Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott demanded a ‘Design forManufacture’ competition for family homes costing £60,000(excluding land). The target was met in 2005, but everyonewondered what the point was. Prescott had unintentionallymarked the centenary of Spectator magazine’s ‘CheapCottages’ competition for Letchworth. The magazine’s editor,John St Loe Strachey, wanted dwellings costing £150 – and gotthem. In 1905 this would be the equivalent of about £11,500today. That a ‘cheap’ home is five times more expensive todaycannot be explained entirely by skills shortages, standardsbeing more onerous, planning complex or communityinfrastructure costs, marketing, sales overheads and thehouse-builder's profit. It is rather that construction is the onlysector in which the cost of living for the majority has not beencheapened by a century of manufacturing, which hassimultaneously raised standards of living beyond the wildestdreams of 1905. The housing market is not about productivity,as a car manufacturer would approach it.

Houses are not like cars. Houses do not depreciate as doproduction-run cars on leaving the forecourt. If they did, wewould expect houses to have a look, performance and list offeatures that make their loss in value worth paying for. Theywould be as good as an Audi TT. No one would enter aprotracted financial arrangement without break clausesaccepting responsibility for the dilapidation and malfunctionof a depreciating dwelling designed without R&D, not made ina factory, handed over in less than perfect condition, lackingan aftercare package, and with a worthless ‘guarantee’. Sincehouses appreciate in value while falling apart, most peoplesign up willingly for mortgages, or aspire to, and try copingwith DIY.

Broken homes with the design content of a twee teapot arevalued with land in the UK. It is possible to value land andaccommodation separately, even if made of masonry. But the

52

Why Drive a TT and Live ina Broken Teapot?What is the fascination with do-it-yourselfrepairs and tweeness? Obviously oldhouses are great because they are large,and often stand in the best locations. And, of course, some old houses are theequivalent of classic cars. But most are old bangers – after several owners they are worn-out maintenance nightmares. Ian Abley asks: Why not knock them downand make way for the manufacturedmodular housing equivalent of an Audi TT

in the gap site? A lot more demolitionwould result in far more interestingneighbourhoods, lower running costs, and less need for wind farms (as beautifulas they are).

AD MMM 052-053 18/5/06 5:34 pm Page 52

UK has a government-regulated market in planning approvalson the basis of shifting architectural judgements that suggestthe building is the important factor, but which is really adisguised process of conditionally reallocating to landownersdevelopment rights nationalised since 1947.

Before then, anyone could develop anywhere they owned.This used to mean property values were based on whetherliving somewhere was better than elsewhere. Todayspeculation depends on development being restricted so thatusefulness and attractiveness are secondary. The clue is that,today, a house the size of a teapot, and even in bad repair, willbe sought after if it is one of a sufficiently limited number ofhomes in relation to the legacy of old planning approvals forimportant land uses, like work places or schools, and thetrickle of new ones.

It is a delicate process of negotiation to effectively makesure that locally, regionally and nationally there are fewerplanning approvals in circulation than there are householdshoping to get hold of one, to sustain the scarcity value of theentire housing stock. That rationing of development rightshas proven a perfect vehicle, better than the stock market andmore affordable than the art market, through which tospeculate.

Government talks about increasing housing supply, andcould create a surplus of planning approvals for land usesbefore anyone asked for them. Each existing approvedsuburban plot could be given automatic permission forredevelopment as up to six storeys of multi–useaccommodation. But the bottom would fall out of the broken-teapot business.

Taken further, approving designs in advance of specificsites being identified, based on popular prototypes provencapable of sequential production, would challenge thelaborious construction industry in the habit of treating every

project as though it were prototypical. Returning to everyfreeholder his or her right to develop land would transformeveryone into a discerning customer for buildings. Fewwould continue with the quaint practice of finalisingarchitectural designs as work proceeds on putting together a collection of ill-fitting bits, delivered in the wrong order,and in all sorts of weather. In a Britain really awash withplanning approvals we would appreciate that a multi-usemegastructure, along with simpler and smaller prefabricatedor manufactured single-use buildings, is a way ofindustrialising architectural production free from thelimitations of the natural site.

But this prospect is subject to a range of social factorsbeyond the architect’s professional ability to resolve throughthe technicalities of architectural design. No matter howmuch government talks of ‘design for manufacture’, theTreasury will have none of it. The financial fall-out from the required surfeit of planning approvals, let alone areassertion of the meaning of freehold, would bring thegovernment down and shake the economy.

Architecture would never be the same again.Manufacturers like Audi might gain a massive market forstatic architectural TTs. Every gap site in dilapidated terraceswould be seen, not as a laborious task of reconstruction, butas a parking space for a manufactured home. And like carsin car transporters, some Audi homes might be fitted into a larger vehicle. That vehicle would not have to go anywhereeither. It would sit there – a megastructure – in primelocations that had previously been a composition ofincreasingly expensive handcrafted teapots.

The Audi TT car driver who lives in that manufacturedenvironment would, for the first time, judge architecturewith the same discretion he or she had used at the carshowroom. 4

53

AD MMM 052-053 18/5/06 5:34 pm Page 53