Introduction

I love the British ability to be unconventional and witty, to push boundaries and ignore rules. Our creative talents are highly sought after in fashion, music and architecture. We embrace technological change at alarming rates. Yet it is shocking how little we apply these talents to our housing. The edges of our towns have become submerged in a sea of red brick, applied to building forms that look the same whether you are in Southampton or Northampton. We need only drive an hour or so away to hear a very different regional accent, yet regional variation in new-build housing has all but disappeared. The UK is a rich composition of diversity; why can’t this be evident in our housing? It doesn’t seem fair that the majority are required to live in identikit brick boxes, the only hint of the occupant within being a flowerpot or some curtains. These homes have no sense of place, do not encourage community spirit and offer extremely low space and design standards. Residents have told me they feel ‘contained’.

Identikit suburbia.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that in the UK new housing is predominantly built by volume housebuilders. In fact, the top five such companies contribute 38% of our overall new-build housing provision¹ (the top ten build almost 48%). To keep up with our demand for housing we need to build between 232,000 and 300,000 new homes a year,² but in 2015 we managed just 142,890.³ It is vital that we ensure that new homes are not blighted by previously accepted poor energy standards. But with Zero Carbon Homes and the Code for Sustainable Homes abolished, there is little incentive for these top ten housebuilders to produce environmentally responsible buildings.

While I was studying architecture at Oxford Brookes University, I became increasingly aware of how much we could learn from vernacular architecture in order to create better-quality housing. If vernacular buildings make up 90% of the world’s buildings and comprise approximately 800 million dwellings,⁴ they arguably cannot be ignored within the context of future housing research. Despite this statistic, the vernacular is all too often ignored in both architectural education and within the profession.⁵ Essentially, vernacular architecture is simple architecture: usually dwellings that respond to climate and culture and are sustainable ‘by accident’. I say ‘by accident’ because people who have built vernacular architecture did not even know about ‘sustainability’; they simply used local craftspeople and materials because that was what was available. They developed many natural or coincidental technologies to improve their comfort, and built homes as a community. This is of course a major reason why these homes suit their surroundings so well. And it is why you find longhouses in Dartmoor, limestone cottages in the Cotswolds and blackhouses in Scotland. We love and admire these homes; we pay a higher price for them. Some of them are listed. British volume housebuilders offer their own warped version, at scale, arguing that we all like the ‘traditional’. But this is wrong, and is the source of the problem. We all like vernacular architecture because it speaks to us of our home, of our place or our people. But the same brick box applied numerous times whether you are in Norfolk or Devon has nothing to do with ‘traditional’.

Contemporary architecture can learn from vernacular principles without resorting to pastiche, creating high-quality buildings that ‘fit’ in the same way that vernacular architecture does but reflecting a very different time. Vernacular dwellings inspire me because they are rooted in their place and have regional identity. They also contain many useful, sustainable principles of design, often lost on modern homes today. I repeatedly ask myself, why is it that modern housing seems so cold and disconnected in comparison? Why aren’t we using these simple design strategies any more? What prevented us continuing the evolution of this kind of design, bringing it into the 21st century?

This book aims to address some of these questions by showcasing vernacular principles used well in contemporary vernacular housing all over the world, both urban and rural, to represent a diversity in housing that should be apparent in all housing schemes, not just a special few. I have interviewed residents, housing-association staff, private developers and the architects of these schemes personally, to get to the root of what makes a successful housing scheme – not just from an aesthetic point of view, but for the people who live in them. These are schemes that have been produced with a long-term mindset, rather than for a short-term profit. They serve as inspiration for anyone designing or building housing in the UK today.

The book is split into five parts. PART 1, View on the Vernacular, discusses what vernacular architecture means to UK housing today, why it is needed in the current climate of a housing crisis, and design qualities that can be identified as ‘contemporary vernacular’.

PART 2, UK Housing, presents ten case studies that show the rich diversity achievable in housing when there is an understanding of vernacular principles. These principles are applied in different ways – to create community, to design climatically appropriate homes or to create a sense of place – but all have the effect of producing inspiring housing projects that suit our climate and culture, and improve health and wellbeing. They highlight what can be achieved in the UK, and that this needn’t cost more than conventional housing.

This is followed by PART 3, Co-Housing, which focuses on community self-build projects. These are important examples of contemporary vernacular housing, as they highlight not only the psychological, ecological and financial benefits for residents but also how far removed conventional housing schemes today are from the community-driven building of the past. Most of these schemes are located in the UK, but one – Sieben Linden in Germany – has been chosen from mainland Europe because it is a very well established larger-scale scheme with 140 residents, and they have hand-built their shared homes using predominantly straw bales.

The case studies in PART 4, Europe, were chosen because their climates are not dissimilar to our own, but governmental leadership styles, in terms of housing, are quite different. As will be seen, this key difference is a major factor affecting the quality of housing in the UK, and one area in which we have much to learn from mainland Europe.

Lastly, PART 5, Rest of the World, looks to vernacular examples across the rest of the world in order to highlight the richness, climatic advantages and ingenuity that can be achieved when vernacular architecture is used as a source of inspiration. These case studies also highlight issues facing countries encountering high levels of developmental change, and how this affects people’s view on housing. There are similarities to the UK regarding how far removed we have become in the process of building a home, and what we can do to reconnect.

It is hoped that the schemes shown in this book will provide a benchmark for housing standards in the UK, and that the case studies can be used as a tool to argue for better quality. It is intended to be a rich resource for designers and housing providers, offering hope and inspiration for the future of housing – but also a better understanding of what the consumer wants, and how we can achieve that. Finally, this book is also a letter to government: please don’t let any more of our country be ruined by poorly designed housing. I want to walk around housing schemes that make me proud to be British. We can do better, we have done better; let’s use the examples in this book and just do better.