HOUSING 089
concrete, I have 2 per cent more profit, but I don’t get reduced carbon. For me it’s about giving something to the collective without earning money – that’s the most terrible thing (the mainstream) can imagine.’ But, he says, his model is still viable, ‘even if we get 3–4 percent profit as opposed to 6 percent.’ To fix the system altogether, he has a radical proposal: ‘My opinion is that we have to cap the profit on residential housing in
‘Even in continental Europe, where renting is the norm, and most... countries operate some kind of rent control, the system is in urgent need of shaking up’
general, and that’s the most important thing – cap it to 3–4 percent and don’t give it to the land owners. You can then invest the extra money into the project.’ Are his ideas popular in Holland, I ask? ‘Not really,’ he says. ‘A lot of power is concentrated by the companies that own land or have a lot of influence to get the land and they don’t want to have less profit.’ But, as of January 2023, he made City Architect for Amsterdam. Landowners watch out.
CASE STUDY FOLKESTONE LIVE WORK UNITS – THE CABINS
Giving something back to the urban neighbourhood, as well as supporting creative live/work lifestyles, the Cabins was commissioned by Roger De Haan Charitable Trust – De Haan being the former SAGA-business entrepreneur who, having solds SAGA in 2004, has invested large chunks of money into reviving and restoring parts of Folkestone in order to attract new residents and creative businesses. His assorted initiatives, run under his Creative Folkestone organisation, include buying up and redeveloping parts of the Old Town as independent retail units, workshops and homes, as well as funding the widely celebrated Folkestone Triennial. Creative Folkestone commissioned London-based Neat Studios to insert live/work dwellings
in an overlooked part of Folkestone’s Old Town that would open up the area between the harbour, its winding back streets and Payers Park, one of the ‘art’ works emerging from the 2014 Folkestone Triennial, courtesy of MUF Architecture/Art. Neat’s response was to generate a cluster of mixed-use timber framed buildings for a variety of tenancies.
Working closely with the historic context, the footprint of these new buildings re-establishes the original building form and line of the old houses at numbers 23 and 25 Tontine Street but into that site they managed to fit five houses and four commercial units, plus a further three flats and a commercial unit inside an existing building. The timber-frame houses are clad in vertical larch panels, the
exterior patterns alternating between wide, flat boards and narrow strips, to create a subtle variation between them. Vertical, structural fins continue across the window openings, to provide privacy and solar shading. Some units are painted matt black, like the classic Kent coastal fisherman’s huts, while the others are left natural. Inside, robust walls panels allow residents to adapt them as homes/workshops as they wish. But the development transforms the wider neighbourhood not just via these attractive buildings but spatially: by removing a poor quality, two-storey extension which blocked both light and pedestrian access, Neat has opened up a pathway that links Payers Park with the harbour and the Old High Street. They also continued
the relationship with Creative Folkestone and the Folkestone Triennial by hosting sparkling, mirror-tiled art works on the exteriors, by artist Jacqueline Poncelet, called ‘Shimmera’, commissioned for the 2021 Triennial.
The project won a Civic Trust award in 2023 – one of very few housing projects to ever do so.
Client Roger De Haan Charitable Trust
Architect Neat Studios Area 1,125 sq m Value £2.8m Completed 2021
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