The Rule of Regulations
By Finn Williams with David Knight. Originally published for an AF exhibition of the same name.
In the last two years, the UK house-building industry has been inundated with new codes, regulations, guidance and legislations. In addition to Building Regulations, an increasing proportion of new housing must follow the Code for Sustainable Homes, Lifetime Homes Standards, Secured by Design, Design and Quality, Standards and Building for Life, not to mention specific standards and additional guidance set by Housing Associations. As a result, the estimated 3 million new homes needed within the next 12 years will be more sustainable, more accessible, and more regulated tan ever before.
Why has this legislation come about? How is it influencing the design of new homes? And what might be the long-term consequences for Britain's housing stock?
Throughout history, legislation controlling the construction of buildings has quietly predetermined the shape of our homes. London's first building regulations in the early 13th Century, "Recommendations made by the council of reputable men... to protect against fires, with God's help", banned thatched roofs within the City. Following the Great Fire of London, the London Building Act 1667 set minimum street widths, regulated party wall heights and specified that all houses should be built in brick or stone- its legacy can still be seen today. With the publication of guidance such as 'Accommodating Diversity', legislation now goes beyond its historical role of safeguarding health and safety to cover cultural sensitivities (allowing for different religious practices), psychological issues (like placemaking), and global concerns (such as climate change). Taken together, this new body of regulations could inadvertently influence the form of 21st century residential architecture as much, if not more than Loos or Le Corbusier's manifestos did at the beginning of the 20th century. With talk of exporting legislative tools including the Code for Sustainable Homes abroad, could we unwittingly be creating a new and more pernicious international style?
The Rules of Regulations pits Le Corbusier's famous five points against five pieces of current housing legislation; Lifetime Homes Standards, Design & Quality Standards, the Code for Sustainable Homes, Accommodating Diversity, and Secured by Design. Do today's regulations finally extinguish modernist house design? Or do they even prescribe a new vernacular of its own that will come to define early 21st century housing?
Le Corbusier developed the Maison Citrohan throughout the 1920s as a standardised house type for mass production- the name itself a pun on French car manufacturers Citroen. In Vers un Architecture he explained how the concept would replace "the old world house which made bad use of space" with its "incoherent grouping of a number of large rooms" in which "the space has been both cramped and wasted."
If Maison Citrohan was built today on a greenfield site in the Thames Gateway, what changes would be necessary to meet the highest standards? What would a compliant Citrohan look like? And would it work better?
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