feedback on building for life masterclass - 12th september 2006

The B4L Masterclass at CABE was informative and interactive and was facilitated by Esther Kurland and Dominic Church with a presentation from Kay Brown of Southampton Council on their new Residential Design Guide.

B4L is about improving the quality of new housing developments. There was a lot to say for good design being objective as against subjective and not necessarily costing more or being difficult to achieve. You can find out more about B4L at http://www.buildingforlife.org/

We tried our hands out on two schemes, grading them against the 4 B4L criteria:

  • Character;
  • Roads, Parking and Pedestrianisation;
  • Design and Construction;
  • and Environment and Community

The 20 questions (5 per criteria) helped us identify what was working in a scheme and what wasnt and so identify specific aspects of the design that were successful or needed improvement. What do you think of the B4L criteria and how they can be successfully used by boroughs to support their LDFs?

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Ta Mandar, your idea about
Submitted by estherkurland on September 13, 2006 - 12:35.

Ta Mandar,

your idea about using Building for Life's 20 questions for estate renewal schemes is a really good one - doubt CABE have considered it. 

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Re:
Submitted by Mandar Puranik on September 12, 2006 - 18:07.
It was very useful masterclass, specially attending with DC colleagues, but lot needs to be done to champion these principle. For Tower Hamlets, we need to adopt the principles to the moe specific needs of our area- which tend to be high density mixed use apartment block housing and less dominated by parking standards. I would be- speaking with Policy colleagues to integrate within Core area Area action plans ( which are yet to be drafted, others are through public consultation) Increase awareness amongst DC colleagues to use the template approach for evaluation. This is going to be very handy for me in ongoing "housing estate regenration" programs, in central part of tower hamlets, where RSI's and their developer partners need great push to raise design standards. Thanks for your presentation Dominic and Kay,
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