Regulations have progressively made homes more sustainable and energy-efficient, and voluntary codes take these standards further. Architects like to push them further still [...]
There are now housing associations and developers who can see the point of good design, and others who can’t quite, but still feel as if they should employ it. The public, too, perhaps encouraged by the TV programmes of Kevin McCloud, are more open to contemporary architecture.
— theguardian.com
According to The Guardian's Rowan Moore at least, who takes the long-view on how Britain's public housing policy and execution have changed in the last 50 years.
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Damn good reporting loved this bit:
Much of the credit should go to a quietly heroic generation of architects. These have grown up in the era following the backlash against their profession, when they could take nothing for granted, when they had to prove again and again that their ideas were not the fantasies of arrogant dreamers, but honest efforts to improve the quality of the lives of future residents. They sometimes find themselves among the worst-paid and hardest-working around the tables of consultants who nowadays get buildings built, and the most committed to the social benefits of the final product. They tend to get squeezed between those well-intentioned regulations and the merciless spreadsheets that calculate profitability and market demands, looking in narrow margins for ways to elevate homes above the basic.
They have to fight battles with property agents who tell their clients that the buyers of flats at market prices won’t want to share entrance lobbies with those paying affordable rents, or that there is no need to make space for a dining table as everyone likes to eat on sofas in front of the TV. Clients say that they’re worried that non-residents might sit down in their public spaces. Architects have to deal with the fact that most housing is built under what are called design-and-build contracts, which limit the power of architects to oversee construction details, which can lead to unfortunate joints and clumsy details. A familiar gesture among architects involved in such projects is the resigned shrug at some element botched beyond their control. “We’re treated almost as if we’re kids who are allowed to play a bit”, says one, “and then the grownups” [by which he means the other consultants and advisers] “come in and make the real decisions.”
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