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welcome back or welcome if you haven't been here before my name is Sam kui I'm um from um from the School of Architecture the world College of Art and um I'll welcome everyone I I don't know who's been here actually this um in the afternoon oh okay so this is quite mixed um okay in that case um I'd like to welcome everyone here um I also like to um thank the architecture Foundation um Ellis Woodman and John Asbury from the barbin for hosting us tonight and um as I explained earlier um this the event tonight is part of a project called housing standardization the um architecture of reg um of regulations and building standards oh sorry design standards I I never used the subtitle so I'm sorry I always forget um and as part of this um um a project that we've been running for about two two and a half years and we are just about to wrap up and the project was funded by the um Arts and Humanities research Council and supported by the pro phophi um Foundation um what I will do is um I'll kick off the event um um this evening by talking a little bit about the work we've done um to Pro um to both sort of I think share some of our key findings even know this is kind of work in progress still but also um maybe to provide the context of the work that's much more comp discussion that's hopefully much more um comparative um I think um in particular I will focus on um two issues one is around housing affordability and the one is housing uh design into International context which of course um you know relates them back to our invited speakers um who have participate in our study um to so according to the Royal Institute of British Architects only 6% of housing in the UK is designed by Architects unsurprisingly less than a uh than a third of the UK's 25 biggest house builders employ their own Architects this means that most housing is extensively standardized in its design and traditional in construction in our study of recently completed U mixed housing developments marketed in England in 2022 the 4,064 um tuet and three bed houses analyzed were based on only 129 standard house types and in this example as you can see here the basic plan is varied according to tenure and local planning or client requirements worthwhile to note is the range of dwelling sizes with the largest just meeting the nationally um described space standard of 79 square meters and the lower uh the lower just above the housing quality indicator previously used in affordable housing programs you can see that private homes are generally slightly smaller and have a wider plan du turn an on Suite to the master bedroom this example also highlights uh that the majority of affordable housing today is a byproduct of private development ments created through planning obligations and therefore provided by the same developer as an audit by the place Alliance found the design of three quarters of 142 large scale housing developments completed in England from 2014 to 2019 were mediocre or poor and over one in five developments should not have been given planning permission much housing in England is the outcome of e uh economic decisions and established practices and preference and preferences by few large organizations with the 10 biggest volume house builders responsible for 59% of new private homes in Britain this limits diversity in housing Supply and design our project is therefore interested in the role of standardization and design governance and shaping housing outcomes and experiences this is essential to understanding how design quality is defined and controlled but also How It ultimately affects evidence Life by Design governance I mean the formal and informal tools employed by the government and housing providers or stakeholders to control the quality and types of housing being supplied as categorized by Matthew Kona design governance andc compasses three key functions guidance incentive and control our focus is on subsidized housing increasingly referred to as affordable housing which is typically designed to just mean a minimum legal and and Market requirements and characterized by standardization subsidized housing is where design regulations arguably matter most and subsidies are commonly conditional to meeting minimum standards so-called affordable housing is however often not affordable to many low-income households in 2021 only 12% of affordable housing was for social rent the average uh uh affordable rent in England um of 13629 per week equates to 46% of the medium annual household income of the poorest fifth in the UK the majority 54% is for affordable intermediate uh rent homes which can be up to 80% of local market rents and in less affordable areas exceeds the median national income and of course as you might know shared ownership is targeted at mid- income households the social rented housing arguably the most affordable provision for low-income households assuming a proportional spend in England just around 5% or2 million pounds of government investment currently supports it with the vast majority of investment going towards the private sector and Home Ownership which of course um makes up a large portion of affordable housing with each social rented home now costing about £400,000 to build in London this would pay outright for social rent homes yet according to National Housing Federation there is a need for 1.6 million additional social rent social bent homes in England alone at the same time government uh government subsidizes private landlords to the tune of 70 billion pounds um in the same period considering the extensive subsidies and policy interventions in favor of the private sector it is apparent that the rhetoric of housing NE liberalization is overly simplistic and disguises a fundamental problem in our dualistic understanding of market and non-market housing systems a key issue of regulatory cultures prioritizing Market self-re uh regulation is that housing systems have greater sectoral differences in dwelling size and housing quality it also leads to stigmatization and residualization of social housing reducing it to the function as a safety net across the countries we studied there are significant differences in and and subsidized to affordable housing delivery and affordability it is interesting to note that Chile's neoliberal government subsidizes almost 35% of new housing and that in China the affordable housing Supply by the government in large cities is to exceed that of Market housing in the current 14th 50-year period um for the first time with guango for example um provisions includ including um 90 uh 92% or 600,000 new public rental homes acknowledging a failure of ownership based models and a need for long-term public housing assets with rent controled I should also add that even in the UK the National Space standards apply theoretically for the first time to all new housing recognizing the need to um uh need to address Regional and sectoral differences many countries use uh standard design Solutions mandatory um regulations and voluntary good practice guides and standards to control housing design these design regulations include uh technical housing standards that control various aspects essential to decent housing such as a space provision amenities functionality health and safety structure performance and environmental Comfort space standards um have become a key measure of housing quality based on two fundamental beliefs still largely upheld first a sociospatial belief harking back to 19th century Victorian charitable housing trusts that improving the housing and life of the lower classes means improving the moral behavior and social conduct second a socio technical belief the sociospatial relations can be mapped measured and improved as first demonstrated by Charles Bo's um social cartography space standards instrumentalize these beliefs by translating normative daily domestic activities and spatial hierarchies based on social norms specifically the nuclear family into graphical anthrop promatic data standardized Furniture dimensions and activity zones and circulation space required by the various expected users of a home this principle of abstracting home use function and social Norm into a drawing with Dimensions has become a pseudoscientific proof of good design and conventionalized by Design handbooks such as an sfi's architect data and the widely uh adopted use of minimum space standards a key problem of minimum space standards is however that rather than being aspirational they often become the targeted maximum dwelling size that does not necessarily ensure usability as we all know from covid-19 despite a long history of space standards since 1918 in England property ities are marketed and described in relation to the number of bedrooms not overall floor areas or cost per square meter with many home owners and renters def not knowing how big the properties are at the same time the small size of homes in England is frequently discussed in the media we therefore study dwelling sizes in London and um as the housing stock is very old with 56% um built before the end of World War II and many properties having been substantially changed over time we found that 61% of dwellings failed the space standards of the 2010 London housing design guide which um um is fairly translated into the the current um National um described space standards in fact 88% of properties failed at least one of the minimum recommended dimensions in the London housing design guide however uh since the introduction of the guide the oval failure rate has dropped to 33 % we subsequently uh studied the space stus of new affordable homes in England the current nationally described space standards however are not mandatory and only 36% of local planning authorities have adopted them um we found that 43% of the dwellings we looked at failed to space standards um now to answer the question if space standards work the simple answer is yes if comparing outcomes between councils that have or have not adopted space standards but it is more complicated as this table shows the overal compliance rate in local authorities that adopted the space standards is 69% however less than half of all houses meet the ndss as they can provide the expected room sizes without achieving the overall space standards there are significant uh differences in regions and between housing provider yet even where homes do not meet the current ndss they are designed to some standards such as the H Qi as the data shows here right so I mean so um standards have been used before uh even room standards and required activity zones that we would assume to be more objective can differ significantly indicating various Furniture standards and cultural expectations for example the minimum size of a double a double bedroom ranges from 9 square meter in France to 12 square meters in Scotland in Australia a minimum 19 CM wide movement area next to the bed is required whereas in the London housing design guide it is only 40 cm these differences are only partially explained by housing provider tenure or Target group especially in countries with universal design controls that equally apply to all sectors and often reflect different economic development and sociocultural Norms resulting in vastly different dwelling sizes and housing expectations this is also evident from how housing standards and quality are determined or controlled in different countries and the dwelling size is prescribed for instance the standard unit unit size for two person dwelling is 14 to 22 squ met in Hong Kong 28 square meters in France 49 squ met in Canada and 55 to 65 s met in Australia with housing in England the Netherlands and Chile delivered by large um volume house builders highly standardized layouts are common whereas in Barcelona and Zurich where developments are typically based on design competitions there's much greater variation in the countries discussed tonight housing in Zurich is noticeably larger than in England homes in Santiago much smaller and in uh in the Netherlands and and Spain they're slightly smaller than the ones in the UK to put this into context we have seen increases in space standards in England over time for example with the ndss about 10% larger than the param more standards from the 1960s that's still often quoted today um a European wide um comparison 2010 of square meter per person shows that England is only behind Denmark Luxembourg and Sweden even before St space standard were reintroduced in London and then subsequently nationally with comparative dwelling sizes since having um significantly changed as you can see from this although England's homes were smaller in 2010 than in most other EU States When comparing like for like there is extensive under occupation and a preference for homes with more bedrooms and importantly an inequitable distribution of floor area per person especially in a private rented sector floor areas therefore provide only a limited understanding of home use and lift experience studying housing expectations and actual use is equally important for example in England especially in Social rented homes and in Chile their room sizes are hierarchical the secondary bedrooms often designed to fit just a single bed a small desk and perhaps a small wardrobe assuming needs of a family in contrast in Zur in Barcelona um more rooms tend to be designed to fit a double bed offering greater flexibility there are also cultural differences in the expected services or amenities found in a home in Zurich communal washing machines are common in England newb Built Homes now provide a standard utility cupo um that can house a washing machine but they still often part of the kitchen there's also no designated space for drying clothes clothes where in Chile a ventilated lodger next to the kitchen for washing and drying clothes is enorm despite overall very small dwelling sizes similarly there are differences in the finishes of fittings expected for example kitchens in Zurich come fully fitted with all appliances and cupboards and barcel and Barcelona kitchens are only equipped for basic use with residents often upgrading them in Santiago the kitchen provision is just a sink in all kitchens are part of an open planed living area which is too small to use the dining table without moving it for every meal in England kitchen Provisions depend on a housing provider and tenure one participant um mentioned to us that their home came only with a stove we therefore studied how people furnish and use to homes as this is typically very different from what is drawn by Architects to gain insights into the discrepancies between the assumptions about dwelling use that underpin standards in everyday life at home as part of this we have used life motion tracking of occupants to understand the patterns of use with occupants um often surprised by how they use their homes differs from how they thought they were when we asked in a survey with over 12200 um respondents from London what they liked or disliked about the homes the responses were surprisingly more balanced than expected indicating the difficulty in generalizing housing problems use uses or needs the most problematic home suffered not always from the most obvious large problems but an accumulation of what might seem minor problems often hidden in small percentages also what people meant by Design was very interesting when interviewing some Serv respondents they spoke about how comparison with TV shows friends and family or the place they grew up in shape the perception of housing there's a great discrepancy therefore between what designers regulators and occupants mean by housing standards and housing quality the agency to make change to the homes was seen by many as essential to well-being and positive lift experience from our interviews with occupants of affordable homes in different countries it is apparent that there are vast differences but also significant um small nuances and housing experiences that are important to understand the generalized and standardized approach to regulation and Design um tends to be most problematic to those in greatest needs of protection and support therefore future housing standards in design needs to take greater account of lift experiences and social expectations and value that shape um sociospatial realities and housing perceptions thank you

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