All articles by Josephine Smit – Page 4
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Tunnel but no light
Kent council drew guffaws of disbelief recently by suggesting its residents might like to help solve its housing shortage by upping sticks, moving to France and commuting to their jobs in England via the Channel Tunnel. Well, perhaps we should all start learning French.
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FeaturesThree-part harmony
Designing a housing estate can get a bit monotonous so Feilden Clegg Bradley brought in a couple of chums to swing along with
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FeaturesThe dealer
Chief executive of Harvest Housing Group Ian Perry has spent three years slogging to pull off the first housing PFI pathfinder project. It's entailed some pretty deft diplomacy and some hard bargaining, but it's finally paid off. Josephine Smit tell the inside story.
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News
Will we ever learn?
It may promise affordable housing on a massive scale, but the government's communities plan could simply be a rerun of 1960s prefab failures like Thamesmead (pictured). We investigate the dangers of sacrificing quality for speed and rock-bottom prices
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Options run out
Deciding the colour of the tiles on the bathroom walls used to be the biggest choice a homebuyer had to make. Now housebuilders are producing optional extras catalogues, offering everything anyone could want. In the USA buyers spend about 10% of a new home’s sales price on extras, and although ...
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Features(Where) The mummy lives
They may have taken longer to build than planned, but judging by their popularity, there's no curse on Crest Nicholson's Ingress Park homes. Josephine Smit talked to director Stephen Stone as he paid a call on one of the residents.
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FeaturesHow low can he go?
Famed for an audacious, but failed, bid for Tay Homes, Country & Metropolitan boss Stephen Wicks had better luck with his acquisition of NorthCountry Homes. Now he's championing rock-bottom sale prices and planning his next buy. Josephine Smit met him.
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FeaturesMcCarthy & Stone asked 394 local authorities whether they had assessed the housing needs of older people.
Why does this matter? Because it is depriving elderly people of housing choice and making it difficult for retirement housebuilders to meet the increasing demand for their product.
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FeaturesIf we can make it there …
With Murray Grove, Cartwright Pickard established itself as the practice that could turn modular technology into architecture. Now that the Americans want it to do the same for them, the practice is poised to realise some of its ambitions. And boy is it ambitious …
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FeaturesDavid Gann
The head of Imperial College's innovation studies centre has spent years gently taking the fear factor out of innovation. Now, says Josephine Smit, it looks as if a conservative construction industry has finally plucked up the courage to trust him.
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FeaturesVillage People
Can you design a community? Yes, but it takes a lot more than simply a construction process, as both Philip Davies of developer Linden and resident Marie Hart have learned at an urban village in Surrey.
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FeaturesMiller's tale
Tim Hough, Miller Homes' new managing director, plans to expand into the South-east and build on the company's reputation for quality and care. But is it the firm's results that are giving him the best reason to be cheerful?
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FeaturesNothing by halves
Mayor Ken Livingstone's draft London plan, which aims to make 50% of homes on new residential sites affordable, is coming under public scrutiny next week. Developers will be going all out to limit the damage.
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Features
Ground control
Ten years ago, development was all about churning out yuppie flats; today the ground has shifted to affordable homes. Josephine Smit meets Andrew Wiseman, chief executive of Telford Homes and a master of both territories.
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Homes comfort
Whenever housebuilders meet nowadays, they can be seen staring intently at one another and muttering, "this is going to be an interesting year". Never ones to talk down business, what they are really saying is: life is pretty damn difficult. The industry is facing more demands than ever before, with ...
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FeaturesDo houses that are built in a factory have to end up looking like this…?
The trouble with factory-built houses is that they look as if they were built in a factory. But off-site manufacture is not incompatible with sophisticated design, as the coming generation of prefab homes will demonstrate.
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Let's be Bold
Britain is full of boring-looking, traditionally built houses, so what's so bad about an equally boring-looking house that has been built in a factory?
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Alphabet soup
If you want to be sure your scheme doesn't get into trouble, make sure the wording of any planning agreement is clear
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Features
All in the Finish
In a month's time the Council of Mortgage Lenders is bringing in a new rule that means homeowners only get their mortgage when the home is complete. Josephine Smit reports on the impact it will have on housebuilders' deadlines
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FeaturesThe children's crusade
How can you make a name for yourself if that name belongs to your famous parent? We talk to people who've wrestled with this problem – and found their own answers.