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Notes from a recent trip to the Ecobuild conference:

It goes like this: DETR figures state that for a neighbourhood to be served by a viable transport network you need 5000 dwellings. To design a ‘walkable’ neighbourhood we should provide all key facilities within a 10 minute walk. This defines an area contained within a circle of 600m radius. Take away the space recognised as necessary for communal facilities and roads and you’re left with a dwelling density of 50 per hectare.

Cue a series of images showing potential layouts at 50 per hectare, which MacCormac admitted himself was barely the beginning of any qualitative judgement of the resulting spaces. His key point, touched on throughout the presentation, was how this qualitative judgement is dependent on an improved understanding of the net vs. gross density - or, crudely put, the houses vs. the spaces.

He’s absolutely right and there’s a thread across this entry that moves from the CABE audit I mentioned earlier (which has much to say about better highways integration), to the car free environment of Trystan Edward’s terraces (whose high density probably land back at about 50 when you introduced parking), through the Span story of quality landscape better mediating the Radburn car/pedestrian divorce, to the shifting tessellations of MacCormac’s houses and gardens.

Full notes on all the speakers can be found on Rob’s weblog: no2self.net

The partners here at Axis Design have a long history of teaching (working here is always an education!) and at the office we have copies of lecture notes and books that are all worthy of re-publishing via the web.

Under a new category simply entitled ‘notes’ we will be posting urban design lecture notes to share with visitors. These are made available under a Creative Commons license.

For the first installment there are three PDF files on offer: 1, 2 and 3.

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A list of external links of interest. Updated live upon discovery:

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Images and comments from phase 2a - add further comments at the bottom.

These are a little out of date now, I shall add some more current images after my next site visit.

Centre windows about the ridge? More glazing bars? Render or tile hanging in gable?

Full glazing bar solution overkill? Single glazing bar solution underkill? Disagreement about half glazing bar solution on opposite side. Lead work detail to be kept in check.

Timber gable over girst floor window retro-fitted since first visit. This house type is being used in phase 2b with mock sash windows - it’ll be a more interesting elevation but we have also proposed a flat roof porch, it may not have enough interest to carry it off. The bathroom layout (largely defined by the hoist requirements) creates some imbalance with the position of the window on the first floor. This house type works much better as a pair.

Post detail could be more robust? Larger timber section size. Overall proportion seems to work well.

Better proportion of fascia on this phase. Lead was previously a proscribed material on WHA spec - had approval for this phase and received thumbs up from Chris J.

How we work as community architects

We are a Midlands based practice with over 20 years experience in public consultation work at a variety of project scales. We enjoy the work and are committed to finding win/win solutions to often conflicting demands.

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Download: PDF sketch-plan

Initial sketch design images for Woolf House: