Organised by the Royal College of Art, St Ann’s Redevelopment Trust, Haringey, The Architecture Foundation, Baylight Foundation and Projective Cities
Dates: Friday 13thand Saturday 14thApril 2018
Venue: Lecture Theatre One, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU (entrance via Jay Mews)
The objective of these series of events over two days is to pull apart and question alternate models of affordable and community-led housing projects for the UK. Using global exemplars – from Swiss projects based on nineteenth century co-operative legal structures such as Kraftwerk I and Mehr als Wohnen in Zurich, new Spanish co-operatives addressing community ageing (La Borda), to the Nightingale structure developed within the specific legal and financial constraints of Australian law – this event will ask what, within the context of the UK, is possible? What works and why, and how do we learn from other places, recognizing the specificity of our legal jurisdiction, financial structures, and cultural limitations?
Future Homes for London: Alternate Models will discuss: case studies and precedents; the consequences of different legal frameworks; co-operative models and land tenure systems in relationship to participation, ongoing management, and governance; the financing of housing projects – patient capital and the perception of risk; procurement structures; and the role of architecture, especially in negotiating difference productively through design.
Participants will hear from those developing, building, designing, leading and living in new projects globally and learn from their experience of delivering alternate housing.
Day 1: Global Precedents of Community-led and -owned Housing
Date: 13th April 2018
Often policy makers and developers see ‘community led’ as no more than glorified consultation, or as a way to navigate the planning process. Communities often talk of ‘community led’, but really mean full community control of housing and amenities. This can include the design process, full ownership of the property on completion, who lives in the development, rental and sales prices fixed in perpetuity by covenants in ownership contracts, and ongoing management. To make it more than just a place where people live, can community groups actively build communities as well as housing – where we might replace the term housing with the notion of civil society? This is not uncommon in other parts of the world. Why do we continue to wait for someone’s permission to do it here in the UK?
Common to many of the international projects that will be discussed is the role of the design process in the negotiation of difference amongst co-operative members and the coming into form of the project. Here, co-operative members navigating competing desires and ambitions for a project are innovating the shared spaces and amenities of multi-residential housing projects, moving away from the usual one two and three bedroom apartments sent to market by developers. These are projects either led by architects, or that involve co-op members who are architects.
The series of presentations are from architects and housing activists operating globally. They will deal with processes, give stories and accounts of specific projects, and speak about experiments in new, shared amenity at the scale of the building block and the dwelling unit.
9:30 Welcome by Adrian Lahoud (Dean, School of Architecture, RCA)
9:35 Introduction by Tony Wood (StART)
9:45 Introduction to Day 1 Tarsha Finney (RCA)
10:00-13.00: International Case Studies Part 1
– Cristina Gamboa (Lacol), La Borda, Barcelona
– Jeremy McLeod (Breathe Architecture), The Commons, Melbourne
– Silvia Carpaneto (Carpaneto Schöningh Architekten), Coop Housing, Berlin (tbc)
– Christoph Schmidt (ifau), R50, Berlin (tbc)
– Christian Roth (Zanderroth Architekten), BIGyard, Berlin (tbc)
– Claudia Thiesen (Mehr Als Wohnen), Kraftwerk I, Zurich
13:00-14:00 Lunch break
14.00-15.30: International Case Studies Part 2
– Jeremy McLeod: The Nightingale Principle, Melbourne.
– Paul Karakusevic: Camden/New York
16.00-18.00: Panel Discussion
Discussion of participation, conflict, negotiation, and constituting community.
Clarifying relationships and terms between community and housing development and national contexts.
– Tony Wood (StART)
– Paul Karakusevic (Karakusevic Carson Architects)
– Catherine Harrington (Director, National CLT Network)
– Jeremy McLeod
– Claudia Thiesen
– Cristina Gamboa
– Stephen Hill (National CLT Network and UK Cohousing Network)
Chaired by Tarsha Finney (RCA)
Day 2: The UK Context: Community Control and Financing of Housing
Date: Saturday 14th April 2018
Until recently the general narrative has been ‘the market will provide’ when it comes to house building but this strategy is a failure for most people. Recently, the delivery of genuinely affordable and community-led housing has risen up the political agenda and raises a series of questions: What is genuinely affordable and who should housing be owned and managed by? What constitutes and legitimises a community to take control of housing projects? How are alternate models of housing to be scaled up to match the UK housing demand and what financing and procurement models are needed? Can public and private capital work with community organisations and philanthropy to achieve this?
The second day will be framed by StART, a group of local residents and workers who have initiated a community-led and transparent process for a 800-unit housing development in Haringey that puts local people in control, with the aim to provide genuinely affordable housing.
10:00: Welcome by Adrian Lahoud (Dean, School of Architecture, RCA)
10.05: Introduction by Tony Wood (StART)
10:15-12:45: Community Control: What Could It Look Like?
– Vanessa Rickett (StART)
– Sphen Hill (National CLT Network and UK Cohousing Network)
– Dinah Roake (Atlas, Homes and Communities Agency)
Chaired by Adrian Lahoud (RCA)
12:45-13:30: Lunch
13:30-16:00: How Do We Fund Affordable Housing?
– Marlene Barrett (StART)
– Stephen Hill (Director, C20 futureplanners) tbc
– Frances Northrop (Consultant, NEF/Co-ops UK Community Economic Development Programme)
– Pete Gladwell (Head of Public Sector Partnerships, Legal & General Investment Management)
Chaired by Paul Karakusevic (Karakusevic Carson Architects)
16:30-18:30 The Future of Community-led Housing
Hosted by The Architecture Foundation
– Annabel Kennedy (StART)
– Chris Brown (Executive Chair, igloo Regeneration)
– Jeremy McLeod (Breathe Architecture)
– Claudia Thiesen (Mehr Als Wohnen)
– Cristina Gamboa (Lacol)
Chaired by Phineas Harper (Architecture Foundation)