It's cold and pouring outside and it's the beginning of June.

It's the week after 'half term'. 

It used to annoy me greatly when parents I worked with talked about 'half term' as if I, a non-parent, should also have this week in my diary: a period not to arrange meetings or expect replies to urgent emails.  Now I do it too, and I push through that week, working and parenting like trying to do a full length underwater. 

This week I have re-surfaced but, inevitably, I am still some way from the end of the pool.

I am trying to hold on to all the Good things I have done even if at the same time there are things I could have done better but honestly, I feel rather drained.

Three of my projects are on site at the moment.  They are all domestic projects and range through small alterations, extensive refurbishment to completely new build.  In my role as architectural designer I guide my clients through the new, unsettling, expensive building process and do my best to mediate all the new relationships with consultants, contractors, inspectors and all.  Good design isn't enough anymore, one needs to be able to listen, empathise, communicate and problem solve. 

Sometimes I really do feel their pain, their frustration.  I wonder over everything and think what I could have done better.  I feel a bit sick.  This is all part of my job and if I'm tempted to feel down about it, it occurs to me that it is part of a lot of people's job. 

Later today I'll have a regular meeting with a social worker, she faces even more critical and personal crises in people's lives every day.  The police officers and investigators of counter terrorism under scrutiny in the news today have to find a way of coming to terms in their own minds with the course of events that form their daily work. Our church minister is off on sabbatical to 'top up' his emotional well being.  How do they manage? Working on my own I recognise I am vulnerable to a slef-doubting chatterbox in my head. Sometimes I find myself longing for a job with no human interaction - is there such a thing?

Mental health has had a high profile recently and rightly so but I'm wondering if the thing that needs our attention, perhaps as a preventative measure to mental health problems, is emotional health.  We know we work long hours, we know that with email, smart phones and flexible working our jobs weave into our personal lives more than ever. What tricks and tools do we have to protect our personal emotions from emotional work?

As you might guess, writing this little piece has been one of those tools for me.  I know that human interaction, while challenging, also gives me a buzz in my job: I love searching out the vision in a client's head and translating it into a possibility, I love a banter with a builder on top of scaffolding or winning over a planning officer with a careful, respectful telephone conversation.  I'm going to look for some more emotional protection though - the PPE of the solo consultant and I think I might start with my lovely network and find myself a mentor, then I can enjoy the swim!

Extending and Altering - first thoughts

I recently presented 3 design solutions to a young couple for alterations and extension to their Victorian semi-detached house in Cherry Hinton.

We met in a coffee shop on Mill Road in Cambridge and on the way I cut through the cemetery, glancing up at the backs of the same era of semi-detached houses as theirs.

Victorian terrace - rear view

It was clear to me that we could have walked along together and picked their options from the selection of box dormers, extended side returns, garden rooms and infills on display just in that row of houses.  I thought about all the rear elevations of all the Victorian streets in Cambridge and then I thought about all the housing in Cambridge in general.  I thought about all the people, like my clients, wanting to live in the city and trying to find the balance between fitting their lives to the house they have and the house to the lives they want.

Victorian houses are well over 100 years old.  They were built without central heating, without insulation, without bathrooms and without electricity (see this article on the history of electric lighting).  When we build on to these houses we work to all the current Building Regulations so these drafty, heat emitting houses can have super efficient nodules bolted on.  I've never questioned the principle of this but looking at that row of houses I couldn't help thinking this is all just lip service to any idea of improving our housing.

What will these streets look like, how will they fit people's lives and the demands of the environment in the next 100 years?  What would it take for us to knock any of them down?  Now, I am doing similar work for folks living in early 20th century houses, inter-war houses, post war houses...the youngest one would be a 1980s house, the oldest is a listed 17th century cottage.  I'm not saying we shouldn't be altering our houses - I'd be out of work for a start - but I am questioning the bigger picture.  At the same time as commissioning my design solutions for their current house, my Cherry Hinton clients have been looking at newly built houses as an option.  Sadly they cannot find anything they feel would suit them as a family.

I was moved to trawl the bookshops of Cambridge yesterday in search of the history of the city's development.  (It's a challenge, I tell you, the glare of Cambridge University seems to bleach out any sense of the city around it.) I want to understand the chronology of house types and relate it to the social norms of the time.  I'm hoping, then, to reflect on our 'way of living' today and our expectations of our houses given that most of them were built for a different 'way of living'.

Somewhere in me I am wondering if it's the house or the living that has to change.

Studio Hobohm initial design proposal for rear extension and loft conversion...to be continued.