bottom drawer

I love the idea of the iPad microflat but in reality it might be a bit grim, given it's being developed by housebuilder Barratt. Not as beautiful as the classic mini-flats at Lawn Road, featured in the AJ today. How much I would love to live there... Gordon Brown and Ruth Kelly just love the construction skills academy at the Battersea Power station site (a joint venture between developers Parkview International, their construction manager Bovis Lend Lease, the Learning and Skills Council and Lambeth College). Lingham Court in Stockwell wins a prize for being innovative regarding cross-subsidy. It's already won a Housing Design Award for its design last year. Final allocation announce for £135m to go into making our planners work harder, or better, or to hire more of them, or something. But guaranteed, everyone will still be complaining about them in a year's time. Especially as weirdly, the ones who get the most money are the one's who've already improved the m...

Designs by CZWG, Allies & Morrison and Carey Jones for a canal-side development by Isis in Leeds have been branded "staggeringly insensitive" in a last-ditch attempt to stop them getting through planning. The Leeds Civic Trust fumed: "It is shocking that council officers are recommending approval of such a staggeringly insensitive and inappropriate scheme which in its physical impact is directly at odds with all the strategy documents produced by the council for the Canal Basin and the Dark Arches in the past 10 years." Wowee. When was the last time that uber-safe Allies and Morrisson got panned for anything? I'm rather excited. And what are the Dark Arches? Sounds like something from Harry Potter.

Southend is bidding for the regional casino pilot. So presumably that means that Great Yarmouth will be spared? Other bidding locations are Birmingham (at the NEC), Middlesbrough, Bedford (like, why?), Blackpool (surprise), Cardiff, Rainham (please, no...), Glasgow, and many other weird and wonderful places who somehow think (like a complusive gambler) that their fortunes will be revived at one turn of the roulette wheel. I'm not so sure. Having seen what happened to the floating casinos in lower Mississippi? It made those towns pretty sad places, and that was before Katrina came along and wiped out the entire economy at one fell swoop, because they had no economic diversity. Putting all your chips on one number ain't that smart.

The ODPM/Academy for Sustainable Communities 'flagship' award is open for entries. Read about it all here .

The Leeds Partnership - a joint venture between Hammerson and Town Centre Securities - has 'revealed' that it had asked Farrell to mastermind the £500 million mixed-use redevelopment of the city’s Eastgate and Harewood quarters. The proposals, which go on public display tomorrow, will create 93,000m2 of new retail space, as well as 600 homes, a medical centre and a church. There are also plans for two department stores on the 8.5ha split site, including a flagship building for retailer John Lewis. I love the idea of 'unveiling' Farrell as the mastermind the day before the plans go out for public comment but actually this is the tail-end of a fairly long process of 'consultation' and negotiation and everyone's known about Farrell's involvement for ages. In fact, he prepared a masterplan for the area as long ago as 1990 according to the supplementary planning document ( pdf from October 2005. There's a long and quite dull (but interesting if you'r...

A slightly premature but welcome article from Ellis Woodman in this week's BD regarding a development by architect Peter Salter in Notting Hill. The project , which has not yet received planning, is for Baylight Properties , the developer headed by AA-grad and former student of Peter's, Crispin Kelly. The development, for 4 dwellings on a compact and complex site, is exciting as it will be the first permanent building in the UK by one of our most sensitive and virtuoso architects. Previously Peter, who has completed several works in Japan including the Kamiichi mountain pavilion, has until now in the UK been known most for his teaching at Bath and the AA, and as former head of the UEL school.

Richard Rogers Partnership's controversial masterplan for a key site near Cmabridge station came under fire last week from local residents at a meeting with the developer Ashwell. The first phase, which will include 1,400 new homes, a hotel and 10-storey buildings on the 8.5ha site, won planning permission, but the second is meeting opposition. Now CABE's design review panel have also refused to back the £725 million regeneration scheme because of concerns about the height of the project and the possible overdevelopment of the site. A report from the design review panel states: ‘We are not convinced that the right building type has been chosen to provide high density at an appropriate scale. ‘While we accept the premise that high-density development is desirable at major transport hubs, we consider that the quantum, scale and massing of the development is too great for the character of the area.’ The report continues: ‘We are particularly concerned about the height of the propo...

Of course, just after I write a minorly stinging post about CABE in the Gateway, I read Serota's interesting piece in BD (subscribers only) about the role of CABE. I will just quote the whole lot rather than post comment: It is the lot of advisory bodies, especially those funded by government, to be on the receiving end of accusations that they are either not toeing the line by slavishly praising the latest government policy initiative, or that they are supine recipients of taxpayer largesse, content to do the government's bidding. As is widely known, much of what we do on specific projects is pre-planning, and does not, therefore, make the sort of shock-horror headlines that are BD's stock-in-trade. That work is not something we brag about. We have no desire to expose to criticism architects, clients and planning authorities who are trying to improve significant projects by involving Cabe at a stage when design is fluid, and change is still economical in terms of both tim...

The Tate Modern in London has emerged as the hot favourite to house the soon-to-be-created National Centre for Creativity & Innovation. Other London contenders include the Argent's King's Cross development, Paddington and even the Thames Gateway, although this would probably be considered too remote. A northern centre will also be established, on the Quayside in Gateshead, between the Sage building and the Baltic. The London Development Agency has commissioned a feasibility study from the Whetstone Group, and will be advised by an panel of experts - including Norman Foster, Tate director Nicholas Serota, Terence Conran and Design Council chief executive David Kester. Tate Modern, which is to significantly extend its empire to designs by Herzog & de Meuron, is also tipped to house a new Design Museum, which will be moving out of its Thameside home on Butler's Wharf by 2012. The Design Council is likely to merge with the new centre, to create a significant new design ...

A consortium of museums and academic institutions in South Kensington have been granted £3m in the Budget to pro-actively reduce carbon emissions. Businesses in the area will apparently be fitted with meters that will measure energy consumption, and this data will be used "to develop a more integrated strategy for the whole area. We want to put in district systems for the area such as aqua-thermal storage systems." The project will be monitored by the Treasury, and hopefully evolve into a best practice model. Good news joined-up thinking-wise. Shame that this morning I woke up to 'Today' on Radio 4 telling us that we're all doomed and it's far too late to do anything about it. Via today's Building .

Everyone's been piling in to the Commons all-party Environmental Audit Committee report that yesterday gave virtually every lobby some tasty quotes to play with regarding the lack of infrastructure provision for the South-East housing growth areas. The best bit was their assessment of a "ODPM's reluctance to take on the building sector but also of a fundamental lack of urgency in the Government's approach to ensuring that new housing and new communities are truly sustainable" by not paying attention to the risks of drought and water shortages and the extra traffic and strain on services that an expanding population will bring. So the Countryside Alliance weigh in here . Prescott's reaction is here (quote: "The idea the government is going slow on infrastructure or the environment is absurd when we are increasing energy efficiency in new homes by 40 per cent this April and investing billions already in the Thames Gateway and other areas to support new ho...

We all love CABE, in the same way as we all love Marks and Spencer. It's aims are laudable and its full of some lovely people, but inside we all know its slightly ineffectual, hung up on due process and lacking flair. But when Yvette Cooper announces that she's asked CABE to "carry out a review on the identity of the Thames Gateway to provide a starting point for developing a strategic approach to design" I'm afraid we do all heave a sigh. To be honest, this is simply not CABE's job. CABE is good at design review, reasonable at some forms of training, and its good practice publications are often quite nice if a bit safe (in the M&S knickers way) and have a tendency to pile up on the desks of local authority officers who think that they don't offer enough specific advice (especially in rural areas). But vision? identity? I think not. But then, seeing as she thinks that The Bridge, Dartford " will encapsulate what the Thames Gateway is about - cre...

A new report by Davis Langdon has warned that the Olympics will be a drain on the construction skills market and may have a significant impact on the rest of the UK, causing other projects to potentially fail. It adds that the Olympics will add a further 1-2% to current inflation trends, with an overall rate of 6% from 2008 onwards, the risk of price spikes in certain locations during 2007/08 and 2010 as projects come on stream, and that projects unattractive to contractors would struggle to achieve competitive or properly resourced bids. (via Building , subscribers only) Meanwhile after intense speculation this week, Building also reports that Stanhope have sold their stake in Stratford City. This is expected to lead to a bidding war between Westfield and the Reuben Brothers for each other's stake, in order to gain total control of the lucrative development. This all comes at the same time as sources close to the Olympic Delivery Authority are leaking news that it is facing a subs...

Several people asked me yesterday about the article in the Guardian about a RICS report on the increasing privatisation of what used to be public spaces, by developers hiring private security guards and policing the streets and spaces. Unfortunately one of the images used, and the first paragraph, mentioned the recently-approved Kings Cross Central development, which we worked on as public realm strategists. Needless to say, we were rather surprised to see the connection being made as Kings Cross is actually not going to be policed privately and is going to produce (pace the local authority planners) "genuinely public streets and squares" for which the scheme has been applauded. If you do manage to read down to the bottom of the article, you will see that in fact, Kings Cross is singled out as the one large development which is taking a different attitude. "Camden council, north London, appears to have bucked the privatisation trend. It has struck a deal with Argent to ...

Work has started on the 'eco-park' at the centre of the New Islington development, Urban Splash 's high-profile scheme in Manchester which features controversial house designs by FAT and some masterplanning by Will Alsop. Obviously they all say it will be great. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Housing Corporation have launched yet another guide to creating mixed 'sustainable' communities. I haven't read it but I know what it will say. Mixed tenure, mixed economy, schools and parks and youth clubs are good things, being able to access public transport is also a good thing, and hey, all will be well. Apparently Neighbourhood Management Pathfinders are successful. Well, anything that actually gets the different providers of social and public services talking to each other has got to be an improvement on the current situation where I constantly find no-one ever knows what the next department over is doing. There's a new regeneration company in Harlow...

The English House Condition Survey , out today, reports that social housing conditions are much improved since the last ten years. It claims there has been an overall reduction of one million social homes and 400 thousand vulnerable private sector households living in dwellings failing to meet the Decent Homes Standard since 1996. Well, things may be better but in 2004 there were still a fairly shocking 6 million (29%) officially non-decent homes as measured by the standards. And on the same day, it was announced that another £29m was going to the East Midlands to bring homes up to the Decent Homes Standard. It's actually not much money, I don't think. The average cost of making a home decent is £7,028 totalling over £47 billion for all non-decent stock. And the DHS is very much a basic level of housing, meaning that homes have adequate insulation, a working heating system and other pretty basic things, though the insulation standards are difficult to meet for older homes, es...

In another guise, this would be a proposal from Rem Koolhaas, in line with all he's written about Delirious New York and other crazy stuff. But actually, it's a developer-led, and very real, project to build a skyscraper in Birmingham that will house a freefall parachute drop the outside of the tower, a flight trainer taking thrill-seekers over the edge of the tower terrace 300 feet up, a gyro tower ride which will take up to 50 passengers to the highest point where they can enjoy a panoramic view, a bungee drop ride, an eight seat giant drop, and a high level seesaw ride. It will be illuminated with laser lighting, making it visible for miles around and accentuating the iconic nature of the development. Two storeys at the top of the building will comprise a restaurant and integral bar, observation area with bar/cafe, three ride lifts and one service lift. It's just been submitted for planning permission and as it has been developed very much in partnership with the city c...

David Cameron is very much in the news right now with his emerging views abou regeneration, housing and other related issues. Central is his assertion that housebuilding to solve social inequalities is the way forward, and those who oppose new development are "bananas" - people who want to 'Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone'. "How can we bridge the widening gulf in our society between those who benefit from being on the property ladder and those who are kept off? This is a challenge that goes to the heart of the sort of society we want to build. For pressing reasons of social justice, and economic efficiency, Britain needs to spread the benefits of ownership more widely." Ideas include rewards for areas that welcome new development (surely a strange sort of bribery?), changes to planning law to apparently 'build beauty in' to new housing (how on earth do you define beauty?), and environmental sustainability measures. He's also advoc...

Adnams have announced this years Flying Egg competition for Artistic Inventors and Creative Geniuses: The Alternative Clock. "At Adnams we care about the environment and take pride in encouraging artistic endevour and a strong sense of community. We hold unusual al fresco competitions to explore the link between imagination and functionality and promote the use of recycled materials. Our challenge is to find exciting and bizarre alternatives to mundance practical objects that no-one ever notices." It all culminates in a wild town party in Southwold which the Telegraph (not that they would know) said 'rivals the Tate' and involves stilt walkers, lots of food and drink and all sorts of bands. You can also win quite serious prize money - there's £2,750 up for grabs altogether. They even make eggcups with wings that you can buy. Previous competitions have included the alternative deckchair and weathervane, among others. It all started with a mad scarecrow competitio...

Cow saved by beer - no really, Adnams beer (of which I am so proud to be associated by family) was responsible for saving the life of a cow, who has now given birth to a healthy calf named Adnams in honour of the occasion. Tony Baskett and his wife Lavender, who are both in their seventies and live in Theberton, Suffolk, feared that their cow, Lottie, would die after she developed a stomach problem. But a vet suggested treating Lottie with yeast - so Mr Baskett fed her Adnams beer from a bottle. "She was very ill and wouldn't eat or drink", said Mrs Baskett today. "The vet who was treating her said she thought that brewers yeast might help cure the problem. She said she had heard of it being used in other countries and in England many years ago. So Tony approached the local pub and they gave him a barrel of Adnams which just had the dregs of the beer in the bottom. We put it in a bottle and pushed the bottle into Lottie's mouth and got it down her that way. Aft...