Archive for the ‘Property UK’ Category

A new report commissioned by SAVE Britain’s Heritage looks at the mess left behind by New Labour’s
disastrous Housing Market Renewal (Pathfinder) Initiative and presents a bold new vision showing for
healing and reviving the communities left shattered by house clearances across the north of England.

To date the government’s Pathfinder programme has cost over £2.2 billion and has resulted in the demolition
of 16,000 houses - four times as many as it has built. And the scheme has left thousands more houses empty
and decaying at a time when of soaring council waiting lists. This report, produced by Mark Hines Architects,
looks at how terraced housing, earmarked for demolition, can be adapted, upgraded and remodelled to a high
standard of energy efficiency, creating a range of accommodation and forming exemplar ‘eco-hoods’ of the
future.

Mark Hines was the architect responsible of the conservation and remodelling of the BBC’s Broadcasting
House. He says;

“The recycling of houses is environmentally friendly and allows us to provide homes quickly and
economically. To prove this, we have produced a number of houses types that would appeal to modern
lifestyles- from one bed double height live work units, to 4 bed family houses. We have designed extension
pods made from hemp, which will be made off site and allow bathrooms to be added upstairs. We found
that the houses could be upgraded to meet code for sustainable homes level 4 or 5, and could potentially
reduce carbon emissions by over 70%.”

The report marks the start of our wider investigation into what we believe could be the real eco-towns of the
future- huge run down parts of our existing cities. Unlike the proposed eco towns, these places are already
here- we’re just not seeing them yet.”

SAVE’s collaboration Mark Hines began in 2008 during a campaign to prevent the demolition of 500 Victorian
houses in east Manchester. This groundbreaking work forms the core of this report, but the study also looks at
how existing terraces can be linked together on communal heat and power networks supplied by green energy
to form genuinely sustainable ‘eco-hoods’ of the future.

Marcus Binney, SAVE’s President, says ‘This report is dedicated to one of the most distressing, indeed
shocking, sights you will see in English cities today. It is the sight of street after street of simple terraced
houses boarded up and awaiting demolition.

Many of these houses were people’s lifelong homes, others were bought up by enterprising young people as
their first step on the housing ladder.

‘Pathfinder programmes are among the most destructive and disgraceful official policies of recent years,
callously pursued by both central and local government. They have caused appalling anxiety and actual misery
to the people evicted from their homes. And this is the more galling when people see the sites of their homes
left vacant.’

‘Mark Hines’s bold vision for rejuvenating existing terraces and their surroundings is a bold vision and one
which no future government can afford to ignore.”

www.markhines.co.uk

Tweet This Post