Insights > Construction AROUND THE BLOCK


For years, social housing has suffered connotations of poverty and deprivation, even as state-owned accommodation has enjoyed a distinguished political and architectural history spanning more than a century. Yet with the housing crisis showing no signs of abating, a new generation of architects is working to design beautiful, inventive houses that fit handsomely into existing neighbourhoods. Andrea Valentino chats to figures across the British social housing scene to learn why the country’s stock of social housing has collapsed over the last few decades, the challenges and opportunities of working in dense urban environments, and if how we build can change how we think about city life.


bloody, into the post-war era, David Lloyd George made a speech in Wolverhampton. Gazing out over a


I


n November 1918, just weeks after the guns had gone quiet and Europe stumbled, bewildered and


crowd of men, their narrow heads covered with top hats and flat caps, the prime minister proclaimed that the terrors of Ypres and the Somme would be overturned in the buoyant, egalitarian Britain of tomorrow. “What


is our task?” the Welshman roared. “To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.” To make that dream a reality, Lloyd George unveiled an epic scheme of house building – half a million in all, with bedrooms and a living room and


a scullery measuring exactly 80m2


Britain has changed in ways inconceivable to the veterans who heard Lloyd George in the shabby, homogenous country of 1918. Yet for


.


Holmes Road Cottages, Camden. LEAF REVIEW / www.leading-architects.com 19 19


Morley von Sternberg


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41