Wayne Hemingway's dire housing warning

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Timely words offered yesterday by design guru Wayne Hemingway. The founder of fashion label Red or Dead who is now turning his hand to housing and regeneration offered a timely warning on just how damaging a narrow definition of sustainability can be. In their "mass panic" to achieve the new Code for Sustainable Homes housebuilders will redirect money from making developments liveable to making them more efficient. "I haven't seen them in such a panic in the eight years I've been working with them," he said. "They are not going to absorb the costs - the cost will come out of making them liveable. I see it happening every day.

We are going to get to a worse situation than in the 60s and 70s. We will build the slums of the future." His contention is that without making decent places to live will lead to new developments being pulled down in a matter of decades. Not very sustainable, or as he puts it we are in danger of building "houses that are efficient with windows that don't leak but are still shitholes."

Hemingway was speaking at a breakfast jointly held by contractor Mansell and engineer Fulcrum Consulting launching a sustainable new houseing development in West London called Westway Beacons (more of this in a future post). His words chimed with two recently released reports - one called Building Houses Creating Communities by Government environmental watchdog the Sustainable Development Commission urging Whitehall to concentrate as much on existing housing as new developments, and one CABE warning against a too risk averse approach from public authorities and clients to designing decent outdoors space.

Comments

[Rob]

Phil,

An old Hemingway post of mine you might be interested in:

http://rob.annable.co.uk/journal.cgi/architecture/wayne-jacobs

[David Barrie]

Hemingway's right. Developers are currently taking too narrow a view of sustainability.

My current obsession is with local food production and 'food systems'. i.e. where do we get our food from in order to live a more sustainable lifestyle.

Just now, for all the emphasis of the development community upon carbon-efficiency and sustainable construction, there's insufficient thought given to the entire life-experience of residents.

People may be able in future to live in more sustainably constructed homes. But where do tey get their food from?

The carbon credit-worthiness of new heating and construction technology could be wiped out by twelve Tesco deliveries a day or turnips flown in from New Zealand.

There needs to be a bigger vision for sustainable living.

http://davidbarrie.typepad.com