Sarah Freeman: for homes as living space feels the squeeze

Houses, just like Mars Bars and Wagon Wheels, have got smaller. According to the organisation’s the Case for Space study, buyers of an average new three-bed home are probably being short-changed by about eight sq ft, the equivalent of a decent sized box room.

RIBA, which based the research on a sample of 3,418 homes across 71 sites in England went onto to criticise the practice of building “shameful shoe-box homes”, which it says are too small for family life.

Irena Bauman, co-founder of Bauman Lyons Architects in Leeds and a vocal supporter of the ability of good buildings to be life-improving as well as functional, might have been expected to come out in support of RIBA’s report, but in fact, she says, the issue is far more complex.

“The study certainly throws up a lot of questions, but I think we have to be careful about dismissing new developments simply because of their size,” she says. “The reality is that there are more and more single-person households and the average family unit is also smaller than it once was and so our housing needs have changed.”

According to Irena it’s not the size of the property which is important, but what architects do with the space they’ve got. In the recent past she admits many have been guilty of throwing up identikit developments with little thought as to how people will actually live in them.

“It has always puzzled me why in a one-bedroom flat you need two bathrooms, but time and again that’s what developers have done. Most people living on their own would probably forgo an extra bathroom for more storage space.

“Historically we have been wasteful with how we have used the space we live in. We need to ask ourselves, does each individual property really need its own laundry and waste collection space, or is there some way of making these collective areas?

“The truth is if you have high enough ceilings and big enough windows then people can live very happily in a quite a small home. It’s about creating the illusion of space and that’s something we haven’t traditionally been very good at.” For years Irena, who watched as Yorkshire’s city skylines were transformed by apartment blocks, bemoaned the lack of ingenuity when it came to creating new homes and when the credit crunch hit, she expressed a hope that it may provide a little room for reflection. Four years on, she says there is evidence that developers have taken stock.

“Since the property crash there has not only been an awful lot of research into housing design, but people are actually willing to listen to the results.

“That simply wouldn’t have happened a few years ago because back then developers could build anything they wanted to and regardless of how badly it was designed it would sell. I remember looking at apartment developments in some particularly industrial parts of Leeds and wondering why anyone would want to buy into them. But they did, and often before they had even been built.

“However, the consequences of that kind of building policy are very visible. When the bottom fell out of the market, entire complexes were mothballed and others that had been completed stood empty.”

However, while the industry may be emerging from one crisis, if the Government’s controversial move to relax current planning regulations go ahead, it could be plunged directly into another. “It’s a disaster waiting to happen and I just don’t believe that by relaxing the planning laws it will somehow deliver a boost to the economy,” says Irena. “Much more likely is it will deliver a lot of bad architecture.

“We saw it in the 1980s with the launch of the Urban Development Corporations. Their aim was to kick-start regeneration and bring land and redundant buildings back into use, but it ended in a mess.

“You only have to look at somewhere like Holbeck in Leeds to see how it went so wrong. It’s an incredibly historic area of the city with some fantastic buildings, but by the end of the decade the area was littered with giant sheds made out of sheet metal.

“The best insurance against decline is to preserve the heritage we have and commission quality buildings which are not only sympathetic to the surrounding area, but which create a place people want to live and work. It sounds simple, but sadly it’s a lesson which still hasn’t been learnt.”

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