AJ Climate Champions podcast: Owen Hatherley on Modernism + Will Hurst explains RetroFirst
In a bonus episode of the AJ’s podcast series, we talk to Owen Hatherley about the retrofitting of Modernist buildings and to the AJ’s Will Hurst about our RetroFirst campaign
Author and critic Hatherley describes approaches to the retrofit of Modernist buildings, lessons learned from post-Soviet housing and why he thinks White Design’s straw-bale Lilac Cohousing in Leeds could be a replicable new-build approach.
Hurst explains the tactics and ambitions of the AJ’s RetroFirst campaign, from engaging with MPs to raising public awareness, as well as the policy levers necessary to prioritise retrofit.
The future of design guides and codes
The latest proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and Planning Practice Guidance (PPG) take some initial steps in the direction of the wider proposed reforms to the planning system.
Notable here is the focus on good design quality and placemaking, with local planning authorities being required to prepare ‘design guides or codes’ consistent with the National Design Guide and the recently published draft National Model Design Code (NMDC) and Guidance Notes for Design Codes (GNDC).
These guides and codes will need to be tailored to each locality, reflecting distinct character, design preferences and aspirations – based on community engagement. To carry weight in decision-making, they should also be prepared as part of a plan, or as a supplementary planning document.
By David Rudlin2021-02-18T07:00:00+00:00
Writing exclusively for Building Design, David Rudlin, who worked on the new national model design code, argues it will give ammunition to planners
I remember a meeting back in the early 1990s with Mr Robinson from the highways department in Manchester. We were discussing the highway implications of the Hulme Guide to Development that my friend Charlie Baker and I had been commissioned to write. Mr Robinson was not happy. In his eyes two local residents – because that is what we were; Charlie was doing this through the Hulme Community Architecture Project – had been given rein to mess with his roads and to promote irresponsible ideas like crossroads! (This was long before Manual for Streets.)
Dan Whelan
The code unveiled last week is unlikely to achieve its goal of creating more beautiful developments, the region’s designers have claimed.
Launched for public consultation earlier this month, the National Model Design Code is aimed at providing local authorities with a baseline standard of quality and practice to take into account when considering development proposals.
For example, it urges councils to consider elements such as development layouts and street patterns; building façades; how landscaping would be approached; the environmental performance of place and buildings, and whether or not developments have taken local vernacular and heritage into account in their architecture and materials.
Consultation description
This consultation seeks views on draft revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework. The text has been revised to implement policy changes in response to the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission “Living with Beauty” report.
A number of other changes to the text of the Framework are also set out and explained in this consultation document, but we are not proposing a review of the National Planning Policy Framework in its entirety at this stage. A fuller review of the Framework is likely to be required in due course, depending on the implementation of the government’s proposals for wider reform of the planning system.