The new wave of affordable housing requires big ideas.

Like those behind the best interwar housing schemes, councils such as Barking & Dagenham realise they need to think big, writes Dennis Austin

I wonder what Karl Ehn would be thinking about the state of design for our housing if he were alive today? He played a major role in communicating a city-wide housing policy in a single project. At its inception in the 1920s, Vienna’s Karl Marx-Hof didn’t succeed simply because it provided indoor plumbing and electricity, nor because it anticipated the growth of central Vienna towards the newly created 19th district of Heiligenstadt.

The success of the Karl Marx-Hof is due to its big idea of dreaming, of formulating a better way of life, of daring to place the individual at the heart of the community. The big idea of developing an all-inclusive environment for the underrepresented, for immigrant arrivals into the city, of creating a sense of belonging. A place where all could prosper. 

There is good work in housing being developed today in the UK: the work of Waugh Thistleton is always encouraging, Mikhail Riches’ Goldsmith Street project demonstrates that sustainable is obtainable and Peter Barber’s massing proves that density done properly can be inspirational. These examples illustrate there is an appetite for the big Idea. We need more of them.

 Creative density needs to combat low scale sprawl and we need to question why a thin sliver of brick is ‘good design’. Large developments employing ‘cost effective’ trusses rendering loft space unusable must be called out for what they are: unsustainable and a wasted opportunity.  

But there is hope and, like the Karl Marx-Hof, it comes in the form of local authorities. On a recent webinar on the role of MMC can play in delivering affordable Housing, Barking and Dagenham Council’s leader Darren Rodwell pondered how from 1920-1935 26,000 homes could have been built at the Becontree Estate and yet today we fall drastically short of delivering such quantities? 

Anyone in a position of tackling the housing crisis who cites the Becontree Estate (apparently Rodwell is a resident) deserves applause. Becontree makes even the Karl Marx-Hof seem small in comparison. Yet both were built in a post-war, post pandemic period of economic malaise. And both delivered hope and opportunity.

As we turn our attentions to the current housing crisis, the devastating impact of a global pandemic and volatile financial markets, we are resurrecting a concept of (key) worker housing from the interwar period. This long overdue emphasis on providing housing for all is an opportunity to improve the quality of life for many and we should not overlook relevant precedent projects. 

This isn’t a nostalgic desire to return to early modernism, nor a political nod to the socialist governments at the time as we all know the catastrophic end to that story. We’ve learned much from the past and are (hopefully) clever enough to understand its impact on our future. Yes, many of the projects of that period were designed to space standards that make todays flats seem palatial, but that’s not the point. The point is that then, like today, we need innovative solutions of dense community housing, strong attribution of open space and spaces for kids to play/carers to supervise.  

Walking through these projects by de Klerk, Taut, Haring, Mendelsohn, Scharoun, Gropius, Loos, Hoffman, Ehn and others, one can still feel the hope, innovation and optimism. I don’t know whether Rodwell knows of the Karl Marx-Hof, or the Britz Siedlung, but when he evoked, with great pride, the Becontree Estate he was evoking the importance of the big idea.

Barking and Dagenham is now looking to partner with modular housing system manufacturers by offering land to construct a factory within the borough. The partnering would be a model arrangement to assist the Council and its development arm, BeFirst London, in supplying the houses they intend to build over the next 20 years - more than 50,000 of them. 

The east London borough has the need, the land and can access funding. The partnering firm that eventually takes up the offer, together with the council, will be at the epicentre of a movement to deliver quality housing, built locally. The synergy created by defining the need and actively engaging with those who can build a team to fulfil the need is the new driving force, born from the desire to improve the quality of life, make a lasting difference and to inspire the wider community. Now that’s what I call a big idea…