Non-Traditional Houses: Identifying Non-Traditional Houses in the UK 1918-75

"That’s true. The Norwich scheme is built to the Passivhaus standard, a very demanding standard that drastically reduces energy use by making the envelope of the building entirely airtight. But in the organisation of public and private space it is clearly indebted to Neave Brown. A gate at the end of the garden leads to a communal garden, which is a textbook case of a semi-private space. No one can get into it unless they have one of those gardens. So innovation of all kinds has been a continuing theme in the history of council housing and innovation in construction was part of the story right from the start. This book, N on-Traditional Houses, is part of that story. It is published by the Building Research Establishment (BRE), the successor to the Building Research Station, which was founded in 1919, because Raymond Unwin told the government that in order to build all these houses at a time of great scarcity, we’re going to have to use materials that have not been used before: alternatives to bricks for walls, alternatives to timber for floors, alternatives to plaster as there was a shortage of plasterers. So it was a matter of expediency. However, there was also the sense that if housing was really going to get sorted out we would have to bring to bear on it the latest most advanced scientific thinking. We would have to apply science to house building, which at that time was still a craft-based business. Then in the mid-1920s Neville Chamberlain, the Conservative politician, decided that if we were to build council housing we would have to undertake very significant research into building methods and so he pumped a huge amount of money into the Building Research Station to undertake this work. “As a council, if you own say 500 of these houses and they’re deteriorating, you need to know exactly what, and where, the cause of the problem is!” The Non-Traditional Houses book is an archetypal product of the Building Research Station, looking at the hundreds of new systems that were developed in response to this demand. Some of the systems were not successful at all—buildings that started deteriorating pretty fast. But others have lasted well. This book is an encyclopaedia of the housing systems that were used. When you look at a building from the outside, it may not be clear what they are made of: if the walls are rendered you can’t tell if it is built of concrete blocks, or timber, or what. As a council, if you own say 500 of these houses and they’re deteriorating, you need to know exactly what, and where, the cause of the problem is! All the different systems, materials and methods are explained in this encyclopaedic volume. Having identified any defects, you can work that back to the construction of the houses and act accordingly. There’s a CD that goes with the book, and this may be more easily found these days than the book itself. It’s a completely different take on the subject from that of a historian or economist. But if we’re going to understand social housing and build again in earnest—and the sense of crisis at the moment makes it increasingly likely that we’re going to have to involve local authorities—this kind of technical knowledge is essential. If there is a new era starting it’s going to involve local authorities. In the 1980s and 90s what were called ‘private-public partnerships’ were the mantra of the 80s and 90s but there has been a reaction against them as ultimately many such partnerships have saddled the public purse with huge debts. I think it’s more likely that local authorities themselves start to build on their own terms. That’s what we see happening with a good number of local authorities in London, for example, now building housing once again. That’s why we need to learn from the experience of the past hundred years. Absolutely. The Grenfell tragedy was a real wake-up call, the most appalling reminder of what happens if you neglect social housing. At the most basic level, it shows the need for proper systems of building control. If you can clad an apartment block with flammable cladding, what’s happened to the codes? After the Great Fire of London in 1666, building codes were introducing that forbade flammable materials on the outside of buildings, and yet here we are some 400 years later doing just that! The books I’ve selected I hope provide a remedy for that kind of blinkered view."