Front to Back: A Design Agenda for Urban Housing

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Front to Back

Sally Lewis, Architectural Press, 2004

By Keith Brown, practicing Urban Designer with the Milton Keynes-based town planning and urban design consultant, David Lock Associate.

Front to Back is a valuable text on the subject of urban design and housing, which will be of interest and relevance to practitioners working in the built environment, students wishing to learn best practice in the design of modern homes and anyone with an interest in creating better houses and, ultimately, better places.

Front to Back is usefully spilt into three clear sections. A thought provoking introduction to the topic of urban housing is followed by a concise set of 'best practice guidelines' for the design of housing, which are then supported by exemplar case study housing schemes which provide an inspirational endnote.

Urban design and housing

The first third of the book sets the scene for contemporary urban housing design, within the context of four wider disciplines; urban design, sustainability, community and social issues. The background is detailed and lengthy, a fair reflection of the complex context within which housing design must operate. But for ease of reading, the book may have benefited from a snappier summary of each agenda to enable quick passage to the heart of the book - the design agenda.

Best practice guidance

The best practice guidance set out within the 'design agenda' (part 2), is the core of the book: accessible step-by-step guidance for the design of better urban housing. The guidance section is the strongest part of Front to Back, practical, digestible advice for practitioners and students alike. The agenda of guidance forms a 'design checklist', a set of issues which urban housing should address in order to be inclusive, robust, attractive and successful. The guidance ranges from urban design staples of 'making connections', through the sustainably aware 'optimising solar potential' to the highly practical 'managing and integrating parking'. The guidance principles can be read in one sitting, but their real strength is their concise form which means the reader can 'dip in' to the guidance as practice requires.

Lewis, a former student of the Joint Centre for Urban Design (JCUD) at Oxford Brookes University, follows in the footsteps of her mentors at the JCUD by presenting a book with guidance set out in a similar vein to the urban design classic 'Responsive Environments' (Bentley et al, 1985). 'Responsive Environments' helped to form the urban design movement of today because of the accessible nature of its common-sense design principles. In Front to Back Lewis has updated many of these urban design principles in line with contemporary agendas (not least sustainability) and if Front to Back is half the success of Responsive Environments our urban housing will really benefit.

The design guidance advice is successfully conveyed using clearly defined principles, bullet point summaries, illustrated with excellent photography and diagrams. When successfully executed there is no more powerful language than the diagram. The diagrams in Front to Back are clear, again owing much to the precedent of Responsive Environments.

Precedent studies

Case studies of successful urban housing are drawn from across Europe (France, Spain, Sweden and the UK) to illustrate the strength of the housing design principles when executed in built form reality. The housing projects are analysed succinctly and again well represented by good photography and clear diagrams. The case studies provide inspiration for the reader, proof that good urban housing can be delivered. All of the precedent schemes have been constructed in the last decade which is proof that good housing can be delivered in today's testing conditions. As stated by Jon Rouse in the book's preface: 'If the Georgians, Victorians and those in the Garden City Movement can do it (deliver quality urban housing), so can we.'

Good urban housing is good urban design

A message which runs throughout the book is that neither housing nor any other single aspect of building or land use stands alone, but that the principles of good urban housing are intertwined with the principles of good urban design.

Ready reference

Front to Back provides an easily digestible guide to the principles for achieving high quality urban housing, spun within the context of good urban design. It is an excellent reference guide for all those with an interest in urban housing and design, practitioners, students or simply those with a keen interest in urban housing.