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RE-NEW TOWN

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A speculative idea to change how more housing is added in post-war new towns, developed by OEB Architects,  YAA Projects,  housing lawyer Nick Bano,  urban data analyst Dominic Humphrey and filmmaker Stuti Bansal 

 

As a group, we a drawn to post-war new-towns, some of us grew up in new-towns: we like their ambition, their desire to address the problems of the age with new, often avant-garde ideas. These ideas have created some successful buildings and spaces of real character. However the steadfast belief in a car-centric future has often lead to areas that are just too low-density and divided to function. Alongside this, the rigidity of the housing model has not allowed these to adapt to suit changes in society.

 

We recognise that improvements have to be made and new housing added. However there is the real risk that many of the original qualities of the new-towns will be slowly eroded to make way for this. Not the handful of high-profile buildings of already recognised architectural merit, just the slow chipping away at the edges of this character.

 

In developing this proposal we asked the questions: what are the avant-garde housing ideas of today? What can we learn from the a more diverse community, one that has moved on from the myopic 1950s ideals of the towns' creation? How can new homes be delivered in a way that is sustainable, both for the environment and the communities they support?

The study purposefully avoids the new-town centre and looks at the small neighbourhood centres. Called the ‘hatches’ in Harlow, however this typology can be found in most other post war new-towns: The small parade of shops serving the surrounding houses.  Corner shops for urban layouts that no longer have traditional corners. These are the kind of buildings that typically wouldn’t be thought twice about demolishing to make way for new development - low rise, fairly low quality, fairly low value. In this time of climate crisis we think its worth investigating the potential for reuse of even this kind of building, recognising that if this model for renewal is applicable across a large number of sites, then in aggregate huge amounts of carbon could be saved

 

The specific site chosen is Slacksbury Hatch, just West of the town centre, chosen because he area of garages behind the shops offers a good amount of space to test ideas, plus the site is free of any current proposal for renovation. We recognise that there are a number of successful business based at the hatch and we stress that these are speculative architectural idea only, not real proposals for the development of Slacksbury Hatch.

The main ideas of our proposal take inspiration from the compound house, which is a multi-generational housing typology found throughout the African continent.  In these, small more private spaces are grouped around a communal courtyard. Often multiple members of a family will share a compound house, with the smaller spaces providing individual privacy, but then activities such as cooking, eating and cleaning happening communally in the courtyard. This helps to foster a sense of collective identity.

 

This is in contrast with our current housing model in the UK, where new homes more often tend to be a collection of under-sized islands, built for profit and inevitably isolating their inhabitants.  Unit sizes are mostly fixed, meaning a growing family or change in circumstances often has to be accompanied by a change in location, which splits families and communities when help is needed most.

 

At Slacksbury, we imagine the area of garages to the rear of the shops can become the courtyard, around which new housing is added. Some shop units are retained, some are repurposed as shared facilities for both the new dwellings and the wider community: A communal utility room doubles as a launderette, the large shared kitchen can also host cookery classes. Linked to the homes above by a generous circulation space that allows for chance meetings between residents.

 

Above the shops a new type of housing is envisioned. Instead of rigidly defined separate flats, this is a self-built flexible grid of spaces that can be subdivided and adapted as required by the residents.

 

Harlow’s seventeen ‘hatches’ are both on the brownfield register and municipally owned. Instead of selling off the land for development, public ownership is maintained with sites long-leased to a new Harlow Hatch Community Land Trust. In parallel, a Community Building Company is established with future residents able to join up as designers, apprentices or makers to participate in delivery of their homes.

 

The constructed happens  in 3 stages:

 

  1. Firstly a new prefabricated structural deck is lifted in place spanning between the walls of the shop units below. This allows the shop to remain in operation while the construction happens. This stage also adds handrails, steps and lift access to the deck allowing for safe use in the subsequent stages. We imagine this is completed by a specialist contractor as requires heavy lifting.  The lift tower if the courtyard is formed from a stack of concrete panels salvaged from the Kitson Way multi storey car park, decorated before being lifted into place to form a bright community totem marking that a chase to the building is underway.

  2. The self build stages begin. As a new community, the soon-to-be residents work alongside skilled builders to raise a simple timber framed grid of rooms. The low-tech frame module is kept small to allow the re-use of salvaged timber, which is often in shorter lengths. The frame is then infilled with a lime and hemp mix, a material with low embodied energy and provides thermal mass and acoustic separation. Brightly painted salvaged plywood off-cuts form gussets to trusses over the long spans.

  3. The final stage is the inhabitation of the grid of rooms. Here individual families use simple none structural stud partitioning to close certain openings in the grid to form rooms. Reclaimed doors are installed.

 

The stages gradually reduce in scale: from the professional build, to the communal self build, to the personal self-build. Alongside this they also reduce in permanence, as we imagine the structural deck and main circulation is very permanent; the timber grid fairly permanent but relatively simple to amend if required; and finally the infill partitions changing as required when families grow or shrink.

 

The design of the new structures looks to-use materials from nearby demolition, including from high profile demolition sites in the town centre: Alongside the concrete car park panels, single glazed curtain walling from buildings such as Aylmer House are repurposed to form a long winter garden running across the front of the first floor. The thin grid of metal frames and pastel spandrel panels are emblematic of the post-war new-town movement, however as a building component they are just not insulating enough to work in modern construction. Re-using them for winter gardens means they don’t need to be insulting and so allows this distinctive character to continue. New high performance glazed doors then connect the winter gardens to the rooms behind. The new glazed facade concertinas to allow the size of the reclaimed window frames to work with the existing structural grid of the hatch. On the courtyard side, the timber cladding is finished with stripes of colour defined by the colours of slaved paint. The use of materials with low embodied energy, the reuse of material, and the significant re-use of the existing shop structure and foundations has the potential to save over half the embodied carbon of a traditional new build.

 

After the houses are built work doesn’t stop there. We recognise that buildings need to be maintained. For too long has regular maintenance been seen as someone else’s problem or something that a new wonder product claims to make unnecessary.  Again taking inspiration from some of the compound houses, regular maintenance happens side by side by regular community festivities: for example every few years a large community-wide painting party is organised. Everyone raises a paint brush, the timber cladding and window frames are repainted, but food, drink, stories and experiences are also shared in the process. Connections between people and the building they live in are strengthened.

 

The existing garages to one side of the courtyard are converted into a material bank and up-cycling workshop, a place for the local community to drop off any spare materials: a few bricks, an off-curt of plywood, half a tin of paint etc. The aim being that the return of spare material become as regular an activity as popping to the shop to get a bottle of milk. A key component of the parade of shops. Small donations that eventually add up to a meaningful change.  Part of a neighbourhood centre for a town to actively remake itself.

 

Before we start new new-towns, lets make the old ones better.

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