createstreets

Terry's oeuvre is remarkable for its quality. For my money there is no better country house from our age anywhere in the world than Kilboy in Ireland. Outside, it is a Doric Palladian villa grown to cyclopean scale & herculean strength. Inside .....

Those poor shops.

Do you ever look at Rotherhithe and Canary Wharf and think that's not a very dense area, considering all the high-paying jobs just across the river? If so, may I interest YOU in a PROPOSAL?

The White Dining Room (Ladies Luncheon Room), Ingram St Tearooms [Reconstructed 1996]. Charles Rennie Mackintosh. 1900.

Oxford Street 1730 Friday 6th Nov

England has plenty of beauty. We just tore down lots of it too (Southsea, London, Bournemouth, Blackburn).

In a 2023 study, naturally not very large, it was found that elderly who moved from other forms of housing into traditional almshouses lived on average up to 2.5 years longer than their peers in other forms of housing. The effect was especially pronounced with elderly from the lowest one fifth of socio-economic status, who lived as long as other elderly from the second highest fifth. There is no telling how much is cause or correlation but the effect is real, measurable and easily observed. The theory is that companionship, meaning, belonging and so on, is what causes the jump in longevity. The effect is similar taking up regular exercise and quitting smoking. And almshouses are far more cost effective than other forms of housing for elderly. We should build more of them.

Here are two railway stations in Cambridgeshire. March Railway Station (on the right) was Victorian, first opened in 1847. Waterbeach (on the left) is due to open in 2028. This is not progress or enhanced prosperity. The collapse in design quality is clearly profound and goes far beyond aesthetics to issues of civic pride, place-attraction and corporate duty. No one involved in the design of Waterbeach Station should be allowed anywhere near the design of any public building or place.

Work starts on flagship bit of civic architecture for Waterbeach new town. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck9q…

South Tottenham is a neighbourhood of North London, whose inhabitants have been campaigning for years for the right to extend their houses upwards, subject to a strict design code. A small part of South Tottenham (in Haringey) won this right some years ago, and its residents have been merrily building upwards ever since. As you can see, it has been done very intelligently: once the transition is finished, the neighbourhood will just look as though it was designed with 3.5 storeys in the nineteenth century. The good news is that another big area of South Tottenham (in Hackney) has recently won similar rights. This is a precedent that much of urban England could follow. Congratulations to the local community, whose extreme perseverance has made this possible!

I posted a picture of my parent's village where the residents have managed to keep it free of road markings. I use it as a visual example of how overladen we are with bureaucracy that makes people's lives worse, in the name of making it better. It's very hard to argue against any regulation supposedly based on safety or performance that are used as a universal trump card to create an arms race of rules and our built environment is now full of them. ht @Alright_dot for the render with signage. Original on the right.