The physiognomy of buildings

Another point that Victoria  Haines' made in her Ecobuild presentation on research for CALEBRE on user barriers to retrofit has been rattling around in my mind. This was the observation that windows are particularly cherished as features that define the character of their homes. When people are considering improvements they are often concerned about the impact that alterations to windows will have on the character of their homes and are reluctant to change them, often knowing more about them than 'the experts'.

Is this just sentiment or an indication of something deeper? The observation highlighted an issue that has been intriguing me for a little while - the emotional connection between people and the appearance of a building. Not so much the building as a whole, but specifically the composition of the facade. Our former partner Jonathan Hale's probings on the relationship between architecture and the body suggest this area is under researched. We are used to thinking about this in aesthetic or performance rather than psychological terms.

There's been a lot in the news recently about the autism spectrum and Asperger's syndrome - even the recent dramatisation of the novel 'The curious incident of the dog in the night-time' drawing attention to it.  Sufferers have difficulties developing empathetic relationships with other people and have  impaired non-verbal behaviour such as poor eye contact or a total inability to read facial expressions.  

Whilst physiognomy - the practice of assessing a person's character by interpretation of their face - might be seen as pseudoscience, an appreciation of the importance of understanding body language or 'kinesics' in communication, leadership and successful group work has become mainstream. We make constant conscious and subconscious readings and judgements about people's character and mood by their appearance and gestures which we do well to recognise. 

I think there is a useful parallel with buildings, and that reading the facade in anthropomorphic terms can help develop a richer narrative about it - a new physiognomy of buildings.  As well as analysing a facade in functional and cultural terms, we should listen more closely to our emotional response. 

By ignoring or seeing as irrelevant the potential for this reading, we are in danger of suffering from a kind of Asperger's syndrome of architecture.

People often talk of windows as being the eyes of a building. Knowing how important eyes are to communication between people, it would not be surprising if windows added more to its character than other elements of the architectural composition.  As we demand more of our building envelopes to improve thermal comfort and control energy flows, we must not lose sight of those emotional responses that make us comfortable in our environment.  The CALEBRE research suggests the great retrofit mission might founder unless these too are recognised.

Customer Appealing retrofit

Ecobuild this year was as overwhelming in ideas as in products with its excellent seminar series. In the 'Refurbishing Britain' theme, lessons from CALEBRE focused mainly on technical solutions. But as the CA in CALEBRE stands for 'Customer Appealing', Victoria Haines summary of findings on people's appetite for improving their homes was particularly interesting.

After all, if we could get our teenagers to turn down their heating and turn off their lights we would probably be closer to the 80% reduction needed than replacing our boilers with heat pumps.

This is in the wider context that energy efficiency as such is a low priority for most people: comfort yes, cost of fuel yes but reducing carbon emissions no. The evidence suggests that unless there is a simultaneous change in behaviour and attitude, homes refurbished as part of the Green Deal or otherwise will be more comfortable but not reduce emissions.

Barriers to retrofit include the comfortable relationship people have with their homes, particularly older 'hard to treat' properties.  Her evidence shows that most people make the major changes to their homes when they first move in, with a readiness to live with disruption then that they would not tolerate 20 years later.

With the scale of the refurbishment challenge needed we have focused on physical solutions - still with many questions over their effectiveness. Clearly they are important but are only a part of a more nuanced approach needed. 'Hard to treat' solid wall properties are a huge challenge to meeting our emissions reduction targets. Linking a reduction of Stamp Duty to undertaking major Green Deal work would be a neat way of both incentivising energy-saving refurbishment at a point that most suits people, as well as stimulating the housing market.

In the meantime, the bigger question remains - how do we change our behaviours to live within our means?

Garden Cities - about flowers or land?

The latest Housebuilder magazine carries an article on the renewed interest in Garden Cities: 'The government want the industry to rediscover the joy of garden cities to help boost housing supply and create sustainable development'.  Nick Clegg, following the Coalition's line, says 'Garden Cities should be built across the heart of middle England'.

You can't help feeling that this interest comes from the appeal of the appearance of the Garden Cities, with the hope that Nimbyism will be less vigorous if 'high quality housing' is built.

Re-reading Howard's 'Garden Cities of Tomorrow' what is fascinating is that the physical vision can almost be condensed into Howard's short quote from Ruskin: '... clean and busy street within and the open country without, with a belt of beautiful garden and orchard around the walls, so that from any part of the city perfectly fresh aire and grass and sight of the horizon might be reachable in a few minutes walk'. But the essence of the ideas are not primarily about the city's physical appearance - certainly not its flowers - but how a new financial model could capture land value for the benefit of the community. In fact the bulk of the book is about the financial arrangements to make this work.

With our current crisis of housing with supply both inadequate and unaffordable, particularly for young people, this revolution in how land value is captured is arguably more pressing than it has ever been. We have have to get beyond the present system whereby land at low value is acquired by private companies to feed into the market at just the right rate to maximise profits for their shareholders, which bears no relation to real needs of the population.

Groups such as the  Community Land Trust movement are doing work to counteract the prevailing model. Interestingly, they are often local and small scale and the idea can work at any scale - they are certainly not imposed top-down to cover middle England. Letchworth and Welwyn Garden Cities were of course initiated as local enterprises.

Those who understand the economics of this model (such as Fred Harrsion who predicted our current crash and ensuing recession in 2005), argue that a complete overhaul of taxation system is needed, with a tax on the 'rents of land' replacing income and corporation tax altogether.

But that's another story ...