total volume of search entries for a given keyword over time can provide near real-time insights into subjects Directed by Akira Kurosawwa. Tokyo: Toho last accessed April 21, 2016, like tenure models. Studios, 1957 www.google.co.uk/trends/

20 21 HOMESICKNESS is intrinsic or intractable. As if the UK’s Eddie Blake property market was naturally occurring, like a cloud formation or an exquisite total eclipse. We stand and stare at the coronal filaments of soaring house prices, and are unnerved by the muted bird song. This permanent crisis creates an ambivalent emotional paradox; we are simultaneously attracted by feelings of attachment and belonging, and repulsed by It is a feat of human imagination. A truly the burden of debt and exploitation. While arresting piece of abstraction!–!that the ambivalence may be a real achievement home can be resolved into a single number. of the psyche, it comes at a price. It costs A home encompasses a lifetime’s the holder, like trying to picture the attachment, a shelter, a location, the colour colour of deep blood red at the same time of a door, perhaps the feeling of immutable as picturing the colour of bright green inviolability, a sense of ownership, or a view. moss. Your home may well be the most And yet all of these things are resolved into expensive thing you’ll ever touch, and a number. We distill a home and all it means while it is far more valuable than that, this into a single number. That number allows becomes its predominant quality. That your home to be exchanged for some!–! uncanny dichotomy is tough on you!–!it or the entirety!–!of someone else’s home. has a psychological impact. As Anthony And that number goes up. Relentlessly. Vidler notes in The Architectural Uncanny, We distil the apparently benign home the uncanny is associated with the twin into pounds and pence, and through this spatial phobias of agoraphobia and it becomes a financial instrument!–!a kind claustrophobia, amongst other anxieties. of transubstantiation into a strangely Your home just got more expensive. Can familiar but incongruous thing. Cognitive you feel it? dissonance emerges, ringing out from The housing crisis compromises our the gap between the use and the meaning ability to develop autonomy!–!infantilising of the building. Just like in the stories of us. One of the many minor spin-of efects ETA Hoffman or Edgar Allan Poe, there is of the crisis is that people are leaving a motif in the contemporary UK housing the familial home later. Leaving home is an market!–!the contrast between the secure important symbolic and actual transition and homey interior and the dreaded for young people; a cultural moment invasion of an alien presence. This contrast whose meaning and importance is deeply is made more fearsome because the two ingrained, yet being distorted by the forces are apparently the same thing. Your home of capital. A government has failed when just got more expensive. it cannot provide policy that allocates Homes in the south-east of England earn basic goods that enable people to exercise more money than most of the people who their autonomy. For this young-adult live in them. Even the Prime Minister of generation, the government has failed to Great Britain experiences this. As shown provide access to stable, safe, secure in his recent tax return, since he became housing. For many, a home is completely PM his house in Notting Hill earned out of reach, meaning a sufocating comfortably more than his salary. extended stay in a place you don’t want to That idea, that an inanimate object earns be. As a generation we’ve been sold the more than you, is unnerving, uncanny idea that owning your own home is an even. The German word for uncanny is important ambition, but that rug is being unheimlich, which directly translates as pulled from under our feet. something like ‘un-homely’. People form bonds with places, and We have accepted this reality of market- the bond with our home is particularly defined housing as the norm, and the powerful. Where we sleep, away from public housing crisis along with it. Sometimes display, where we have the most agency. it is talked about as if the problem When you feel at home, you feel right.

23 The length of time we spend somewhere Britain’s youth should not be tolerated. KEEPING UP APPEARANCES almost gave up on the city. The year influences the attachment we have to a It is a minor version of the placelessness Tom Dyckof before, New York nearly went bankrupt. place, but that is not to say that we don’t experienced by refugees and migrants, Deindustrialisation and suburbanisation form bonds quickly. It’s not that the home like those currently languishing in were emptying out most other cities. needs to be a consistent location for a the Calais Jungle. London had lost a quarter of its population lifetime (although that is what some people The lack of autonomy and the uncanny since the Second World War. The suburb, aspire to), rather there is a universal need in housing are shown up in the cultural not the city, had become again the to have a place, which may change, but activity around housing. Paying for housing landscape of aspiration. which is secure, and not haunted by has become a ritualised dance!–!perhaps a In Britain, though, another significant uncertainty. Even the reptilian brain seeks way of dealing with the unbearable subject, shift was occurring: social mobility was out a secure place; it experiences place by clothing it in symbol. In Aesthetic You can, I think, discover all you need to increasing at a rate not seen for decades. attachment though it does not have social Theory, Theodor Adorno, citing Freud, know about the British home from a single We remember the 1970s today for the bad emotions. Place attachment is part of the notes ‘that the uncanny is uncanny only episode of George and Mildred. This TV times: the Winter of Discontent, the cold deep history of the human mind. It is because it is secretly all too familiar, sitcom might be 40 years old this year war, the oil crisis. What we forget is that intrinsic. In short, we form our identity which is why it is repressed’. There are the (though inevitably you can find it perfectly much of the decade experienced economic through attachments. While these choreographed symbolic rental deposits, preserved in low-definition glory on boom. The 1970s were uncertain times, attachments can be with a number of things or rehearsed lines about rent hikes. YouTube), its flares, trouser suits and for sure, but they also contained optimism (not least people), places are an important House prices are recited at any given social casual racism somewhat dated, the jokes and incredible experimentation. category of attachment focus. When these gathering, and hysterical shadow boxing a bit hokey. In the late 1970s though, The postwar consensus was coming to an places become uncertain and uncontrollable, is played out through gezumping and George and Mildred was the hit show in the end, geopolitics were shifing, and western it afects us on a profound psychological gezundering. Hallucinogenic PR strategies UK. It had an audience of twenty million. countries across the world were trying level. It becomes harder to go out into peddle luxury flats which are sold to people It spawned five series, a stage show!–! to work out what was next. Five decades the world and be free if you don’t!–!on some who will never see them in the flesh. even a film! Four decades on, its comedy later we now know what was coming: level!–!feel strongly attached to a place. The malaise caused by the housing crisis of manners, of social classes battling on neoliberalism. But at the time of George Society on the whole is more mobile is a kind of homesickness!–!the ache is not suburban lawns about what it means to be and Mildred, neoliberalism was one of than ever, particularly those at the extreme for the physical place but rather for the middle class!–!and its portrayal of the home many possible destinations. The future fringes; the super rich and the global feeling of home. Closing the gap between as a place of financial investment for a was still up for grabs. poor are on the move. This points to the the function and meaning of housing, new nation of small entrepreneurs!–!are all In Britain, national governments both fact that it is not relocation itself which between the financial instrument and the thrillingly prescient. These days, we think lef- and right-wing began jump-starting is undesirable, but rather, the lack of location of one’s innermost residence of the 1980s as the decade that turned an economic shif towards the post- control over one’s own movement. would be a good place to start in the Britain into a nation of homeowners. But no industrial by tinkering with the postwar This estrangement is nothing new!–!Marx treatment of the pathology. The cognitive –!the causes of the worst housing crisis for consensus on state control. Afer 1970, noted in the Economic and Philosophical dissonance between financial instrument generations originated many years (even Conservative prime minister Edward Heath Notebooks of 1844 that the development of and home isn’t just a weird feeling, it is centuries) before this time. Afer George balanced old-school state investment with the rent system had rendered ‘home’ a an injustice that unbalances people. In order and Mildred, the British home would never a new business agenda!–!‘go for growth’!–! temporary illusion at best. Sometimes to tackle the pathology we have to start be the same again. loosening up the free market to stimulate illusions are a good thing though!–!it’s not one step back from tinkering with economic I’ll set the scene. So there’s George and a consumer boom. Credit was deregulated. the ephemerality that is the problem, it is models, we have to understand our more Mildred Roper. George is ‘working class Mortgages became easier to acquire. the complete lack of control. basic requirements. Community Land and bloody proud of it’, his wife Mildred is Private, not state-funded, housing estates We have less autonomy. The feeling of Trusts, massive council housing building aspirational, constantly aghast at George in the suburbs began being built on a scale disempowerment is palpable in the shared programmes, and rent control initiatives ‘showing me up’. Both conform to classic not seen since the 1930s. There was a rented kitchens around the country. will all need to be implemented to tackle British comedic stereotypes: George property boom. The oil crisis, and punitive Autonomy is the universal urge to be the diferent aspects of the crisis. But none the henpecked husband emasculated by public-sector cuts afer Britain’s 1976 causal agent of one’s own life and act in of them are possible without a shif in the the forceful presence of the shrewish but bailout by the International Monetary Fund accordance with one’s integrated self. political discourse, which requires sexually voracious Mildred. For years (insisted upon by a new breed of neoliberal Cognitive control over a place does not an imaginative leap. they’ve occupied the shadier end of the city, economists) were worrying augurs of require ownership in a limited legal sense, Throughout our adult lives there has amateurish Peter Rachman-types, renting what was to come. But by the time George but rather agency. Rent hikes, evictions, been a growing sense that Something out shabby inner-city rooms to lodgers. and Mildred was on its second series, and council relocation are all symptoms Has To Be Done. However, people also treat Times, however, are changing. The council Britain was on the rise again. Industrial of the housing crisis, which afect the the problem as somehow intractable. is compulsorily purchasing their old inner- action, inflation and unemployment were powerless, amplifying autonomy loss. For our generation it is a pretty vital task. city terraced house to build a concrete all falling, disposable income was rising. When forced relocation occurs, people It’s an imaginative task, not just in the flyover, and Mildred is determined to grasp Mortgages flowed once more. House prices experience a grieving process similar sense of designing a better distribution the opportunity to haul herself up the doubled. Britain was finally experiencing to when loved ones are lost. The immense system, but changing the collective psyche. social ladder by moving to the suburbs. the kind of consumer and suburban boom uncertainty hovering over the heads of It would be a feat of human imagination. This is, afer all, the decade when the west it had enviously witnessed in America two

24 25 decades ago. A tentative balance had been John Russell!–!son of a middling family of them by the council. ‘I’m not going to live he can to stop the Ropers from moving achieved between state regulation and merchants!–!did. He was made First Earl in a vertical slum’, insists Mildred. Mildred in, fearing their presence will devalue his the free-market. of Bedford by Henry, and given a patch tends to get her way. family home: ‘that man could drop the The results were incredible. By 1977, of land on the outskirts of London to They are shown round the house by the property market for miles around’. But to the gap between the rich and poor in Britain play with (what had once been the rather defiantly middle-class estate agent Jefrey no avail. The newly freed market has was lower than it had ever been. That, alas, idyllic looking garden of a now banished Fourmile, the humour arising from the spoken. The Ropers buy the house. didn’t last. What did, though, was the Catholic convent). Almost five centuries inability of George to read the signs of The five subsequent series follow the popularising of a particular attitude towards later, Covent Garden contains some of middle-class taste. The house has a patio Ropers’ education in the arts of the the British home: that of the middle-class. the most valuable real estate in the world. (‘pat-ee-o?’, says George, slowly, as he middle class, with comedic consequences. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the ‘middling The Bedfords still own most of it. reads the estate agent brochure)!–!where The fluidity of social class since the 16th sort’ began to bubble up in those nations You didn’t have to be newly ennobled, one might host barbecues, suggests Jefrey century and the consequent insecurity of less predisposed to autocracy. Early though, to deal in houses. The crumbs (‘barber’s queues?’ asks the nonplussed personal fortune has long been modern-day capitalism may have been that fell off the royal table were feverishly George). It has an ‘Adam fireplace’ (‘a a recurrent theme in British literature, born among the moneylenders of Florence, traded by the new middle classes, too. damn fireplace?’!–!yes, I know, the jokes from Jane Austen through Charles Dickens, but it truly flourished in Flanders, the Fortunes could be made, land amassed. are getting a bit thin). The house has all to Alan Bennett. The particular national Netherlands, the ports of the Hanseatic Property developers like Nicholas Barbon, mod cons, including a waste-disposal unit anxiety produced by the topsy-turvy League, and of course, the British Isles!–! son of a leather seller, got rich on the and, the pièce de résistance, an avocado- social order in the 1970s, though, made places where the wings of monarchs and rebuilding of London after the Great Fire coloured bathroom suite, complete with a that decade a golden age for the British monks were clipped, while merchants were (and have continued to get rich on the bidet. ‘I don’t see why you need two loos’, television situation comedy series. Most!–! allowed to soar. endless rebuilding of Britain ever since). grumbles George. like Butterflies, Fawlty Towers, The Fall This new middling sort were a curious There was only one rule in Britain for the Mildred, though, can read the signs. and Rise of Reginald Perrin and The lot. Some were in the professions regulating middling sort as it wheeled and dealed Fashions come and go in the bourgeois Good Life!–!depicted the middle class at the new capitalist economy!–!law, perhaps, in homes: if you can, get hold of the land. home!–!avocado bathrooms one year, Scandi home but under threat, failing to achieve or government. Most were direct Afer all, land is a finite commodity!–!yet style the next. What does not is the middle- fulfilment through material wealth. George participants in the capitalist economy through its perpetual sale and resale it is class behaviour behind these fashions: and Mildred, though, perhaps owed its itself, as merchants. But the activity of all able to produce infinite wealth. to not just own one’s home, but to flaunt particular success to its portrayal of both was governed by one thing: the buying Anyway, back to George and Mildred. one’s ownership. Perhaps Mildred has read the middle and aspiring working class, and selling of commodities –!commodities Another great transfer of property and Thorstein Veblen’s 1899 text The Theory of poking fun at both. like the home. power took place in the 1970s, and millions the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the To cut a very, very long story short, Exactly when domestic property of new John Russells were created. My Evolution of Institutions, in which Veblen by the time the actor playing Mildred, development was ‘invented’ is a moot point. mum and dad were two of them, and so I proposes ‘conspicuous consumption’ as an Yootha Joyce, died suddenly in One thing we can be sure of is that by was born in a starter home in the suburbs essential bourgeois activity!–!buying and 1980!–!cutting both her, and George and the time of the Great Fire of London in 1666 in 1971. The middling sort had risen in displaying things non-essential to life as a Mildred of in their prime!–!the Ropers had it was in full swing. The previous 150 strength in the centuries afer Henry VIII, means of demonstrating your wealth. not quite graduated into fully-realised years had been another unsettling period and by the year 2000 they would become Or René König’s assertion in 1973 that bourgeois behaviour. I like to think, though, of social change, with Tudor and Stuart the majority social class in the UK. As the ‘what distinguishes the bourgeois is that by 2016, George and Mildred have monarchs relinquishing power to unruly 1970s began, though, the working class distinction itself’!–!the need to distinguish succeeded. They’ve had children (a little parliaments while currying favour still dominated the country: two-thirds of oneself in the pecking order, particularly late in the day), and grandchildren. They've with key allies by buying them of with gifs Britons were in manual labour, Britons like when that order, in Britain, changes so traded Peacock Crescent in for something of land and title. Henry VIII’s Protestant my dad (Britons like George, if he could frequently. (The name of the Ropers’ new grander in Wimbledon during the 1980s Reformation famously transformed not ever get a job). The extension of credit, street!–!Peacock Crescent!–!I’m sure, was (such a profitable decade), when Mildred only England’s religion; it also though, in the 1970s, and the invention pointedly chosen by the scriptwriters. Peck, herself became an estate agent. (Well, she revolutionised its structure of property of that new financial instrument, the peck!) The home in Britain thus becomes wasn’t going to wait any longer for George ownership, as lands grabbed from the modern-day mortgage, meant that for the not just shelter, or a nest, but a method of to get a job.) Their children have done OK. Catholic church were given to families who first time the working class were able to fixing identity and wealth!–!especially newly But Mildred, now in her 80s (people live so found themselves suddenly yanked up the consider home ownership. acquired wealth!–!in an insecure world. much longer these days), does worry social ladder. The self-made man!is the The opening episode of George and This perhaps partly explains the deep- about how the grandchildren are ever key theme of the age, an archetype of Mildred has Mildred doing just that. rooted British prejudice against living in going to get on the property ladder. which is Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith’s The husband and wife visit a modern apartments. Owning foundations, as well as Tell you what, though, she should have son who becomes!–!through his ability to neo-Georgian home for sale on Peacock bricks and mortar, makes the middle class held on to that inner-city terrace. wheel and deal!–!the second-most powerful Crescent in an ‘exclusive development’ who they are, or want to be. Have you seen the prices in Peckham and man in the country, chief minister to the in Hampton Wick, south-west London Mildred, naturally, adores the house. Hackney? Be worth a fortune these days. capricious Henry VIII. (‘All BBC2 and musical toilet rolls’, moans The situation behind this comedy, though, Times and tastes, after all, always change. Sadly Cromwell didn’t survive one of George). George, you see, is perfectly happy is that Jeffrey the middle-class estate Land!–!at least until an asteroid hits the Henry’s mood swings. Another minister, to move to the high-rise flat offered to agent lives next door, and does everything earth!–!does not.

26 27 THE HOUSING CRISIS In the UK, house prices are unafordable Rising house prices are not just due to Record low mortgage rates mean it is IN ELEVEN GRAPHS relative to earnings. Unlike other a lack of new homes being built. Two relatively afordable to own your own countries that had rapidly rising house decades of falling interest rates, increased home (even for recent first-time buyers). Neal Hudson prices during the 2000s, the UK saw no mortgage availability, rising income and Otherwise, the cost of renting means significant increase in new homes built. wealth inequality, tax incentives and other many households need state assistance That may have contributed to rising prices factors all contributed to the current or to share with others to lower costs during the boom, but helped to minimise housing crisis. These often-interrelated sufciently. This has led to significant the bust following the credit crunch. factors mean solving the crisis will be overcrowding in high demand markets, The rapid fall in interest rates helped a considerable challenge. This chart particularly in the private rented sector. many households to avoid the worst of the highlights how falling mortgage rates Meanwhile, many older homeowners recession, however house prices are again enabled first-time buyers to borrow more continue to under-occupy large family rising faster than earnings. relative to their incomes, while keeping homes, as the supply of age-appropriate mortgage repayments afordable. housing remains limited.

Fig. 2 First Time Buyer Afordability Chart 14 1990 1980 12 32 AS) R 10 28 8

2007

6 1993 24 4

Mortgage rate (net of MI 2003 20 2 2015 Mortgage reoayments as percentage of income 0% 16% 1.6 2.0 Loan to income ratio 3.2 3.6

Fig. 1 House Prices Fig. 3 Housing Costs by Tenure

United Kingdom 60 120 A All household members with state assistance C B Household head & partner 100 with state assistance C Household head & partner B C without state assistance 40 80 Spain A

60 B A

Ireland 20 40 B C A Housing costs as % of income 20 Nominal house prices (2007/2008 peak = 100) 0 0% 1978 1985 1993 2000 2008 2015 Owned Outright Owned with Mortgage Social Renters Private Renters

28 29 Homeownership remains the most popular However, what the previous chart on first- The consequences of this are that the In reality, we can see that the events and UK housing tenure thanks to various time buyer deposit requirements does nation of homeowners is in decline. consequences of the 1980s and 90s incentives, including rapidly rising prices. not reveal is the overall average income Although the decline in homeownership really only created a generation or two Although owning is relatively afordable, of house buyers. It only considers the did indeed accelerate following the credit of homeowners. For many younger the biggest barrier remains the purchase afordability for actual first-time buyers. crunch, the private rented sector had households today, their only option is cost. Prices at high multiples of household When we compare the average incomes of already begun to grow much earlier in the the private rented sector. Unfortunately, income require either large deposits or very buyers with all households’ incomes, we 2000s, and mortgaged homeownership this sector is primarily designed to high loan-to-value mortgages. Accordingly, find that the average buyer no longer has can be seen to peak in the late 1990s. accommodate short-term occupancies, many first-time buyers require help from an average income. As house prices have The government is now committed to as opposed to long-term household family, or government schemes, while risen faster than incomes, households reversing the decline, although this will be formation. Private rental is generally not very high house prices in London make with lower incomes have found themselves a significant challenge given the current appropriate for the increasing number of mortgages unafordable to all but the most priced out of homeownership. high-house-price market. families that are finding themselves stuck income rich, equity poor first-time buyers. in this model of housing.

Fig. 4 First Time Buyer Deposit Requirements Fig. 6 Households by Tenure, England

14 change in data London 14 Owner Occupiers 12 12 Private Renters

10 United Kingdom 10 8 8

Social Renters 6 6 North West 4 4 Housing costs as % of income Housing costs as % of income 2 2 0% 0% 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 1915 1935 1955 1975 1995 2015

Fig. 5 House Buyers’ Income Fig. 7 Homeownership by Age Cohort 14 Mean Home Mover Income 14 Born in 1960 Born in 1970 12 12 9 10 10

8 Born in 1980 8 8 7 Born in 1990 Mean First Time

Buyer Income 6 6 6 5 Deciles of Income 4 4 4 3 Housing costs as % of income Housing Housing costs as % of income 2 2 2 1 0% 0% 1977 1985 1993 2000 2008 2015 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 At age

30 31 Looking ahead, the challenge is to build Increasing new housebuilding will It is not enough to simply increase Fig. 1 Nationwide, ECB more homes and increase the country’s require increasing output across a range construction; new homes must be the Fig. 2 Council of Mortgage Lenders housing stock by more than 1 per cent per of tenures, and among a range of market right types in the right locations!–! Fig. 3 DCLG English Housing Survey year. Previous high periods of building (the participants. Private-sector developers the trend towards urban living and smaller Fig. 4 Council of Mortgage Lenders 1930s, 1950s and 1960s) ofer some clues and housebuilders will continue to play the households does not mean just building Fig. 5 ONS as to strategies, although these periods largest part, but their output is constrained small flats or large family houses. We need Fig. 6 DCLG, ONS, Census also saw large numbers of demolitions to the rate they can sell in this high- more homes of an average size. Until we Fig. 7 Council of Mortgage Lenders and a lower net change to housing stock. house-price market. A long-term solution seriously tackle the issue of new housing Fig. 8 British Historical Statistics 1988, Recent housebuilding levels are far too low, will require increased delivery by local supply, we will continue to see house DCLG, Webber forcing greater efciency of use: existing authorities, housing associations, build-to- prices rising, particularly where demand Fig. 9 DCLG, Webber houses divided into flats, empty houses rent investors and a range of other people is strongest and appropriate afordable Fig. 10 DCLG, CCHPR AE Holmans 2005 refurbished and non-housing converted. and institutions. supply is most constrained. Fig. 11 Council of Mortgage Lenders

Fig. 8 Change in Population, Dwelling Stock & New Completions Fig. 10 Housebuilding by Size & Type of Property

3.5 New Housing Completions 4+ Bed House 200k Net Change in Dwelling Stock 3 Bed House

3 Population Growth (England) 2 Bed House 2 Bed Flat 160k 1 Bed Flat 2.5 Other 2 120k 1.5 80k Housing completions 1 Annual change in dwellings Annual change 40k 0.5 0 0% 1853 1873 1893 1913 1933 1953 1973 1993 2013 1964 1974 1984 1994 2004 2014

Fig. 9 Housing Costs by Tenure, England Fig. 11 Housing Costs by Tenure

Private Enterprise 60 London 400k Local Enterprise

Housing Associations 50 Unknown 40 300k

30 South East East 20 200k South West East Midlands

10 West Midlands Wales Scotland Housing completions, England Housing 0% Housing costs as % of income 100k Yorks & Humber North East –10 0 –20 1925 1935 1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 2015 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

32 33 IT DOESN’T PAY TO WORK and tell her precisely what the other side from Savile Row suits to gas cookers!–!is and Milwaukee have been efectively Aditya Chakrabortty is briefing about them. defined down to a playground in Zones abandoned by their country. These people Only a bit later does it dawn on me 1 and 2, with its suburban hinterland were once the black middle class. But that what I’ve just heard is an example of either awaiting gentrification (hello, now their manufacturing industries have something I’ve come to call ‘defining down’. Tottenham! Nice to meet you, Peckham!) died, their economic usefulness has It’s a process of narrowing the definition or in purgatory as a dormitory for cheap been expended, and it’s up to them (pretty of your city, your country or your economy labour (Brent, Thamesmead). The new much alone) to deal with crime, the so that it cuts out some industries, some London beloved of government ministers, afermath of the subprime crisis!–!even regions and some people. And where you of The Economist and of the new breed with poisoned water. A couple of years ago, I was writing a piece end up is deciding!–!like the man from of urban economist is really just a If we can take all that in about America about the residents of a council estate in the town hall!–!that some people can be few square miles of industries dedicated then we should also get used to the idea London that was being demolished, to be forced out of your homes, your borough, to helping the rich get richer and feel that a growing number of people and replaced by!–!surprise!!–!luxury flats. your city, because they no longer fit. better. That may be through the tax- places in Britain are efectively surplus It was the usual sorry story and I did the Nor is it just one bumptious bureaucrat. planning factories of PwC, KPMG and to requirements of this new economic usual dutiful things, including calling Go on YouTube and you’ll find a video the rest, estates management, or PR model. In the great defining down, they’ve the local council to find out why exactly from 2014 of the boyish chair of Barnet’s and lovely restaurants. And just so the been written of. And unless we rethink they wanted to dispossess more than a housing committee, Tom Davey. He’s asset-owning middle classes can still the economics of modern Britain, we have hundred households. in a council meeting and he’s claiming feel they have a stake, they get to engage no hope of winning any but the smallest Mid-call to the head of communications that he and his Tory colleagues must be in property speculation. Because when and most provisional victories on housing. for this local authority, he breaks of and providing afordable housing!–!because the average house in the capital now Every so ofen, a society decides asks, ‘Can I say something of the record?’ people are buying them. An objector, makes more money in two days than the which of its citizens really matter. Now, any journalist!–!or just about I think actually a Labour councillor, points average worker makes in one week (the Which get the star treatment and the big anyone who’s ever seen a TV drama about out that the only people who can aford latest figures from the Ofce for National cash handouts!–!and which get shoved journalism!–!knows what that means. It’s them are the wealthy. And the young Tory Statistics), it really doesn’t pay to work. to the bottom of the pile and penalised. code for: I have valuable information thumps the desk, saying, ‘Those are These processes have been going on These are the big choices post-crash that could shape your story, but only if you the people we want!’ Again, redefining for decades, but they’ve picked up speed Britain is making right now. This is how don’t divulge where it came from. who gets to live here. since the crash, so that an entire country we’ve ended up cutting disability benefits We veer of the record, and this guy Perhaps you expect such talk out of is now rapidly being defined down to at the same time as we cut tax for the says, ‘The thing is, on council estates what Tory-run Barnet. Afer all, it’s Thatcher’s a handful of postcodes, cutting out whole super-rich. That’s why we can shrug our we find is there’s a lot of obesity. And former backyard and its True-Blue regions, industries and demographics. shoulders when steel towns of Redcar, benefits claimants. And, y’know, drugs council is now also outsourcing around It is into that radically reconfigured Scunthorpe and Port Talbot go down. and worse.’ 90 per cent of its jobs. But its Labour political economy that we must insert When you have an Ayn-Rand-quoting I listen to this public ofcial, his no- counterparts define down too. debates about housing, because the ex-investment banker put in charge doubt handsome salary paid by the very Think of Focus E15’s Jasmine Stone madness in our property market is only of Britain’s industrial policy!–!even same people he’s now slagging of. And meeting Robin Wales, the mayor of the one major symptom of this wider shif. though he openly says he doesn’t believe I get sufciently annoyed that, right on borough where her family had lived for When we discuss the dire shortage of in industrial policy!–!that tells you deadline when really I shouldn’t be doing more than 100 years, and being told, ‘If you afordable housing in London!–!genuinely how much industry actually matters in anything apart from finishing my piece, can’t afford to live in Newham, you can’t affordable, not the Mickey Mouse, Section this country. I start a row. aford to live in Newham.’ 106-friendly version!–!we must realise I’m not pinning all of this on Sajid Javid Or take a look at Waltham Forest’s core that it’s not a bug, but a feature of the and David Cameron. Rather, I think they ‘So you’re saying that everyone strategy, which states: ‘The Council wants new Britain. Or, in other words: it’s not come afer 30 years of reconfiguration in a council flat is fat or on the to make the borough a place where high- contingent, it’s structural. It’s not driven of the economy. We can argue over precise dole or on drugs?’ and middle-income people choose to live by BoJo, or by Barratt, or by dodgy deals at dates, but broadly speaking Thatcher ‘No, not everyone but you know …’ and can aford.’ Unlike Barnet, these are property fairs in Cannes!–!although they began in earnest the clear-out of ‘And why do you think council tenants places that have historically been home all play their part, of course. British industry and the regions that were are like that? Is it the municipal to London’s working class. But now they’ve In this case, the reality is also the its home, while Blair tried patching architecture?’ had a taste of gentrification, of property metaphor: a city that doesn’t want to house over it. All Cameron is doing is heralding ‘We just think mixed communities speculation and land deals and smarter so many of its people is an economy the endgame. work better.’ shops!–!and they want more, please. that has no home for them. It’s not that The real damage was done by Thatcher!– Britain itself is being defined down, you can’t aford a place in London, it’s that !destroying one in five of all manufacturing All in all, a pleasant 15 minutes. I file so that an entire national economy London!–!in all its global-city, financial- jobs within just 18 months in the early 80s. the piece and am lef with these scribbled is reduced to little more than a bet on centre finery!–!has no place for you. With But of those three prime ministers it’s notes from this of-the-record briefing. London. Meanwhile London!–!the great the benefit of distance, we can see that Blair who’s most interesting. He presided So I obviously ring up one of the women sprawl, the radical hotspot, the light- the African-American factory-working over a decade-long economic boom!–! heading the council-tenants’ campaign!–! industrial hub knocking out everything families of rust-belt cities like Detroit the biggest boom Britain has ever had.

34 35 Yet in those glorious years up until the the newspapers and the experts foretold. hospitals and schools, and for the salaries Wealthy foreigners from dicey places credit crunch began in 2007, across If the 80s recessions pulverised the north, for running our big businesses. stowing their cash in safe and stucco- whole slabs of the country!–!the Midlands, and Major’s slump flattened the Home The justification for all this is that the fronted London postcodes: we know all the north, Wales and Scotland, the private Counties, this meltdown was going to be sectors and regions getting the handouts about that. But much bigger, far more sector created barely any new jobs. The (to quote the numerous headlines from are ‘systemically important’!–!that we had restless forces are now at work. You vast bulk of additional employment came 2008–9) ‘grim down south’. It wasn’t, to give them money so they could go on see this up close across inner London, from the state. So what was formalised thanks largely to Gordon Brown’s rush to making and lending money to the rest with former council estates and new under Blair was the creation of supplicant bail out the banks to the tune of £47,000 of us. How many times have you heard builds springing up at record prices regions, dependent on central London for for every British household. This was politicians and pundits say that that’s with apparently guaranteed yields employment and for benefit payments. paid within just a few months in cash, why the banks had to be bailed out? attached. You see this in City ofce space, Go to nearly any northern cities and loans and underwriting. It was followed Well, look at the figures: in March 2008, the majority of which is now owned by you’ll see the devastation that has by a series of government schemes to help on the very brink of collapse, just over foreign investors. You see this when a US resulted. Leave the train station, owned banks lend, which also proved a helpful three-quarters (76.2 per cent) of all bank investment firm swoops in and buys and run by the public-sector Network Rail, aid to repairing their balance sheets. and building society loans went either up an entire red-brick estate, such as and walk along the main road. There’ll be Finally, there has been the £375 billion to other financial firms or on property New Era on the fringes of the City, and a university or two, which depend of quantitative-easing cash pumped into for mortgages. Less than a quarter (23.8 then jacks up the rents for the households on public financing for some departments markets by the Bank of England. per cent) went to what you might call the living there. and for all its students. A public-sector What all this money did was guarantee productive part of the economy, or non- The property, you see, is valuable. hospital, of course. If you’re lucky, a BBC that the one place to come roaring out financial businesses. You’ll remember A one-way bet in the one-horse economy studio!–!although it’s probably been of the crash was London. House prices in how after the bail-outs George Osborne that is Britain. But the people who live scaled back and the local newspaper is the capital took of, even while the rest and Vince Cable urged the banks to do in them, the ones unable to participate almost certainly on its last legs. And what of the country still faced the prospect of the decent thing and lend more to in this new speculative era? They’ve been about the local private sector? Most negative equity. It began creating full- industry. They even set lending targets. defined out of the city they come from. of it’s gone AWOL, apart from to provide time jobs, even while the rest of the In 2015, bank loans on property or to a bit of retailing relief. Nearly every name UK got by on part-time work and temporary other financial institutions had gone up in the FTSE-100 biggest companies share contracts. And the one group to actually to 86.9 per cent of all lending. The index is now headquartered in London, prosper during the crash was the rich, productive part of the economy, on the along with all their major corporate again largely based in London and the other hand, received just 13 per cent. helpers: the big law firms, accountancies south-east. Take that £375bn of QE Manufacturing received a paltry 1.2 per and PR outfits. money!–!described by Nigel Wilson, boss cent of all loans, despite making up Blair’s supplicant regime was always of the insurer Legal And General as a 10 per cent of the economy. fragile. Now, under the guise of austerity, ‘policy for the rich by the rich’. His view Eight years after Britain’s speculative Cameron has efectively ripped it up, was confirmed by the Bank of England’s economy took down the productive hacking billions out of the welfare system own research, which confirms that the economy, it’s not only back!–!it’s bigger and shrinking the public sector. richest have made the most out of their than ever. This helps to explain why When provincial cities were sites of disbursement of public money. economic growth has become decoupled production they had distinct economies What we’ve seen over the past eight from incomes, so that the chancellor and identities: Cottonopolis Manchester; years has been a massive bankrolling can boast of how Britain outperforms Worstedopolis Bradford; Brummagem of a small elite of business owners and the rest of the G7 even while the average Birmingham. Leeds boy Keith Waterhouse top executives in the south-east by worker earns less in real terms than wrote: ‘If they had soot in their lungs they working- and middle-class households they did before the banking crash. Nor is also had red blood in their veins, and across the country. Let’s count them: the this just a British syndrome. Across the there was such a thing as provincial Thames Tideway, the Channel Tunnel West, real economies are stagnating even pride.’ Now they largely survive on Rail Link, Crossrail (set to be the biggest while the financial economies are awash meagre handouts from the capital, while construction project in Europe). One with cheap money created by central Whitehall ofcials ask them to jettison think-tank totted up all the coalition’s banks. The productive economy remains their identities and become Northern planned spending on transport projects in a slump, even while the speculative Powerhouses. Or George Osborne ofers from 2010 to the election in 2015. economy is pumped up with money. them an elected police commissioner. Londoners enjoyed public investment of As the speculative economy grows, so That is what defining down looks like. £2,731 per head, far outstripping any does the list of things it speculates on. Those spending cuts followed on from other region. The north-east received That means homes in London have the banking crash, which was of course a measly £5 per head. Central London become a globally traded asset class, to made in London. You’d have thought the has also become home for the fees for be bought and sold on. Britons jostling financial crisis would topple the financial managing our public- and private-sector up the housing ladder is a tradition at centre of London. Certainly, that was what pension funds, for building our PFI least as old as the dinner party.

36 37 THE HOUSE-HOME Indeed, this anachronistic tendency consequences for culture. Settlement the instruction of a wife, the training of Mark Cousins can become so insistent that some have entails a site. The planting of crops and a slave, the disciplining of children, and argued that the house is the origin of the domestication of animals requires the breaking in of horses!–!and even the architecture. Forget the pyramids, the some kind of material structure. What is training of oneself, through body building. temples, the palaces; the most fundamental it that is required? It is a structure of This describes more graphically the need before any others, according to the domestication. The animals, the crops, the nature of domestication. It is an act of Abbé Laugier, is shelter. His account very humans themselves move into another extended will, exercised by a man who centres around how natural objects!–!trees, zone. The site will become the place for acts as a patriarch!–!upon his wife, his branches, foliage!–!could be used in the the production and reproduction of what slaves, his children, his animals, and above The house is home to an insoluble problem construction of a primitive hut, made is necessary to life, and the continuation all himself. It is ofen forgotten that for architecture. If architecture is one of cut trees as simple columns and beams, of the generations. Both hunting and the domestication of animals included the important element in building, another with a leafy covering. This polemic on gathering can continue, but a quite decisive domestication of humans. A domestic element is that of the house. Architecture the origin of the first house is still accepted event has occurred from which there unit was only animated and organised by and houses belong to diferent worlds, by the heir to the throne, Prince Charles. is no return. a strong, and at times violent, will. with different histories. They belong to Laugier’s argument, like so many others At the moment that trade, production, It was here, surely, that the other side!–! diferent regimes of existence. in the 18th century, rests on the assumption and the village emerges, the sty has the home!–!began to emerge. For the child, The historian Jérôme Carcopin wrote a that if you want to discover the nature of become what could be thought of as a the physical domestic regime it was book titled Daily Life in Ancient Rome. something you should discover its house, or following the Ancient Greek, born into would have had a powerful efect. In its preface he gives an account of sitting origins. Our analysis here goes in the an oikos. From this process historians The god-like figure of the father would in his study about to work on the volume opposite direction. and social theorists have derived the have dominated the child’s experience when he finds himself looking at a 19th Nonetheless, we are able to ask the idea that the oikos, the house, is the of love and hatred. The domestic system century lithograph of Ancient Rome, seen question: where did people who lived in basis of a system that can be called the clearly inculcated a strong idea of home. from the River Tiber. He remarks that the past actually live? We don’t really know. economy. Unsurprisingly then, when the It was where the child or the adult came the public buildings seem correctly Afer the event of settlement they may Athenian Xenophon wrote a dialogue, from, and sometimes returned. Whatever imagined and sited correctly, but that the have lived in human ‘sties’ within an the Oeconomicus, it appears to be a text claims upon the adult the city placed, rest of the available space of Rome in enclosure made from rudimentary material devoted to estate management. The they would not erase the association of love the picture was mistakenly covered with structures (intended to keep animals relative schema is based upon a married with the home. In one sense, it seems villas. He muses that the villa type did in and other humans and animals out). couple working the economic potential the home is almost invented as a memory indeed exist in Roman history, but that the This type of settlement inevitably of a farm. The house plays its own of the past, even while it still physically error of the artist was to neglect that the responded to economic growth by allowing economic part alongside the fields and remains in the present. It is captured villa was the type of building Romans used the human sty to develop specialised the pasture. This play has led some to in Greek by the idea of nostos, of longing as a country or seaside second home. internal spaces, taking shape according believe that the Oeconomicus is the basis return. Most obviously in the Odyssey, It would not have appeared in the city as to ‘indoor’ production and the needs of of the economy, a term obviously derived the home becomes the object of a a neat little house on a street. Urban living breeding young children. Production from oikos. We are invited to think that passion!–!especially when the return home in Rome, we know from many sources, would not have been seen as distinct from the links between households began is arduous, delayed, and dangerous. produced tenement blocks!–!rightly reproduction. Both would have seemed to be articulated as a market. Even beyond The home has entered the list of those thought to be chaotic, dangerous and like safeguards in the continuous struggle this, some theorists argue that while terms that excite powerful feelings. The overpriced. Certainly the rich and the to exist. Over time, the domestication the polis expresses the public side of the house-home begins its progress from powerful had their palaces, as well of humans was separated from the town, the oikos defined a ‘private’ social the period of settlement. As animal as their extramural retreats. But the more function of agriculture and husbandry relation, a market relation. The town husbandry completely changes the life of pervasive problem for the architectural through the concept of the farm. Early on, or the city should therefore be seen as the an animal, so this domestication wraps historian is that which we may call alternatives to this singular arrangement interweaving of these public and private the infant in a repertoire of feelings: love, the ‘anachronism’. It is not just that the emerged; the sty for humans could dimensions. They will organise the way obedience, loyalty, but also of rebellion, historian commits an historical error be split of from the agricultural site to property law evolves since this question competition, and independence. The concerning the type of buildings that form a specialised collection of sties. of the house is obviously central. human animal has to negotiate a way Romans typically occupied. The real This came to comprise first a village, But this whole view feels too neat, through these possibilities. It is enough to problem is that of the historian altogether, and later a town and permitted the and too premised upon teleology and the say that the home, and therefore the house, and it is one shared in much that is written emergence of a marketplace where idea that what existed in the distant past becomes the very touchstone of feeling. about the house and home. Anachronism surplus produce could be bought and sold. is nonetheless destined to produce the This is so much the case that in the 17th is the tendency, and sometimes the In terms of constructing the genealogy situation we inherit today. It doesn’t take century a new illness had to be coined in compulsion, to see the present in the past. of the house-home the issue of human account of the fact that in Greece there military medicine!–!it was nostalgia, In the lithograph it was vital that the settlement is paramount. When humans was another word for house with very the pain sufered by being unable to return. citizens of Rome had houses, so the model abandoned the life of hunter-gatherers to diferent cognate terms: domos. As a noun Under the power of nostalgia soldiers closest to our own version of the house was adopt a settled form of life!–!of agriculture it signifies the house, but in its verb would eventually put down their weapons falsely represented as the Roman home. and of animal husbandry!–!it had untold form it can also be used to the describe and start to walk home. Military discipline

38 39 was unable to counteract this state, and if were mainly distributed to households. HOW IS THE HOME CHANGING? The home is not changing fast enough, the soldier was not allowed to go he would The postal service was organised in Seventeen British developers, but priorities are finally shifing: simply lie down and die. response to the rise in significance of location over space, affordability over The house-home underwent a the address. While parliamentary local authorities, housebuilders investment, a point of life home over a fundamental transformation during life addressed the citizen, administration and housing associations at home for life. the 19th century under the pressure of the addressed the household. Indeed, a major the forefront of their industries growth of towns and cities. This pressure problem for the homeless was not just the were asked to answer the question. Marc Vlessing, CEO-and pushed London towards an ecological lack of a place to live, but the lack of an co-founder, Pocket disaster; the expansion of the population address upon which the administrative could no longer be accommodated. and financial identity of people depended. The filth, the lack of fresh water, the The more the problems of housing The home is changing in response to absence of sewage disposal was creating increased, the more the household was the changing lifestyle trends of a dangerous health threat to everyone involved with all aspects of life!–!education, The home is changing in response to our generation, with the focus moving in the city. Urbanism appeared initially health, welfare, everything we consider the changing lifestyle trends of away from the tangible space to as the investigation and proposals to deal ‘having a life’. Indeed we could replace our generation, with the focus moving the intangible value-added services with London’s existential problems. These, Le Corbusier’s dictum that ‘the house is away from the tangible space to and sense of community, demanded by along with the overcrowding of houses, a machine for living in’ with ‘the house the intangible value-added services an ever-increasingly transient population. described a vast difculty that became is a machine for having a life’. Too much is and sense of community, demanded by known as the ‘housing problem’. The demanded of the house-home. an ever-increasingly transient population. Reza Merchant, CEO, The Collective emergence of the term ‘housing’ describes Revolutionaries and some architects a process in which the house became a have fought to disengage the house-home Reza Merchant, CEO, The Collective political and administrative object of from having so many functions. They With younger generations becoming concern and reform. Housing as a term have usually entailed soliciting some of more accustomed to sharing cars, taxis designates the precision and regulation its functions to external and collective Home, as a physical place, the source and now homes, we are seeing a middle needed to house the population and it provision. But the house-home, whether and scene of experiences, is threatened ground emerge between buying and quickly became the object of policy at it takes the form of a privately owned by a new ‘connected’ world, virtual, renting where people choose to minimise a local and at a national level. The outcome villa or a flat in social housing, continues unearned and rootless. consumption in favour of accessing their was a series of reforms, and recognition to maintain its centrality in the social homes as and when they need. of the structural issues that underpinned objectives that are placed upon it. Far from Crispin Kelly, director, the housing problem!–!the form of being, in Victorian terms ‘a haven from a Baylight Properties Barry Jessup, director, First Base provision, the market in land prices, the heartless world’, it has become the central access to finance on the part of would-be basis for the administrative state. buyers, and the nature of the rented sector. Moreover, housing in the private sector The home is changing from a stage How homes are made is changing, Towards the end of the century it was has almost expelled the architect. set for domestic life to a space where from speculative, cost-driven, mass clear to most people that philanthropy could Architects never managed to gain control private, public and professional lives production of units to individual not cope with the lower income section of housing. The contemporary architect- coexist and collide. customer-designed homes; from of the population, and that local government designed house is a rarity. Most ofen counting bricks to investing in would have to intervene to build properties it is a type of project in which the architect Isabel Allen, design director, dreams, the future is custom build. at an afordable rent. Clearly, this housing ‘does’ architecture to show what he HAB Housing problem has never been solved. or she can do. It is not a solution, at the Chris Brown, executive chairman, At the same time, new types of society moment, to the housing problem. Igloo Regeneration brought about by industrial production The home is being progressively and the dramatic urbanisation of countries designed to achieve regulatory also deepened the significance of owning compliance, rather than necessarily The afordability crisis presents or renting a house-home, whether it to suit the needs of future occupiers. a new challenge for homes to be took the form of a house, a semi-detached, designed for ongoing commercial part of a terrace, or increasingly in some Steve Sanham, development productivity!–!spacious enough to kind of a block. The growth of democratic director, HUB enable intergenerational cohabitation, reform gradually extended franchise dividable enough to allow Airbnb and increased the proportion of the style asset sweating, indestructible population who could vote. But less noticed The home that captures light and enough to provide a guaranteed future was the increasing centrality in national volume undermines traditional form. income stream for the kids. administration of the household and the householder. The infrastructures of water, Roger Zogolovitch, chairman and Colm Lacey, director of development, sewage, gas, electricity, and the telephone creative director, Solidspace LB Croydon

40 41 The more blurred and flexible the Ten years ago you bought your new THE WAY WE LIVE A Pocket Living boundaries of our life and work become, car from the car showroom, today you Verity-Jane Keefe 1 Bedroom flat the more tightly our homes can be specify the exact car you want and it is customised to fit, sometimes too much built bespoke for you; the home is Hackney Downs, London, E8 so!–!we must build common social changing the same way. Purchase price, 2015, £230,000 spaces to make sure our homes aren’t Single male young professional too self-centred. Tom Bloxham, founder, Urban Splash

Tobias Goevert, head of regeneration + design, LB Harrow There is a danger that for the many, the ‘home’ increasingly means parents, adult ofspring (and partners), Working patterns have changed grandparents and even complete significantly in the 21st century and the strangers, living under the same roof in boundaries between work and socialising smaller and smaller spaces throughout have become more and more blurred, their lifetimes!–!our challenge is to make this is also changing residential models sure that doesn’t become the norm … in large cities. John East, strategic director Peter Harris, director, SUSD for growth and homes, LB Barking and Dagenham

We are making homes that are better networked yet less convivial, Exclusion from conventional home increasingly similar yet less attainable, ownership could give the next more open plan yet less flexible. generation the freedom to invent new and exciting ways to live - what Daniel Hill, head of thamesmead seems like a struggle now could strategy, Peabody Group reform the concept of the home forever as people, places and markets adapt to a new era. The race to build the quantity of housing we need in our fast-expanding Rachel Bagenal, director, cities and the grave danger that puts us Naked House in of creating flats and houses that are not part of real communities means we must proactively drive the answer to this question and build homes that are beautiful, comfortable, afordable and, above all, units of community.

Martyn Evans creative director, developer

In the main, the home as a physical construct is not changing, whereas social and family structures are, which is putting huge economic and physical pressures on the fabric we are inheriting.

John Nordon, design director, PegasusLife

42 43 B Shared Ownership C Starter Home D Purpose Built Student Accommodation 2 Bedroom flat 2 Bedroom house with garden Premium Range Studio flat or ensuite

Family Mosaic, Crouch Hill, London, N19 Hills Residential, Homes for Life Unite Students, One Stratford, London, E20 Purchase price, 2016, 50% share £242,500 Stevenage, Hertfordshire, SG2 Rooms from £204!–!£400 Rent on 50% £725 per month Purchase price, 2013, £199,995 approximately per week Young couple and two rabbits

44 45 E Rentable creative workspace F Property Guardianship G Co-living Living room inc. of-street parking Ex Local Government ofce building Bedroom plus shared facilities

Vrumi, Clapham Common, London, SW4 Global Guardians, Croydon, London, CR0 Old Oak Common, Willesden Junction, £55 per day £500 per month London, NW10 Young male musician Room for £260 per week

46 47 H Airbnb I Local Authority Temporary Homeless J Luxury Retirement Village Entire Studio with bathroom, Hostel Accommodation for families Serviced Apartment plus shared kitchenette and washing machine Studio and communal kitchen luxury amenities

Commercial Road, London, E1 London Borough of Barking and Dagenham Battersea Place Showhome £74 per night Thames View Estate, Barking, IG11 Battersea, London, SW11 Costs unknown 2 bedroom apartment, £860,000

48 49 BEYOND ERGONOMICS a successful metaphor that enables its the world comes into conflict with reality So perhaps the future does in fact Martti Kalliala swif normalisation. This is the essential and needs to be violently adjusted, or arrive, but insidiously: first, through us as task of design. where a metaphor has been stretched to individuals arriving at the future when Ergonomics is the science and art its limits and suddenly snaps. we ourselves become old; and second, of designing things that fit the human body The home might be one our most through the occasional, piecemeal snapping and mind. Or, by extension, ergonomics meticulously maintained normalcy fields, of metaphors we have been relying on is the science and art of comfort; of yet potentially one of the more fragile, for understanding the world. These two designing the artificial world in such a as it is packed with metaphors at their processes work hand in hand: the former way that it requires a minimum amount breaking points. Even ‘home’ itself is contributes a great deal to the latter. In his essay ‘Welcome to the Future of energy!–!physical and cognitive!–!for a one!–!the idea of the single nuclear family So how to design a home in which Nauseous’, Venkatesh Rao sets out to human to adjust and operate. home as established afer the Second to wait for the arrival of the future, a home develop a provisional theory of why For ergonomics to be applicable, if not World War is still the basic underlying for a lifetime? Perhaps by designing the future never seems to arrive. That is, universally, at least across large model through which the home is one that resists both normalisation why we never feel that we live in a future populations (eg, as exemplified by the understood and portrayed. For example, (and the metaphors which bring it about) that we had earlier imagined, but rather Neuferts’ architectural design standards), consider the confrontation between the and the very process of ageing itself. live in a permanent, continuous present. it must presume both an Eigenmensch idea of homeownership and the real The Bioscleave House (Lifespan Extending When we scrutinise our lives 20 years and an Eigenkultur!–!‘standardised human/ workings of financial capitalism. Villa) designed by Arakawa and Madeline ago, it is obvious we live in a very diferent culture ingredients’!–!from which its Conventional wisdom!–!via the second Gins, together known as the Reversible time, but the future future still appears norms can be derived and to which they law of thermodynamics!–!tells us that Destiny Foundation, might give us to lie beyond some fixed-distance horizon. can be projected. The variance in human everything is subject to entropy. some clues. Built around the turn of the For example: think about any depiction anthropometry, biomechanics, cognitive Unless cared for, all is on its way to millennium in Long Island, New York, of the ‘Home of the Future’ from 20 years psychology and cultural literacy is a speedy collapse/death. Accepting this the house, conceived as part of the couple’s ago. In many ways we do in fact live sufciently predictable for everyday things wisdom boils down to establishing campaign to defeat mortality, seems in those futures (via mobile computing, to be generally designable in such a fashion a relationship with decay. One can to dispose of many of the standardised Amazon, Nest, Deliveroo etc), but does that they are not uncomfortable (or don’t kill celebrate it, accept it or temporarily try to cultural ingredients that add up to the it really feel like we do? us) and we are able to use and understand mitigate its efects, but never reverse it. notion of house and/or home. Inside, Rao attributes this phenomenon to them with fairly little assistance. Yet generally we try to ignore it. one encounters an artificial topography a process of normalisation. According Or rather, we understand the parts of As most consumer goods have become that shuns any notion of comfort to him we live in an artificially constructed things we interact with: their interfaces. essentially disposable (and anything or ergonomics. Jenna Sutela writes: ‘Gins and constantly maintained ‘normalcy Most things we engage with!–!whether digital can be constantly updated), we are and Arakawa believed that engaging with field’!–!the general cultural aggregate they are home appliances, digital networks able to remain wilfully ignorant about balance and using one’s body to maintain that we consider to be normal. New or public services!–!are in reality much the decay of our material possessions. equilibrium stimulates the immune things, regardless of whether they too strange, occult and complex for us even Or we decorate spaces in a ‘shabby chic’ system, and eventually stops the ageing are technologies, social norms or services, to begin to understand in their totality aesthetic!–!the 21st-century version of process. Comfort, on the other hand, enter the normalcy field by extending in any meaningful way. It comes as no Ruinenwert!–!celebrating the visual efects was understood as a precursor to death. metaphors, as skeuomorphic heuristics: surprise that the interfaces of these things of (simulated) distress-over-time inflicted […] They describe a house leading its users the car arrived through the motorised are generally designed around metaphors. upon their surfaces and furniture. into a perpetually ‘tentative’ relationship carriage metaphor, the World Wide Web An important aspect to understand about It is only when it comes to the decay with their surroundings. The landscape through the document/scroll metaphor, Rao’s concept of the normalcy field is of our own bodies that we truly need to of the house, in combination with the the computer in your pocket through that it is distinct from reality!–!it is a model confront reality. Slowly what was body’s friction, produces an aesthetic the telephone metaphor, Airbnb of the world mapped onto the world itself. once normal to us!–!certain ranges of of resistance to corporeal complacency, through the bed and breakfast metaphor, Ergonomics spans this distance. It is how motion, motor functions, appetite for keeping its users young and agile. and so on and so on. Thus the sensation the field interfaces with the world itself. novelty!–!starts to deteriorate. The scope Everyday you are practising how not to die.’ of a continuous present: rather than The title of Rao’s essay, ‘Welcome to the of what is ergonomic to us decreases, While it is unclear whether the move forward, the so-called normalcy Future Nauseous’, is a reference to what as does the scope of metaphors available Bioscleave House actually achieves its field is being continuously stretched he sees as the obsolescence of Alvin to us for digesting new things. Think goal (no one lives in it and Arakawa and through time to cover and integrate Toffler’s idea of ‘future shock’!–!the of your own experiences of introducing Gins have in fact both recently passed ‘new things’. (In fact Rao himself goes as experience of the future hitting us at such a new technology to an elderly relative! away), certainly the ethos and tools of far as to say that we live in a mangled speed that we experience it as an instant –!or of being the elderly relative. the Reversible Destiny Foundation find version of the 15th century, at which existential trauma. Rather, what Rao On a personal level, each individual is resonance among transhumanists time the bulk of our ur-metaphors were sees as an imminent scenario is ‘future confronted by the future through the and those inclined to so-called ‘paleo’ established.) Here the question of design nausea’, or the experience of a breakdown process of ageing. At the time of writing lifestyles and ‘natural movement becomes important. Anything that is of one great, shared sense of ‘normal’. it is the only future that has consistently patterns’. Maybe an architectural to become successful and widely adopted In other words, a breakdown of shared arrived to every human being that has response!–!a home beyond metaphors, needs to be brought into the world via metaphors. It happens when our model of lived to an advanced age. beyond ergonomics!–!is on its way.

50 51 HOUSING BY STANDARDS This concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk responsibility for the content of a building, of external stairs (to ensure level access). Finn Williams has not only defined the historical canon and its role within the city. When the Mayor of London recently of 20th century architecture, it has cast In any typical new residential consulted on rewriting these standards, expectations about the role of the architect development in the UK, many of the most only three architecture practices submitted we still struggle to reconcile with the important decisions will have been made a response. Given that the guide has realities of 21st century practice. Too many before any architect is involved. had such a critical and direct efect on the students of architecture enter education The question is whether architects follow design of homes in London, surely it is under the false promise of a starring role. Zaera-Polo’s lead and design within these time that architects give the standards Too many architectural courses exist in a conditions, or whether the conditions proportionate attention as a design project. In 1902 the Wertheim department store clientless, budgetless, zero-politics vacuum themselves can be a subject for design. The intended audience for a residential in Berlin commissioned 12 leading which perpetuates this myth. And too The size of a residential development development is largely driven by the architects and artists to design a series ofen, the contrast between the freedoms of is largely dictated by negotiation with the concept of ‘viability’. Viability assessments of full-scale ‘modern interiors’ as models education and conditions of practice leave planning authority, by national and were first introduced in London in for a new German domestic life. A dining the brightest students without the faculties local policies, and by housing standards the 2000s to justify extracting greater room by Peter Behrens was singled to challenge the system itself. Beyond the covering everything from accessibility contributions for afordable housing out by a contemporary critic as ‘one of the pages of the architectural press, the reality and sustainability to safety and space. from developers, ofsetting the gradual most interesting of the whole series. is that most British homes built today are Many architects see this bureaucracy as withdrawal of public subsidy. In 2012 It is a uniform creation where every shape the antithesis of a Gesamtkunstwerk!–! an inconvenience!–!boxes to tick, obstacles the concept of viability was baked is subject to the intention of an orderly they possess a kind of complete authorless- to work around, red tape to be cut. By into the planning system through the will!…!A basic rectangular form!…!appears ness. There were 629 new build homes assuming that policies and standards National Planning Policy Framework, as flat ornament on the walls!…!in the showcased on Dezeen in 2015, which constrain creativity, these architects are ensuring that the burden of funding porcelain service, the knotted carpet, represents a small fraction of the 142,890 reconciling themselves to compromise. public infrastructure would still allow for and in relief on the silverwares’. Behrens’ homes constructed across the UK in the But if we see policy as part of the design developers to make a reasonable profit. display of total design proved so popular same period. At least two-thirds of process it becomes a powerful creative tool. In other words, the total income for a it was sold as a complete room five times. new homes in the UK are not designed The Rule of Regulations and SUB-PLAN: development!=!land!+!development costs!+ In some ways, it did become a model by an architect at all. A Guide to Permitted Development, both planning obligations + 20% profit. for the modern German interior; Behrens Where architects are involved, the written in collaboration with David Knight, However, the hard-nosed clarity of this went on to mass-produce a comprehensive growing technical, legislative, and economic show how visualising the efects of policy equation is obscured by poor consistency, catalogue of domestic products for AEG. complexity of the building process has on housing can make it a tangible field transparency, and accountability in how But it also helped establish a model gradually flattened their influence to for imaginative design. viability assessments are executed. Most of architectural micro-management over the facade!–!sandwiched between the The instrumental relationship between assessments are protected from public the home that remains a misleading ideal increasingly powerful forces of economics policy and the design of the British home scrutiny due to ‘commercial confidentiality’. for the profession. and politics, or budget and bureaucracy. is most evident through space standards, As a result, even Boris Johnson concedes, Over the last century, architects have In the UK this results in the practice or their lack. In 1961, the Parker Morris ‘the whole viability assessment business is used model interiors as a compelling and of ‘jacketing’!–!using architects to design Committee report Homes for Today and something of a dark art’. Behind closed familiar medium to communicate new ideas facades for readymade standard house- Tomorrow established space standards doors is an industry that excels in about the home to the general public!–! types to secure planning permission. based on household activities that became fine-tuning the figures to maximise profits, particularly at world fairs and expos, where Some developers hedge their bets by mandatory for all UK public housing. These while delivering an acceptable level of the domestic interior is a common format submitting parallel planning applications standards were withdrawn in 1980 by a public benefits. Their results predetermine that crosses cultural borders. Exhibited for ‘traditional’ and ‘contemporary’ new Conservative government concerned how much afordable housing can be interiors ofer a full-scale doll’s house elevations of the same internal layout. Once at the cost of housing, who argued the provided on a site, and how many to exercise complete design control, from permission has been won, the ‘planning market would provide the right type of penthouses must cross-subsidise it. the form of the space, to the fixtures and architects’ are ofen dropped for cheaper homes. Since then, the average size of Spreadsheets have become the fittings. The domestic products that spinof subcontractors or in-house technicians. British homes has shrunk to the smallest battleground where the future form of the from these interiors have become a kind Alejandro Zaera-Polo recognised this in Western Europe. In response, the Mayor city and who it is for are played out. Yet very of hallmark of the star architect!–!Alvar power shif in 2008 when his General of London introduced the London Housing few architects are even literate in the basics Aalto’s vase, Le Corbusier’s wallpaper, Theory of the Building Envelope conceded, Design Guide in 2009. For better or worse, of viability. If viability is more an art than Aldo Rossi’s cofee maker, Renzo Piano’s ‘the envelope has become the last realm the guide moulded an entire generation a science, it should be subject to the same refrigerator, Peter Zumthor’s peppermill, of architectural power’. Zaera-Polo’s claim of residential architecture in the capital. critique and creativity as other more visible Zaha Hadid’s kitchen tap, or David on the importance of the border between The consequence has been a ‘New London aspects of the planning process. There Chipperfield’s cofee spoon. Henry van inside and outside was a pragmatic Vernacular’ defined by east-west facing is a role here for architects to use ‘creative de Velde not only designed the architecture, response to the briefs he was increasingly linear blocks (to avoid single-aspect north- accounting’ to find alternative ways of interiors, furniture, and cutlery of being asked to answer!–!essentially facing homes), an array of balconies (to building more socially viable developments. his Bloemenwerf house, he designed wrapping pre-determined volumes with provide each home with a minimum of five The afordability of a residential matching dresses for his wife. attractive skins. But it also abdicated sqm private outdoor space), and an absence development is clearly one output of

52 53 this viability equation. In fact, in the workmanship. These standards limit both absence of government grants, afordable the design of new homes and their shelf life, housing is being cross-subsidised by by prescribing products that typically have increasingly high-value private market a design life of 25–45 years. housing!–!polarising provision at the Even within the first five years, the top and bottom ends of the scale. For the ubiquitous housing that results from this house buyers between these extremes, formula shows signs of wear and tear; the afordability also depends on the rainscreen cladding is dented, the Siberian availability of mortgages. Architects and Larch timber is stained, or the render is planners may consider mortgages beyond cracking. Within 50 years, most of today’s their influence, but mortgages have a new housing will need to be completely re- formative influence on the shape of our clad, if not re-built. Meanwhile house buyers homes and our cities. are taking out leases of 99 or 125 years on the In the United States, the Federal same properties. Housing Administration (FHA), created There is nothing wrong with impermanence under Roosevelt in response to the Great if it has been considered. According to Depression, provided government subsidy Frank Dufy ‘there isn’t any such thing as to mortgage lenders!–!as long as they a building. A building properly conceived agreed to their terms. From 1934 until is several layers of longevity of built the early 1960s, the FHA’s Underwriting components’. The problem is that the lifespan Manual imposed mortgage terms explicitly of housing is being delegated to standard promoting cul-de-sac single-family warranty products. But what if warranties suburban homes, and prohibited racial were designed with as much ambition and integration. These standards guided invention as the details of an architect- real estate practices across the US, designed house? What efect would a 200-year producing sprawl and segregation on an warranty have on how we design the home? enormous scale. The FHA’s Manual was Space standards, viability assessments, arguably the most influential publication mortgage terms, and standard warranties on American urbanism of the 20th are just part of a preset bureaucratic century!–!despite being written without framework for UK housing that architects any design input. are expected to step around. There is Mortgage terms continue to exert a common pattern here; some of the most a powerful influence on the form of the powerful design tools lie furthest from British home today. For example, the architect’s accepted remit; and the the requirement for an eligble property to more formative the decision, the less be ‘habitable’ excludes many renovation, architectural intelligence goes into making conversion and self-build projects!–!while it. Bureaucracy is the real architect of raising the threshold of afordability and the contemporary British home. reducing our ability to better use existing An understandable response would be buildings. Might architects help redesign to try to eliminate bureaucracy. But recent debt in a way that increases afordability? government attempts at ‘streamlining How long a building will last is rarely the planning process’, have led to more even addressed in an architect’s brief, or uncertainty, complexity and litigation. their response. A building’s lifespan is the Like the Hydra, every attempt to remove result of industry standards that largely go bureaucracy ultimately breeds more of it. unquestioned!–!despite falling increasingly The alternative is to recast our short of the durability we might expect. expectations about the role of the architect The National House Building Council to include redesigning these standards. (NHBC) monopolises the market for That means learning to see bureaucracy not construction warranties in the UK, as a constraint, but as a field for architectural covering 80% of newly built homes. Their creativity. It also means letting go of the idea Buildmark warranty ofers ten years of of designing the cutlery, and learning how guaranteed protection!–!but only when the to design without drawing. In this way, the home conforms to the NHBC’s own set model interior might still be a relevant tool to of standards on detailing, materials, and redesign the conditions of the modern home.

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1 6 11 17 The front door seems to fl oat A common wardrobe of A kitchen on an outer surface Decades provides qualities above the pavilion’s portico, household objects dominates of the totem relates to the of space and surface, not just as the exhibition itself is the central space, and includes imagined social spaces between functional programs. This offset from the walls and fl oor a curated selection of archive the structures. hard surface below a bright of the building. pieces from fashion designer window could be for a variety J.W. Anderson. 12 of activities, including work 2 The wooden fl oor of the pavilion or leisure. On climbing the steps, the 7 has been totally concealed by visitor navigates around an The junction of three daybeds. linoleum. This threshold links to 18 oversized replica of a Georgian When combined, this furniture the back corridor (which has The square bed in Decades is panel door, whose glossy assumes ambiguous forms. no time period). designed not to force either a black surface is the focus for This particular confi guration specifi c use or family structure. the Giardini’s central axis. recalls the Roman triclinium, 13 or dining couches; the platform In Years’ room, a grey party 19 3 serves as a place to eat. wall represents the structural One half of Decades is In the central Hours space, services conduit of the naked dominated by an inhabitable modular daybeds are arranged 8 apartment architectural model. core, which contains all in various confi gurations With diameters of 2.6m, the infrastructure. (alone, a pair, and in a two infl atable spheres in 14 group). They become spaces Days dominate their context. From the perspective of a 20 for solitude (work or rest), Visitors can climb inside fi nancial institution, the defi ning The massive front door, mounted conversation and recreation. and experience their prints element of the home is a toilet on its triangular supporting from the interior. and hand basin. structure, as seen on leaving 4 the exhibition. The daybeds are comprised of 9 15 three elements: a frame, a ledge Between each room are breaks Two types of wall are shown and a mattress. Here they are in the continuous wall element. in Years, the permanent seen in powdered steel, corian These deep, coloured thresholds structure (represented in grey) and linen, but these could contain mats inscribed with that comprises the shell of be easily swapped for other the text ‘a home for...’ and their the building, and the internal materials. Thus a universal form rooms’ time period. This image partitions added by residents can assume diverse fi nishes. shows the threshold between (represented by yellow masonry Days and Months. here and a transparent perspex 5 stud wall as seen in 12). The pavilion interior is painted 10 Jack Self with black, and all natural light The staircase in the Months 16 This photographic essay is excluded. An offset white wall room leads to an upper level View from Years into Decades, by Thomas Adank with the marks the height of a domestic and bedroom. It sits behind showing one of the fl oor mats contribution of Johann Besse. Finn Williams and Shumi Bose ceiling, and the rooms are a pair of doors that can be in full, the coloured threshold It was realised on the 15th bathed in horizontal light of closed to create a totally private and the varying light conditions and 16th of May 2016 at varying intensities. space within the ‘totem.’ between rooms. the British Pavilion in Venice. Typical floor plan showing pinwheel Site plan of Quay House, Canary Wharf. Welcome home. This is your communal living room, core structure The dashed line indicates the DLR elevated which you share with a number of other apartments on line that cuts across the site your floor. You normally spend a couple of hours here each day entertaining friends, socialising with neighbours, working or relaxing. The modular daybeds allow you to tailor the space for diferent forms of labour, rest and play. You describe it as your own private living space; it feels like a shared home, but not a public room.

You share a number of common objects with your neighbours!–!from practical things that are infrequently used (like power tools) to objects you can better aford together, like clothes. You keep these objects in a large transparent ‘garderobe’, or communal wardrobe. Even though you live in the centre of the city, your rent is not expensive. You use your savings to invest in shares of the company that owns and manages your building.

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72 Interiors are formed solely by transparent Space is not predetermined in function View of tower proposal for Quay House, Canary Wharf garderobes and daybeds

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0 1 Interior view demonstrating the free plan and a garderobe Garderobe Rammed earth (London clay) bathroom detail wall unit configured as a kitchen (£625pcm per person) Daybed Interior view of a typical apartment (£625pcm per person)

COMMON STOCK roof is only perceived as an existential threat by those directly underneath it, while those on the Ideology never exists in the abstract. It is not ground floor have no motivation to contribute to a noun in this sense, but a verb. Ideology its repair. On the other hand, when the block is happens. Or, more precisely, ideology ‘takes owned in a cooperative it becomes more place,’ (an expression that properly describes its egalitarian: since what is owned is a share of the dual temporal and spatial qualities). Our beliefs whole, everyone wants to repair the roof. In this about the world only exist at the moment they model, each resident has the same investment in become tangible. A thought has no agency, but the care of the common structure and spaces. when it becomes an action it has consequences. This is the opposite of a model based on private This is especially true of the acts that create and individuated ownership. artefacts and objects, which continue to exert influence long after their authors are no longer One might assume the sharing economy in present. In the end, it is not enough to describe the built environment would be mainly concerned the reality we want to inhabit; we must build it. with this question of common interest. However, to date it has only produced one type of housing To become normalised and accepted, ideologies ‘product,’ a kind of pay-as-you-go access must adopt a form that is comprehensible to that disenfranchises the user from ownership the audience of their era. The welfare state was altogether, and thus any asset appreciation. a collective will towards a universal standard Since individual freedom of movement is of living. Today, that has been recast as the essential for integration into the global economy, impractical dream of a failed socialist utopia. this model uses the apparent smoothness of Yet strangely, when those same desires are arrival and departure to create an exploitative couched in the contemporary language of and inherently precarious domestic condition. Silicon Valley they become somehow trendy. The phrase ‘sharing economy’ neatly grafts The time period of hours immediately suggested communism directly onto capitalism – which is to a form of shared ownership that could address say, it allows for the appropriation of solidarity some of these issues. To own an object or a and goodwill by neocapitalism. The structure of space for a few hours is to possess it when you the sharing economy may be communitarian, need it and to relinquish it when you don’t. but control of the means of production (the apps In the context of housing there is an ecological and algorithms used to coordinate decentralised dimension too: if we pool our resources exchange) is firmly concentrated in the hands of together we can have a better quality of life by corporations. If the users of a sharing economy dramatically reducing our material requirements. platform were also its benefactors, it would be We might not be able to afford a home with indistinguishable from the Soviet fantasy of a a large room for special occasions. But if we computerised communist economy. chip in with a number of others we could afford to collectively buy a house with a large room, Sharing is a particularly relevant concept in the then share its occupation. The same is true design of housing because, unless the model is of even the most banal domestic object: it is monastic, the home is always a space occupied really necessary for each apartment to have a by two or more people. Its use and resources vacuum cleaner, when a single one between us have to be negotiated, which can become either would do? If we split the cost it will be cheaper, a source of communality or conflict. When consume less resources, and be just as efficient. the atomic financial unit of the house is the If we are prepared to share, we can have more. bedroom (as in the shared house), the additional common spaces (such as a living room, kitchen Rather than concentrate on how space within or bathroom) can become highly contested the home could be shared over the course of and financialised. The amount one member several hours, this model imagines a new type of pays in relation to the others can produce a domesticity altogether – one not carved out commercial hierarchy. But when the home itself from within the existing space of the home, but is the whole financial unit (as with a single-family added to it. The focus has been on how sharing home), the negotiation of space is no longer might provide a resident with amenities they driven by economic competition but solidarity. could not afford by themselves. Every resident has an equal stake, and its overall success becomes a common concern. The financial system used to fund the housing At the scale of a housing building, like a tower model’s construction is a very long-term block, this principle becomes even more corporate loan (in this case fifty years) that important. If the basis for ownership is the single allocates shares to residents in proportion to apartment, then maintenance of the structure their repayments. Long-term debt is an excellent itself requires political administration: a leaking way to create affordable housing because it produces three types of sustainability: social, apartments that could be collectively occupied. financial and environmental. Although a large Each floor features a large communal living room amount of interest is paid over the half century, shared between sixteen people (one of these this makes monthly payments very low. And rooms was represented in the central space of because the building has to last such a long the British Pavilion). Since the room is provided in time, any maintenance costs impact on profit. addition to your own apartment it is a space you're This drives energy and material efficiency. Unlike not forced to use, but can choose to occupy. a cooperative, which relies on up-front cash Sharing can be a luxury, not a compromise. buy-ins from its residents, this organisation The interior spaces are dominated by two conveys shares based on time of occupation. pieces of furniture designed by Jack Self and Those shares are not forcibly sold if the resident Hesselbrand. The first of these is a daybed. The bed and sofa are converging: in 2014 the bed moves away. They get the best of both worlds: In 2014, for the first time ever, the bed overtook freedom of movement and security of investment. the sofa as the most used piece of furniture overtook the sofa for the first time as the most used The value of the shares will naturally fluctuate in the British home. This was primarily due piece of furniture in British homes. with the market value of the building. In other to a decline in live TV and rise in on-demand words, the shares act as an easily exchangeable services. Simultaneously, the amount of time derivative product. It is important not to see this spent working from home is increasing, as question of ownership and financing as in remote email becomes more common. So too Our current economic model makes mass ownership any way separate from the architectural model. is the number of hours dedicated to online impossible in the long run. socialising. The bed has become the primary This form of finance heavily preferences small space of production and reproduction, of work, sites with high density. The model therefore takes leisure and rest. It is our main social furniture, Communal storage suggests new ways of sharing the typology of a high-rise tower block, applies as indeed it was before the 16th century. The long-term financing to reduce the cost per daybed is comprised of three elements: a simple personal objects; a transparent structure questions person drastically, and then adapts the typology. steel frame, a long shelf and a mattress. The To demonstrate an example, a tower in London's form is intended to remain universal, even if our relationship with everyday domesticity. Canary Wharf produced the following results: the material selection changes. The economic status of its owner should not privilege access Height: 270m to design. The daybed appears in several In a fair and just society, we will collectively own Gross Internal Area: 65,964m2 configurations in the show, as a place of work, the sharing economy. Floors: 92 (incl. 2 basement) social activity, and combined into a gestalt soft Occupied floors: 87 platform. This hints at the model’s pursuit of non- Average floor area: 717m2 functional space – the rooms, like the furniture, Land value (2015): ~£7,684/m2 are not predefined in their use. British fashion designer J.W. Anderson has curated Site area: 1883.7m2 the clothes of a common wardrobe shared between Maximum site value: £26,600,000 The second piece of furniture is a ‘garderobe,’ Construction cost (2015 estimate): or secure wardrobe. This is a totally transparent, households. £178,102,800 acrylic structure whose scale and density allows Loan amount: £208,000,000 it to act as a wall element as well as storage. Fixed interest rate: 5% per annum It aims to present a critique of ownership by The bed today is a place for production and Loan term: 50 years forcing new relationships between both the Monthly loan repayment: £944,608 resident and their objects, as well as between reproduction, working and relaxing, socialising Total interest paid over term: the objects themselves. The garderobe and sleeping. £358,765,183 juxtaposes our most prised possessions with Tower capacity: 1392 residents the most banal domestic utensils – artwork abuts Base rent: £650 per calendar appliances, heirlooms alongside laundry, Each apartment possessing its own vacuum month per person mops meet mixers and medicines. In Home Market value on completion: Economics, this garderobe presented the cleaner is neither necessary, nor environmentally ~£440,000,000 common objects of a communal household. In addition to the spare futon and record player, responsible. The model adapts the structure and design the curated common clothing from fashion of the high-rise to explore new forms of shared designer J.W. Anderson provoked questions domesticity. Traditionally, the tower features a about the limits of what we are prepared to share. When we combine our resources, the result is more lift and stair core with a central corridor leading than the sum of the parts. to apartments. Here, the core was broken down The possibility of a truly egalitarian and socialist into its constituent elements to form a double model of housing emerging from within pinwheel supporting a steel deck system. There the capitalist paradigm is an explicit goal of are no internal supports, unless one considers this project. This research and proposition the eight circular wet rooms as large inhabitable represent an attempt in that direction. Through columns. As the core was pulled apart it eliminated the exhibition format, and through graspable the corridor, while creating spaces between scales, this work seeks to normalise that ideology. DAYS Home is where the Wi-Fi is

Åyr You’re constantly on the move, from city to city around the world. It doesn’t matter where you are, you can always climb inside your inflatable retreat whenever you need! to –!this is your portable and personalised space, where you can make yourself at home. To feel at home here you only need a Wi-Fi connection, which you use to flit between your social media feeds, entertainment, virtual and commercial consumption.

You used to think of inflatables as either practical infrastructure, like the air bed, or pure entertainment, like the children’s bouncy castle. Now your personalised spheres ofer a new type of space, one that responds to the transience of your global mobility and is just as unique as you. No two are the same. So come on and climb inside, wherever you are you can get away from it all and reconnect with your friends. Relax!–!what’s new on your screens?

84 Portrait 1, Åyr Portrait 2, Åyr Portrait 3, Åyr URBI ET ORBI by other means than the limited material progressive. It had to be replaced by pods, Sublimation is the process whereby solids turn resources of the whole earth or the alienating pads and all sorts of technical cocoonings into gas without having to pass through the The Achilpa aboriginal tribe planted its sacred consumerist factory floors; self-realisation that offered a much more versatile realm for liquid state. It is an appropriate phenomenon pole wherever their hunting and gathering was to be reached beyond the secularised becoming thanks to their reduced presence. to describe how early neoliberalism, with took them, so that they displaced the centre religious and familial values and beyond the In the effort of dematerialising architecture, the its focus on rapid commodification, creates of their world with the pole and maintained confines of the household and the rigidity of avant-garde proposed a minimal architecture bubbles of all kinds: dotcom bubbles, the communication with the sky while being norms. Under the disguise of liberation, a new that left bodies free as they dwelled without subprime bubbles, tulip bubbles, filter continually on the move. The Pan American emotional framework was to be found. In other buildings. bubbles. In this context, the membrane airline was only able to become truly words, mentalities and techniques to be ‘who became the architecture of choice and came international by opening hotels offering an u wanna be’ while being a commodity, to be The promise of nomadic freedom projected to prevail as the no-frills solution to the fleeing American home-away-from-home at home everywhere while calling nowhere home, by postmodern nomadism and immaterial incommensurability of sublimated things. each of their destinations, setting many to be individual and more divided than ever. architecture was freedom. With some historical of the standards of the global hotel industry distance this was not realised. It separated just enough to delineate their in the process. The Feel At Home add-on on The worldly project gained its domestic The philosophical dominance of space and essence and hold their meanings. It generated my UK mobile allows me to order a series of essence by forming against the deceptions the physical dominance of resources conflated just enough difference to make value real enough inflatable environments from Guangzhou in of postwar family life, in the attempt to create the freedom to move your body around with to be exchanged. Yet, if membrane architecture China while at a friend’s barn in the depths of the promised home that never was. Proto- liberty. Interestingly, the emergence of this managed to concretise the utmost reduction of France’s Pyrenees mountains. I have network entrepreneurial youths started by shedding model of liberation coincides with a general the materiality of value, it wasn’t enough. A new and power; I can reach my colleagues, their own parents to spread true homeyness sophistication of the liberal cosmology (ie, ground had to be invented. One which was even relatives and memories; I am at home in this everywhere. They planned a homebound value system). Container standards and less material and which literally potentialized removed place I had never been to before. liberation when home alone, tried to seize international measures established during the humanity by mechanising dialectics, that is, the means of reproduction by being true to Second World War had conferred commodities the difference between 0 and 1. Nomadism has never been about being their selves and crafted emancipating devices with the capacity to move virtually unbounded homeless, nor about being home everywhere. in their dad’s garage while yearning for a on the planet. The new frontier was the The golden age of membrane architectures It relies on having the possibility to orientate Playboy bachelor pad. putting-into-motion of the feelings of the world. marks the last gasp of modernist architecture emotionally and symbolically while before it is dragged by the neoliberal being in foreign spaces. The cosmicisation The ambition was seductive and, in fact, rather The liberalisation of sentient bodies required wave. Like a skin, a screen and a facade, of unknown territories always needs to go fair. The experience of the modern home an emotional infrastructure devoid of the the membranes defined and mediated the through a consecration. was mostly soured with the lived reality of rigidity and locality of the household. They relationship between interiors and exteriors, housing. The relief was to be found outdoors required an infrastructure that could formalise homes and worlds, selves and others, and This cosmic rule of existence also applies in turning the wild into a fun garden. The associations beyond the familial format and overlaid a virtual topography with no gravity to the cybernetic nomadism of our parents. project thus started with the construction that could weigh the value of individuality nor perspective. The domestic pods, placed The inflatable pods, relaxation pods, sensory of bubbles designed to accommodate the beyond matter. In short, something greatly in the landscape against the ill visions of deprivation pods or climate-control spheres rules and relations of the mythical home. adaptable but measured enough to guarantee the real, realised the illusion of escape. They are evolutions of the primitive hut which The temporary zones proposed places the reproduction of the cosmological order. are the spaces that incubated our digital makes a space into a hospitable place. The where human interactions aren’t denatured, All that is solid had to melt into air, but all that present, sealed the fate of the built-form and emergence of the desire to make the whole where violence is absent, where the self is is holy wasn’t to be profaned. The liberal prefigured the one the platform. earth hospitable coincides with the first sights strengthened by comfort, where production is world wasn’t going to disintegrate by of the finitude of our pale blue home from also consumption, and where work is not dispossessing its subjects from their place. At this point in time, several decades after the outer space. The inversion of the Western work any more but a full, unhindered labour last architectural prototypes, the immaterial gaze sealed the transformation of inhabitation of love. It was a life without object and a life The cosmic poles of our liberal souls revolve ambition advanced by the sublime enclosures from colonisation to domestication. The without work, a life in Eden made possible around one point – freedom. This involves the has proved to be no less than concrete. reformulation of domesticity that happened by the network. freedom of movement, freedom of being, free We are living on the grounds sketched by our after the Second World War and peaked in the markets and liberated exchange. However, parents then, but we do not wish to escape 1970s was both the vehicle and the symptom of High on selfhood and communality, driven in the process of this liberation, the liberal our home like a failed suburbia. When there is a deep restructuring of the Western’s cosmos by the riddance of waged relations, the avant- man became estranged from place. It was time no outside, the exit has to come from within. which is capitalism. The nascent neoliberal garde drafted today’s affective infrastructure, to liberate him further, by conferring upon him We surf surfaces, flick through images and subjects formulated themselves first by that which may have actually liberated some a portable totem (like those of the nomadic caress with soothing impulses the glazed imagining the city and the world as a domestic aspects of life but also laid the foundations for aboriginals). Its purpose was to allow him to transparencies articulating our augmented utopia. They progressively projected a new today’s subjectivities and technologies. stay fixed at the centre of his own world, while reality. We know that our quest facilitates the domestic landscape. These liberal techologies were the catalyst simultaneously permitting his untethering in corporate translation of bodies into profiles for breaking down the rigidity of traditional space. Nonetheless, the oxymoronic nature to enable their automatic control, but what Today’s housing crisis is the legacy of former rules and hierarchies. of this liberty – home everywhere and yet else to do since old freedoms are medieval generations, when the previous means to nowhere – continues to disorientate. Amongst when you’re dwelling in orbit. We thus revise accumulate value and exercise power began Like the norms that had to be torn down, the contemporary nomadic classes, even the our constellations tirelessly, word by word, to lag. Liberation, individuation, automation: the solidity of modern architecture was also most privileged still complain of being the image by image, story by story, a digit at a value needed to be produced and captured considered too static and corrupting to be victims of gentrification. time, hoping to be driven to eternity through our lucky stars. Like Ulysses traversing a particularly resilient platform to practice thousand-and-one plateaus, we know that the vampiric excavation of previous zombie we are bound to forever return to our new histories, whether their are romanticised selves, because the forever infants aspire to organic healings or fetishishised archetypal the freedom of images like the eternal youth sexualities, or the images thereof. Beings, envied the freedom of things. space and time cannot be thought without the Many facets of the vision of existence matured technologies hosting and furnishing them. by the baby boomers have been realised. In Bodies have been smartened by their devices, terms of ideology, the digital, its platforms, and cities consequently made eminently smart. profiles, and personal devices have conquered Images have become the brick and mortar of How can a home be more than clothing, but less more of life than was ever thought, and the existence as the digital infrastructure became sustained resourcefulness of the virtual as primal as architecture for existence. than architecture? disclose that it is only the beginning. In terms However, this hasn’t hollowed buildings and of architecture, the genealogy from Fuller’s constructions of their relevance. The ethereal world fairs to Uber’s split fares shows that dreams of membrane architectures were only 80% of smartphone owners check their email or the structures experimented by the techno- realized to the extent that dwelling was made social media accounts within 10 minutes of going utopians do continue to live on. Mostly more autonomous from architecture, made actualized by exploiting the cheap labor of more portable by making it fit in the pocket. to sleep or waking up. the south to fulfil their affordable obligation, But, if the digital only impedes on the raison inflatables and geodesics are the contemporary d’être of architecture, it exploits and thrives materiality of the temporary event, less the on its past materialities. It has reinvented You travel ever-increasing distances, yet live in philosophico-political event than the one architecture from without, rendering it less celebrating products or entertaining the crowd, than architecture but still more than fashion. an ever-decreasing circle of references. if the two haven’t ever been the same.

As the material consequences of demateri- More than 53,000 properties in the UK are being alisation are being felt, the twofold legacy of the inflated cosmology ought to be exhibited rented on a daily rate. jointly. The materiality of life has been hitting back many of those who were entitled enough to take a break from it. Where to go and how The future is always forced to occupy the spaces of to be when your safe space is a thin bubble the past, even if it refuses to acknowledge or engage which shape and size is mostly updated with- out your control? The infinite selfless division, with them. motion and valuation which is at work and puts to work should be despised, but we shouldn’t forget that the productive totality where we The short-term accommodation company Airbnb reside now was made acceptable by a blend of optimism, privilege and innocence towards takes its name from ‘AirBed and Breakfast’. The the possibility of an idealised domestic totality. company’s founders developed the concept afer It seems that the more domestic the city has become, the less room there was to dwell. using inflatable mattresses to convert an apartment

It is time to reflect upon the blinding actuality into a shared home for a couple of days. of our past future. The legacy of this well- intentioned avant-garde resonates at each bubble bursting while each bubble forming Your personalised space feels familiar anywhere, stands as a homage to the relevance of but generic space everywhere feels uncanny. that sort becoming. This is nonetheless the historical time we inhabit. A time which is far from being more sober towards its future that previous ones, as it hectically attempts to cope both with the anxiety of neoliberal no- futures as much as the modernist dismissal of pasts. The immaterial megastructure that has now integrated a majority of bodies and spaces in its web is proving to be a MONTHS A house without housework

Dogma and Black Square When you first heard your new home was modelled on a Inhabitable core, first level plan Inhabitable core, second level plan boarding house you had doubts ...!but afer living here for a 1 Entrance 6 Sleeping alcove 2 Storage 7 Shelf / hanger few months you can’t imagine a better form of life. It’s not 3 Bathroom 8 Technical shaft a hotel, and it’s not a rental flat, it’s a well-organised 4 Technical shaft 9 Storage 5 Kitchen communal household, which allows the ideal balance of private enclosure and social contact. Everything you need is provided!–!your personal totem is a two-storey utility core containing private spaces for sleeping, washing and preparing food. The open-plan areas between you and 4 5 2 your neighbours are shared, and you spend the days here working and socialising.

You feel liberated in your totem: you don’t need to buy furniture, sign up for utilities or get internet installed. It’s all as easy as booking a room. Most of all, there is no housework!–!cleaning, laundry and all the other domestic chores are included in your rent. This home 3 makes perpetual labour history.

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96 View of the interior space with entrances View of the interior space with sofas and View of boarding house in View of boarding house in to the inhabitable cores desks embedded along the perimeter Boreham Avenue, London Goswell Road, London Unused land in proximity of London’s Crossrail as sites for the boarding house Typical plan of a boarding house

1 Hayes Harlington, 2 Southall, 3 Hanwell, 4 Hanwell, The basic system, composed of a load-bearing are part of the pattern of cores. Lifts can be Botwell Lane Uxbridge Road Lower Boston Road Rosebank Road skeleton hosting regularly distributed cores, attached to the façade as add-on elements. canbe adapted to different conditions. If the site allows it, the boarding house 5 West Ealing 6 Ealing Broadway 7 Acton Main Lane, 8 Farringdon, Depending on the available space, the modular can frame a courtyard, offering a shared, open Manor Road Florence Road Shelimar Road Clerkenwell Road structure can develop in a variety of urban cloister to the guests. In some cases, morphologies by expanding both vertically the prototype can take over a whole block 9 Whitechapel, 10 Canary Wharf, 11 Royal Victoria, 12 Royal Victoria, and horizontally. The frame is stable enough to and be deployed as a sequence of linear Pedley Street Salter Street Boreham Avenue Coolfin Road support a mid-rise tower, while the staircases buildings separated by gardens.

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8 9 5 6 1 2 3 7 10 11 12 4 LIKE A ROLLING STONE make commitment to stable accommodation is consistently rejected by a generation that shift in working conditions and it is precisely in Revisiting the Architecture of the Boarding House undesirable, as one might need to relocate increasingly resists marriage. Instead, an such a conjuncture that the model can become quite often to adapt to a labour market that is alternative means to reconsider the rhythms of relevant again. In the mid-1800s, entrepreneurs 1 increasingly volatile. These workers, who tend our working and affective lives is put forward – an and charitable organisations tried to reform Our proposal is a dwelling meant to host a to be single, or involved in short-term act, perhaps, of realism, against the ideology of the boarding house; the Rowton Houses diffused dweller for a limited length of time. We imagine relationships, postpone the start of a family until the domestic which our generation neither in England, for instance, represented an effort this new type as an alternative to the nuclear a later phase of their lives – or write it off can afford, nor desires. to offer cheap and ‘hygienic’ living condition to family apartment, which dominates the housing altogether. He/she finds him/herself in a very the working class. However, this could only market both in London and elsewhere and fragile economic situation as it represents a 3 remain a temporary solution, as the that is both unaffordable and undesirable perfect target of speculation. He or she is not The housing model we put forward can be precariousness implicit in the model was not for singles and short-term tenants. For these tied to a spouse, family or community able to formulated as an attempt to rethink a genealogy well suited to the kind of social structure the reasons we propose a living space that requires support him/her financially and socially; as his/ of projects of living spaces that we could industrial city needed. The best model indeed no commitment in terms of investment and her future cannot be planned, demanding better define as boarding houses. The boarding house was the family home, which would provide a maintenance. The type can be applied on sites or fairer conditions is impossible. is a residential complex in which the inhabitants compensatory haven from the stress of the of different size and configuration as it is based rent their space for a limited amount of time. factory, while also representing a prime engine on an adaptable, modular skeleton, filled with In this situation, architects seem to have very It distinguishes itself from both the hotel, and of consumption, and fuelling the growth of the single-occupant units. The unit is a two-storey limited agency. However, we do not believe this the rental flat, because all chores pertaining real-estate market. Boarding houses did none of core, which contains bathroom, storage, a is the case: on the contrary, we argue that the to domestic labour (cleaning and cooking, in these things; they were not paradigms of idyllic small kitchen surface at the lower level, and a untenable living conditions of the precarious, particular) are conceived as work, professionally intimacy, they did not encourage the tenants generous sleeping alcove for up to two persons single young worker are also created and offered by those who run the house, and paid to buy more furniture, knick-knacks and clothes, above it. Although it is affordable for a single aggravated through the repetition of one single for by the tenants. While a hotel might not and needless to say they did not push users to dweller, the latter can invite his/her partner into type of housing, that is to say housing for the offer to cater to domestic chores, due to the tie themselves to a larger dwelling through his/her individual space. This individual space nuclear family. The replication of dwellings very short stay of the clients, in a rental flat long rental contracts or mortgages. So towards can be seen as a self-sufficient interior, as the meant to contain the nuclear family – a male domestic labour is always performed within the the end of the century the boarding house access to the upper level is contained within the parent, a female parent, and one or two family structure, and unpaid. On the contrary, was perceived as the bearer of a social core itself, behind a door that can be closed to children – excludes the easy possibility of in the boarding house domestic labour is stigma which was entirely instrumental in its isolate the user from the noise and activity of accommodation of a plethora of subjects who professionalised and waged. This peculiarity eventual disappearance. the surroundings. In this way, the bathroom can don’t fit the mould, from elderly people frees the tenants from the need to perform their be accessed directly from the upper level which to childless couples, and, more significantly, household chores, while making cooking and Only in the global crisis of the 1930s did its is imagined as an intimate, quiet space – a soft the precarious single worker which is perhaps cleaning more efficient by sharing resources. relevance and usefulness become apparent platform to sleep, read, watch videos; a large the single largest demographic excluded from once again. Living in a boarding house meant round window gives the upper level air, light the nuclear family apartment type. The family This model emerged as a response to two issues reducing private space to a minimum, owning and a view. The module of core and skeleton is flat is impossible to subdivide, difficult to that had arisen in mature capitalist societies few belongings, not settling down; as workers defined, but can be multiplied in different share and over-dimensioned for a single. The since the 17th century: on the one hand, the followed opportunities to make a living, they horizontal and vertical configurations to fit family flat enforces a specific way of living and social ambition to control, house and make found themselves willing to compromise on different sites. We believe these sites should be its predominance equals a virtual imposition of productive the poor and, on the other, the the values of rootedness, belonging and kinship in proximity to major transport infrastructure that way of living over others. market need to house single men displaced that were paramount in traditional societies as the users of such a type would need to be by work. One precedent of the boarding house and that the Industrial Revolution had already highly mobile; we retraced a constellation of For these reasons we think the moment has were therefore the hostels and hotels weakened. Also in this case, authorities possible sites around the Crossrail line, cutting come to put forward an architectural alternative catering to travelling working men of diverse had to accept the presence of this kind of an east–west section to London and touching to the existing models on the market, that is to conditions – from sailors to miners to scholars accommodation; however, as soon as economic upon very diverse urban conditions. say, the family flat, the students’ dormitory and and artists, these men were uprooted from their conditions improved after the war, boarding the hotel. These models do not only impose a families, and could neither afford nor manage houses became strictly regulated in all the 2 rigid choreography of use – they also imply to organise a more traditional form of dwelling Western world, and in particular in the United As housing prices soared in the last decade, a problematic economic rationale. The for themselves. If most examples are very States, where they were virtually outlawed on buying a house in London has become family flat – the temple par excellence of the humble, we should also consider that this the basis of their poor living conditions. extremely difficult for first-time buyers, almost ‘productive’ population – needs a family to be category contains luxury residential hotels that unfeasible for middle-income workers and maintained, paid for and cleaned: a family were very diffused in the West since the Again, the reason to eradicate them was outright impossible for singles. The rental composed of at least one productive (male) 1800s. However, the other precedent is the ideological and economic rather than market caters to an increasingly significant member able to pay for it, and one re-productive workhouse, an institution where a minimum philanthropic: these places did nothing to mask portion of the population including young, (female) member able to take care of it. Any welfare provision – bed and board – would be or naturalise the dire working conditions of their educated workers under 40 – those who would other economic model, let alone social or provided to the poor in exchange for work. occupants. They did not sweeten precarious, traditionally be expected to form a family and affective model, won’t work. On the other hand, dangerous and alienating jobs by making them buy a house. The pre-eminence of rental is not the commercial dormitory and the hotel are Neither of these types was born out of palatable through the compensation offered from only a reflection of the current condition of real designed for users who are supposed to be ‘not philanthropic concerns as they merely the family home. They did not send the workers estate, but also a consequence of the habits productive’ – the student, and the tourist – simply accommodated shifts in labour patterns. back to their wives in the evening, but rather and needs of these subjects. Young workers because they are not stable, and are therefore Similarly, the boarding house proper would clustered them in what could potentially become not only cannot buy: they might not want to buy exploited as source of extraction of profit. But emerge in the mid-1800s as a response to a hotbed of rebellion. They did not encourage in the first place, as both their jobs and private the equation between stability and productivity is the large influx of foreign workers in newly their inhabitants to plan ahead, and therefore lives are fundamentally precarious. Most of this not valid any more –if it ever has been – and the industrialised cities, or newly colonised to buy commodities, get mortgages, get married. generation work on short-term contracts that re-productive, domestic labour of the housewife territories. We are witnessing today a similar Paradoxically, they even enabled a form of gender equality, for, once domestic labour is 5 professionalised, the woman is no longer the Although all boarding houses are different from servant of her husband. As increasing numbers each other in terms of volume, all of them share of single women entered the labour force after the same modular structural systems, the same the First World War, boarding houses offered interiors and the same finishing. All boarding them a possibility to escape the patriarchal houses are based on a modular concrete house without entering a new contract with a skeleton with prefabricated concrete slabs. dominant male. For all these reasons, boarding Outer elevations are obtained with light insulated houses were highly problematic places, carriers metal panelling and metal frame windows. of a possibility to reject the ‘natural order of Vertical circulation varies according to the things’. They could be accepted in extreme conditions of the site and the overall dimensions scenarios – the colonisation of the American of the boarding houses – some of them have Private renting in the UK has doubled over the West, the expansion of industrial cities in internal staircases and lift, others external Britain, the restructuring of Depression-era prefabricated staircases. All interiors are based course of the last 10 years. economy – but they have never been an on the repetition of the same inhabitable core endgame or a supported political project. to be placed at the centre of each structural module. These prefabricated elements are The politics of domestic labour forces us to adopt And indeed if the boarding house represented identical to each other and are stacked – once certain power roles. We are only liberated from at times an emergency solution, it also stands as the concrete skeleton and slabs are a place of possibilities: of freedom from completed – one on top of each other with the the family when there is no longer any obligation to perceived hierarchies, and of social aggregation help of a crane. These cores are stacked so and solidarity. Perhaps we find ourselves once that pipes and cables that are contained in a do housework. again in a condition of shifting labour patterns; vertical shaft placed at one corner of each unit boarding houses have recently reappeared can serve the whole column of units. Inhabitable in those pockets of the post-industrial world cores are the most technological components of The boarding house is to the home what co-working where competition on the knowledge labour the entire boarding house and their production space is to the ofce. market is fiercest. In San Francisco, the inside factories rather than on-site is meant tech industry has sparked the diffusion of to simplify the construction process, improve communes and boarding houses where the quality and reduce costs. tenant can only rent a ‘pod’; in Seoul, increasing The totem structure is impossible to categorise, numbers of young graduates can barely afford Around the core, double-height shared spaces and it exists at the junction of architecture, to rent a single room without a window in a can be used by the inhabitants as living goshiwon – establishments initiated as rentable rooms or working spaces depending on their infrastructure and furniture. study rooms in which, with time, first a bed preferences. This space, which is rather limited and then a bathroom joined the initial provision in terms of overall surface, is equipped with of desk and chair. built-in furniture such as sofas and tables to be The number of temporary workers in the UK has placed in the bow windows along the elevations. 4 These elements – together with the part of the increased by 20% over the last six years. Our boarding houses for London are meant to core that is completely open to this communal be affordable housing solutions for temporary space, such as a working ledge equipped with inhabitants to be built in various sites in London a sink and a hot plate that the inhabitants can In a boarding house, domestic labour is separated in proximity to the stops of the Crossrail line. use for cooking or crafts – reduce the need of from the individual cell, which becomes a pure This new railway infrastructure that will cut the inhabitants to purchase any kind of furniture that city from east to west will allow distant and they might not be able to take along with them temple for living. peripheral areas to be quickly connected once they decide to move out. The result is with central neighbourhoods. Areas of the city a housing model that is no longer made of that at present are not ideal for workers that rooms, but of continuous spaces and individual Private renters in the UK spend almost 40% of their need to be mobile, and that rely mostly on public alcoves. Besides responding to the need for transport, will soon become potential sites housing of temporary inhabitants, the aim of our income on rent in comparison with the European where lower costs of land might make housing proposal is to use the model of the boarding average of 28%. more accessible, tenable and desirable. house to de-domesticise housing and thus to Additionally, our boarding houses are built challenge the latter’s economy and ideology. on sites that at present lack a clear use definition – urban vacancies, neglected sites, The project team for Dogma was comprised residual parcels or forgotten interstitial areas. of Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara, with All these sites could be leased or obtained Luciano Aletta, Ezio Melchiorre, Andrea Migotto at lower rates from either public or private and Stéphanie Savio. owners through special planning agreements. Time-limited building permissions could be The project team for Black Square was Maria granted in exchange of controlled rent-price Shéhérazade Giudici, with Jongwon Na and boarding houses. Lara Yegenoglu. YEARS Space for living, not speculation

Julia King Interior views of a naked apartment in various stages of completion When looking to buy a new home, you suspected you were These illustrations by Anna Mill being taken for a ride. The tacky countertops, ugly lights and built-in ovens!–!the finishes and fittings were so expensive, and not at all your style. That’s where developers make most of their money, and you simply refused to pay.

Your home is designed from the bank’s perspective, stripping out every cost that is not required by your mortgage. It’s called ‘shell’ construction!–!just a roof over your head, running water, electricity, a toilet and a basin. Nothing else. Not even a kitchen sink! Some people thought it looked bare, but you saw a blank canvas. You saved a lot of money and, over time, created a space that reflects the way you choose to live.

The price of your home is tied to shell value, locking in the original discount. Your fixtures and fittings are your own, and you can either take them with you, recycle or resell.

108 View of interior of a naked apartment Visualisation of the ‘Welcome Home’ letter Image by Hugo McCloud and Harry Dwyer distributed as a prop in the exhibition

Welcome to your naked apartment.

Housing for all – for years to come

A housing revolution

Better than renting

Bare necessities

Customising your space

Letter of support from the Naked House Community Site plan of the Clarence Road Garages

Builders, partners and advisers to the Years model

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7 The average cost of a home in London is now £530,000–that's 3 beyond the reach of most people. This crisis in affordability is defining the lives of a generation. Crisis necessitates a creative response.

Naked House is a group of young Londoners who decided to developour own affordable housing model. The idea was born out of desperation as we struggled to find a home that we could afford and that was designed with us in mind.

We reject the obscene accumulation of wealth in homes that is commonplace in London and want homes to be affordable for everyone, always.

Our model goes back to basics – saving build costs by creating communities of genuinely affordable “naked” homes.

The Naked House unit will be a well-designed shell. It will provide a base layer that can be built on, improved, adapted and extended over time by the occupant. We have taken the banks’ requirements for getting a mortgage as our brief. The Naked House unit will meet these requirements and nothing else.

Driving down build cost is only part of the equation. To make homes genuinely affordable, you need to work on every component of the house building process. We have begun with the practice of a traditional house builder, taken it apart and turned it upside down.

Land cost is a significant component. To remove this cost, we have developed a leasehold arrangement on public land. This enables us to sell Naked House units for what they cost to build and nothing more. The occupant then pays a monthly ground rent to the Council who owns the land. This brings long-term revenue to cash-strapped local authorities and makes the homes much cheaper at the outset.

We are not making a profit, so there is no developer margin built into our model – just income to cover operating costs. And there are no sales and marketing costs. Anyone can sign up for a Naked House as long as they earn under £90,000. We don’t need fancy show homes or sales brochures. The homes will speak for themselves. To ensure that the Naked House units remain affordable in perpetuity, we have a resale covenant in the lease. This locks in the original discount for subsequent purchasers.

This is a model that can be replicated, so we are working

to secure plots of land across London. Over 200 London

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households have joined the project already and we’re 6

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5t o3 Fig. 1 Current market trend SPACE FOR LIVING, NOT SPECULATION Finance as a design parameter Naked House resale covenant Finance as an opportunity, housing as a home. Benefiting from the partnership with Naked House, the natural starting point was to seek The most important form of exclusion these opportunity in the mortgage itself; something days is in housing: who gets to live in a city? Naked House is already doing. In 2015 they Suketu Mehta won a competition by New London Architecture (NLA) calling for solutions to solve the housing Median wages Housing today is perhaps the most important crisis with an entry that proposed stripped-back, form of social exclusion, and arguably the defining shell-like houses that enable homeowners to issue of our time. It is universally accepted that customise and adapt the layout of their homes the UK has a housing crisis not seen since the in order to fit their needs. For the Biennale we Value i.e. Access Second World War, while simultaneously facing asked how we could seek more opportunity in Victorian levels of inequality. Whether we need this strategy beyond reducing ‘build’ costs. to build more homes, make changes to stamp duty, tax foreign investors, introduce property In addition, given current economic trends, a tax, restrict mortgage lending, fill empty homes, concern for the present Naked House model is Time redistribute wealth or all of the above, architects that even with a re-sale covenant to maintain – or architecture – seem to have been written out affordability, with housing market values now of the equation. far outstripping median wages, units would quickly become unaffordable even for this The Question model, particularly in London (Fig. 1). It is in this context, that we (myself and ‘industry Fig. 2 Standard mortgage model advisor’ Naked House) were asked to ‘critique In order to push the design and associated the speculative model of property’ within the financing with affordability in mind, we engaged Proposed model time condition of years. We proposed to with a mortgage expert at a major high street go beyond an interrogation of the kind of housing bank. Primarily this confirmed that the minimum that would be good to see in the UK to critique requirements for a mortgage from a finance

Ownership and speculate the housing ‘problem’ through perspective rest on a loose notion of 'habitable', the lens of the market, regulation, policy universally defined by all banks as: hot and and finance; specifically the mortgage which has cold running water, services for a bathroom

Debt played perhaps the most important role in the and kitchen – specifying only the ability of rise of Britain's debt economy. For it is ultimately the homeowner to carry out ablutions – and the mortgage that fuels the economy that the means of heating and lighting. The emphasis surrounds housing, with homeowners often of the toilet should not be underestimated: our spending more on interest than the actual build shit is arguably the final frontier of the hyper cost of the home, perpetuating an artificial commodification of our lives as the only basic regime of scarcity through debt. dwelling need charged as a service tax and not a metered (and measured) product like gas, Time Furthermore we asked: what would housing – electricity and water. and the way it is financed – look like if not predicated on the idea of the house as an asset In doing away with all except the minimum for speculation but as a home? And critically, requirements of finance we are left with a how can the economic and political structures ‘habitable’ – ie, serviced – shell laying the underpinning the current production of housing groundwork for the Venice proposal: a multi- No Debt High Debt present themselves as design parameters? storey apartment structure and the associated The aim was to develop a housing model which financial diagram to maintain affordability. Fig. 3 could achieve affordability over years. The exhibition at Venice is a model representation of these minimum requirements. Because of the propositional nature of the brief, while rejecting the profound social inequalities Small sites, big opportunity that manifest through private property, we If London had the same density today as it did

to Design decided not to reject the notion of ownership in 1815, contained within its existing footprint it

High Freedom and capital gain associated with private could accommodate nearly 35 million people. property, but to imagine capital appreciation Densifying parts of London is surely one of the as a common rather than individual good. many solutions required to deal with the housing This is an important point because, while indeed crisis. One of the problems is that councils it is important to know what you oppose, left with small pockets of land are currently not in the spirit of getting things done perhaps an well equipped, or phrased differently, the approach to political activism is the ability to contemporary planning paradigm is not suited to to Design operate from within ‘the system’ through a developing such small plots. One such council,

Minimal Freedom series of camouflage bluffs. Enfield, has engaged with Naked House to look for solutions to develop small plots such as Cultural shift the Clarence Road site – which has been used This proposal aims to influence cultural attitudes as a real world condition to inform the proposal towards the idea of the home as a store of wealth. (see Clarence Road Garages). In recent years, the home has come to rival pensions as a long-term financial investment. Our proposal begins with this arrangement: The potential return on investment heavily that land would be leased to a parent company – influences whether to add another bathroom to a not-for-profit community interest company (CIC) your property, or what colour to paint your home acting like a developer – for a minimum 125-year in the event of re-sale, and so on. In bringing period at a 5 per cent return on the value complete control back to residents without the Domesticity requires a lot less than we might think. of the land through a ground rent. The land would burden of debt, housing can be enjoyed as a be valued at the point of achieving planning home not an asset (Fig. 3). What are the core qualities that make up a home? permission and would be payable on an annual basis to the Council. Each homeowner would It should be recognised that the ideas that And how basic could its material conditions be for it likely pay around £3,000 a year in ground rent. underpin this model are not new. Many aspects to still feel homely? This provides the council with a long-term of the proposed financial system already (and much-needed) revenue stream and exist in Germany. The difference in this case removes the intractable land value problem is an emphasis on the formation of institutions The price of the typical UK home is forecast to rise from the equation. with the capacity to operate at scale – not relying on individuals or the small groups often by 50% in the next 10 years. The parent company – which for the sake of this associated with projects such as Baugruppe exercise has been imagined as industry partner, in Berlin, or Elemental in Iquique. Naked House – would negotiate the lease, take Without price controls, discounted house sales out a commercial loan to build the shell and Much emphasis during this process has been assume overall liability as the parent entity. on engaging with, and seeking affirmation from, (through subsidies or reduced construction costs) The loan would be secured against the head large-scale financial institutions. Local housing will only benefit their first owners, and lead to lease and the parent company, limited by shares, activism can only achieve so much, a radical would own 51 per cent of this entity (the shell), collective approach is needed and architecture, accelerated market speculation. with the rest owned by the residents. Unlike or architects, can play a critical role in this mortgage-based models, where homeowners are if we are willing to engage with the systems that burdened with debt, here ownership is accrued underpin advanced capitalist production. More than 170 tenants were evicted every day in over time without debt (Fig. 2). People need to stop thinking of decent housing 2015, the highest figure since records began. Decoupling shell and unit as something only a few deserve, and realize The shell – based on a 423m2 block in Enfield – that it is something we all need ... Never has our would have space (referred to as a unit) for 20 financial model for allocating that housing been Home ownership in the UK is now so unafordable housing-compliant, one-bed apartments of 50m2 more obviously wanting than it is now. each, roughly costing £1.8 million to build. Danny Dorling that the average age of a first-time mortgage This cost would be transferred into an annual applicant is 39. ‘shell rent’ to the residents in addition to the ground rent, plus a fee for maintenance; cumulatively amounting to £600 per month per Family relationships are fundamentally unit, well below the local average. reconfigured when the home becomes primarily Residents buying a unit would pay a nominal fee of £1 for the space and would become a valued as an asset. leaseholder in the parent company. The fit-out would be as per the means and desires of the resident, and could be funded through cash If you moved into rented accommodation in London over time or raising a loan with the bank, and is today, you will spend about £91,500 on rent before completely separate from the finance associated with the shell. The apartments would always buying your first home. cost £1 and upon re-sale the units would return to their ‘naked’ state. Value would only be realised at point of re-sale and potential borrowing could happen for second properties based on upmarket values of shares associated with the shell. The key idea in this proposal is that wealth appreciation is shared with the residents from the shell and not the actual unit they reside in within it. DECADES A room without functions

Hesselbrand Your home is functionless, but that’s not a bad thing. Maquette of a room without functions Instead of cramming specific programmes into the smallest area possible, it is designed to provide you with generous, adaptable, useful spaces. You occupy two spaces, one inside the structural core and one outside it.

There are no predetermined rooms with predetermined activities!–!no ‘kitchens’, ‘bedrooms’ or ‘bathrooms’. Your home has a diverse range of spatial conditions that suggest diferent activities. There are qualities of light and dark, open and closed, private and public, wet and dry, sof and hard. Your square bed captures the essence of your home: it doesn’t dictate which way you should sleep, or even how many people can rest here together.

Over the decades your life has changed from youth to old age and from singleton to parent. But your home has always accommodated your needs. Your neighbours reflect this demographic spread, and the residents’ community promotes intergenerational exchange. Twice a week you volunteer as a childminder for the building.

120 Typical plan of the housing model Cross section indicating alternating aspects View of the interior: a space for intimacy View of the interior: a space without pretentions

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0 5 View of housing model: a proposal for a new form of life in the city View of the interior: a space for the self View of the interior: a space for belonging

PRIME Locals In urban areas with high density and living costs, Our ambition is to design a new housing model there is a growing tendency for the ageing that provides homes for the growing number population to consider downsizing their home of people in London who struggle to dwell without moving to a new area. The same areas in an environment built almost entirely around often have few young people working in the the nuclear family. The housing crisis is from service sector, leading to a demographic our perspective not simply a question about polarisation. Our proposal is situated in Chelsea increasing the supply, but a call for questioning in central London, an exemplary site for these how we live. Today we spend an increasingly conditions. It provides a new typology of housing large part of our lives outside the pattern of combined with integrated and semi-public traditional family life, resulting in a growing need services, attractive to both the elderly and the for alternative forms of housing. In response young. The elderly provide an already established to this condition we imagine an intergenerational public life in the area, while the young bring new housing model for the elderly and the young influences and services, creating a more socially who are the two fastest growing demographics sustainable area where people can be locals in London. Their increasing presence gives them across generations. large political and economical influence, and provides a great opportunity for proposing a Timeless architecture new form of life in the city. We believe that large-scale housing is key to imagining new life in London. Architecture has New forms of life great potential spatially to promote and stimulate In only a few decades the traditional passage more collaborative forms of living that can through life has seen a radical shift, changing improve both economic and social conditions the basis for our human relations. As we live for its users. As an alternative to meeting short- longer and settle down at a later age, we have term investment returns on housing, we propose become lifelong learners in constant pursuit of a long-lasting design that stays relevant new experiences. However, this spirit of self- for decades. By reimagining the ways we live realisation is paralleled by the mourning of an era and work, across generations in the city, we where the individual enjoyed an unprecedented can revoke the prevailing transitory form of freedom. Today, the widening gap between dwelling that predominates in London today. This wages and the cost of living has made it almost approach requires a constant dialogue between impossible to live in London without support from the timely and the timeless, between what it financial institutions or the family. In this nearly means to live today and what constitutes the neo-feudal society, we become increasingly eternal qualities of space and the human form. indebted and will never be entirely free. To counter such an evolution, we aim to use the Together and apart full potential of architecture to provide citizens We propose a model for housing that allows with housing and workspace that assumes less people to be able to live out their entire life within financial risk (for user and investor alike) and its structural walls. A model where communitarian instead is capable of offering a more socially and living bridges generational gaps and recognises economically sustainable form of life. the interdependency between social and private space. Our proposal is an architecture where Changing demographics living and working, together and apart, are not Over the next 20 years London will grow by 1.5 contradictions but complementary poles. million people, generating a need for 50,000 new homes to be built per year. Nevertheless, Slab and plinth the unavoidable problems of the housing crisis The project is composed of a residential block should not undermine the urgency for imagining and a communal plinth. The block is comprised new models of housing. Living and working can of a single row of living units, which occasionally converge in new forms to both enhance the are joined together allowing for multiple sizes possibilities, and ease the pressures of living in of households. The block connects to the plinth London. The elderly and the young are the two on the ground floor in a large threshold space fastest growing social groups in the city, yet they accessible to both the residents and the wider are the least provided for in terms of specific community. This semi-public space reinstates forms of architecture. Together they are reshaping one of the very cornerstones of the city in the demographic landscape, putting enormous the building – the possibility of unpredictable pressure on the city. As the most economically and meetings. A broad range of services along with politically influential groups, bringing them together workspaces is offered within the lower levels could offer a powerful tool for questioning the of the plinth, ordered to create an environment status quo of housing architecture. where the inhabitants of the building and the users of the spaces below can meet. The relationship between service, structure By permitting multiple and unrestrained ways of and space is absolute; the walls making up the entering and moving through the building, the core are not only the structural element but also distinction between inside and outside (what organise how you live and what make it possible typically constitutes the division between private to invent and refine your own life. The plumbing of and public domain) is challenged. Consequently, the housing unit has been designed with the same the proposal as a whole assumes the care as the rest of the architecture, allowing for responsibility of offering a social and inclusive appliances and fittings to go beyond a singular platform to both residents and visitors alike. purpose and transcend a merely functional use. The shower provides an example of where Function does not equal space a monofunctional purpose makes way for a The locus of the project is the residential unit space to take on different roles; having which, unlike the traditional apartment, has the potential to be used as a private balcony or neither corridor nor service space. It consists of study or even both. a single room that holds a series of differentiated spaces. It is a room without functions where Bathroom and kitchen Future-proofing our homes means abandoning actions can take place where needed and Although plumbing made the kitchen and desired, designed to encourage the user to bathroom inseparable from each other, they have architecture’s reliance on technology or specific become more conscious about the environment always developed in opposite directions spatially. pieces of furniture. he or she inhabits. To allow for a different The bathroom has evolved from a chamber form of flexibility, the room is split diagonally, pot and screen in the corner of a room into a both abstractly and figuratively. This produces dedicated space with fixed furniture. Meanwhile, Functionalist space is designed around ergonomically spaces that are defined by their qualities rather the kitchen has evolved from a room dominated than their functions. Light and dark, open and by single-use, heavy elements into a mobile optimised actions that determine precise social closed, private and public, wet and dry, soft and island. In line with this trajectory we propose a hard; each part of the unit offers a combination seamless bathroom and the nomadic kitchen. relations. When cultural norms change, these spaces of different qualities. Unlike the promise of The bathroom can be accessed from two sides can quickly become impractical or redundant. flexibility by virtue of reconfiguring space, here and is placed at the centre of the household, it is the permanent and specific form of the both structurally and conceptually. It was the first architecture that allows for loose use. All different private space in the home, and it may become the Most building materials used in new housing in the spaces within the single room are designed to last. It is the only door that when locked arouses avoid traditional specifications of capacity or no suspicion. It is the space where you can be UK have a lifespan of around 30 years. Yet over half orientation, in order to question our need for who you are when no one else is looking; a space adaptable, useful and timeless architecture. without pretensions. At the opposite side of the of the existing homes are over 70 years old. central wall – and conceptually contrary to the The solid and the void bathroom – there is a long ledge. A concealed The floor area of one living unit is 37m2, equalling wireless charging plate runs through the room 1 in 3 children born in Britain today will live to 100. the minimum standard for a single person like an electric mantelpiece, permitting devices dwelling in London. To make every square metre to be liberated from the wall socket. Objects count, circulation space is removed so that such as frying pans contain their own heating Rationalism is the design of space through abstract wherever you are you can always sense the room elements and operate wirelessly, allowing in its entirety. The two halves of the diagonal cooking to take place at any point along the or universal ratios. In 18th-century Georgian Britain, layout, the solid and the void, create a space ledge – including from bed. Cooking becomes a terraced houses used Classical proportions and that gradually decreases towards the back of the purely social act. unit. Here, the windows are smaller to make more harmonic dimensions to create adaptable, useful intimate spaces and create a sense of privacy. At We are in a situation where the unification of and timeless spaces. the opposite end, the room opens up towards the private and public domains, the imperceptible communal balcony with a large window frame, division between work and leisure and an overall providing indoor and outdoor seating. This design housing shortage dominate every generation creates a home wherein a person can define a in London. In this context, our proposal aims to space and use for themselves in his or her own interpret and address critically the relationship right, and the mediating between social and between city and building, structure and space, private makes collective life easily accessible but individual and collective. We believe that we also as voluntary as possible. are capable of demanding much more from the spaces we inhabit, and our proposal puts Service structure and space forward a new strategy for architectural design, The walls that separate the residential units answering to our new needs. An architecture constitute the core, which is the primary space more open to interpretation and based on maker. The core walls reconcile service, universal qualities can answer growing concerns structure and space, making them inseparable for equality, inclusivity and personal freedom. from one another and giving the building a simple logic to a range of complex spatial scales. This publication was Shumi Bose, Jack Self and The British Council is produced to accompany Finn Williams are curators the commissioner of the the 2016 Home Economics of the British Pavilion British Pavilion at exhibition, which took place at the 15th International the Venice Architecture from May 28 to November Architecture Exhibition Biennale, and the UK’s 27 at the 13th Venice – La Biennale di Venezia. international organisation Architecture Biennale. Their individual practices for cultural relations and It was commissioned by cross a number of disciplines, educational opportunities. the British Council and amongst them design, All their work is in pursuit published by The Spaces education, planning, of charitable purposes with REAL. developing policy, writing, and supports prosperity editing and curating. and security for the UK Editorial Director and globally. Jack Self Black Square is the ofce of Maria S. Guidici, and REAL, or the Real Estate Editors Dogma is the ofce of Pier Architecture Laboratory, Finn Williams Vittorio Aureli and Martino is a cultural and architectural Shumi Bose Tattara. Aureli, Tattara and foundation and an Giudici have exhibited their institutional partner of Production Editors work widely, from gallery- Home Economics. REAL’s Julia Dawson based shows in London to dedication to spatial Emma Capps international events like equality encompasses the the Tallinn Architecture financing and construction Catalogue Design Biennale 2014 and Venice of architecture, its terms OK-RM Architecture Biennale 2012. of ownership and its contribution to standards Printer Hesselbrand is an of living. Graphicom international architecture practice based in London The Spaces is a digital Copyright 2016 The Spaces and Oslo. Founded by publication from VF www.thespaces.com Martin Brandsdal, Magnus Publishing exploring new Copyright 2016 REAL Casselbrant and Jesper ways to live and work. From www.real.foundation Henriksson, the studio residential buildings to delivers a broad range of public domains, co-working Catalogue architectural services, clubs to hotels and retail Acknowledgements including strategic design hot spots, we will look at Pocket Living and research projects. the spaces that are pushing Mike Tsang boundaries and meet the Rosa Hammond Horton Julia King is a British- people who are changing Natalie Steyaert Venezuelan architect, how we live. David Crosby sole practitioner and Cathy Eastburn researcher in the UK and Eddie Blake is a writer Tom Milsom India. Currently developing and senior designer at Global Guardians low-cost housing for slum Sam Jacob Studio. Unite Students dwellers in New Delhi and London Borough of Agra, her existing and Aditya Chakrabortty Barking and Dagenham ongoing body of research is senior economics concerns afordable commentator for First edition domestic typologies. the Guardian. ISBN 978-0-9573914-8-2 OK-RM is a London-based Mark Cousins is a British design studio working in cultural critic and the fields of art, culture architectural theorist. and commerce. Founded in 2008 by Oliver Knight & Tom Dyckof is an Rory McGrath, the studio architectural historian, is a collaborative practice writer and broadcaster. engaged in ongoing partnerships with artists, Neal Hudson is an curators, editors, architects, associate director designers and institutions. of Savills residential research. Åyr (formerly known as AIRBNB Pavilion) is an Martti Kalliala is an art collective based in architect whose work London whose work focuses focuses on emerging on contemporary forms of spatial conditions. domesticity. Åyr is founded by Fabrizio Ballabio, Verity-Jane Keefe is a Alessandro Bava, visual artist working Luis Ortega Govela and predominantly within Octave Perrault. the public realm.

131 HOME ECONOMICS Pavilion Manager Commissioned and Caterina de Rienzo organised by the British Council Events Coordinator Myfanwy Grantham

External Relations Yuki Sumner

Public Relations Sutton PR Curators Shumi Bose Technical Manager Jack Self Lee Regan Finn Williams Technical Team Room Designers Alex Booker Hours, Jack Self with Luke Currall Finn Williams Tim Eve and Shumi Bose Richard Galloway Days, Åyr David Garnett Months. Dogma and Joseph Richards Black Square David Small Years, Julia King Decades, Hesselbrand Exhibition Fabrication Mike Smith Studio Artistic Director Jack Self Exhibition Translations Paolo Cecchetto Visual Identity and Design OK-RM Exhibition Acknowledgements Exhibition Design Francesco Anselmo Hesselbrand AtelierOne Adrian Campbell Structural Engineer Piero Morello Arup Elisabetta Rabajoli

Advisers Exhibition Assistants J.W. Anderson Liam den Hamer All rights reserved. No part The Collective Constanza Larach of this publication may Fjord Francesca Romana British Pavilion be used or reproduced, Fergus Henderson Dell’Aglio Exhibition Sponsors distributed or transmitted Naked House Ushma Thakrar in any formor by any means PegasusLife whatsoever without the Royal Bank of Scotland The British Council would prior written permission also like to thank the of the publisher, except in British Pavilion following organisations for the case of brief quotations Selection Panel their generous support of the in critical articles and Marie Bak Mortensen British Pavilion: Diamond review and certain non- Rob Gregory Architects; Grosvenor commercial uses permitted Eddie Heathcote Britain & Ireland; The by copyright law. Joanna Hogg Modern House; Valchromat. Charlie Hussey Every efort has been made Teresa Stoppani to trace copyright holders and to obtain their Commissioner permission for the use of Vicky Richardson copyright material. The publisher apologises for Project Manager any errors or omissions Gwen Webber in the image credits and would be grateful if notified British Council of any corrections that Project Team should be incorporated in Harriet Cooper future reprints or editions Mary Doherty of this book. Alastair Donald Debbie Leane Harriet Seabourne Oscar Taylor

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