Friday 10 March 2017

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.