Woods Bagot Insights

Beyond Numbers: Turning 1.5 million homes into Resilient Places

How sustainable placemaking is the key to creating thriving homes in the 21st century.

Britain is facing a housing crisis that has been a lifetime in the making. Since the late 1970s1Breach, Anthony. “The Housing Crisis.” Centre for Cities, 19 June 2020, www.centreforcities.org/housing/., the UK has progressively built fewer and fewer homes than our European neighbours – accruing a deficit of 4.3 million homes in 1977 that’s created a chasm larger than London’s current stock of 3.8million homes. 

The process of finding a way forward in the UK that meets the current government’s ambition to build 1.5 million new homes will create paths towards better homes and cities across the globe – we must ensure that these homes are places where people will truly live and thrive in the coming century.

A resilient, low-carbon life: 21st Century homes.

Before putting pen to paper and shovel to ground, we must first ask: what kind of homes should we build? To answer this, we need to understand the world of the 21st Century in which these homes will exist.

Here’s what we know: the world will be warmer, with greater risk and uncertainty. Recent years have revealed valuable lessons about resilience in our built environment. While our current housing stock faces challenges with these new realities, these insights now guide our approach forward. We cannot carry on with a ‘building-as-usual’ mindset.

Each of these 1.5 million homes must innovate to minimise embodied and operational carbon and, more importantly, they must form resilient places where people can thrive in the 21st century by living a low-carbon life.

“Fixating on numbers can distract us from the real task at hand: creating places where people will live and thrive in the coming century.”

WHERE: Leaving up and out behind.

The Government’s pledge of 1.5 million new homes sparked debates between those advocating to “build out!” or “build up!” Respectfully, neither position will deliver the homes we need. Building out into green belts would create car-dependent communities lacking transit connections and amenities, while building up in urban centers faces barriers from planning policies and conservation areas.

In truth, the centre vs periphery debate has worn out its usefulness; it doesn’t reflect the continuing evolution of British cites. Between the centre and periphery, there are sites that have become underused as economies and patterns of work changed. They may have once been considered too fringe, but near-by development and regeneration open them for reappraisal. We’re all familiar with these ‘ugly duckling’ sites: the odd parked car, weeds emerging from cracks in the asphalt and old sheds.

What do these sites offer us? Paramount, they can be well connected and close enough to opportunities, services and amenities. We feel confident inviting people to live here because they can get to from here to where they need to go by foot, by bike, or by bus. They are spaces where local authorities crave a new vision (and tax income) and where we can foster a collaborative rather than confrontational planning process.

“Each of these 1.5 million homes must innovate to form resilient places where people can thrive in the 21st century by living a low-carbon life.”

Greater London: Areas with good or better public transportation service.

Greater London: Conservation Areas and areas affected by the London View Management Framework. The areas of London that are best served by public transport and public amenities are subject to the most stringent development controls.

HOW: Demonstrating potential for great change.

We love these sites for their potential to affect change beyond their boundaries through investments in walkability and public spaces. As architects, we’re here to continue their story with care and empathy.

Woods Bagot’s Castleton Works site in Leeds, though currently a disused parking lot in an industrial area, benefits from its proximity to the city centre and sits at a key junction in the expanding cycle and tram networks. These factors presented an opportunity to continue regeneration from the Junction across Wellington Road. Unfortunately, the local authority had recently consented to a scheme that reacted defensively to its location – a podium of parking that offered no value to the public realm and lacked vision for its future community.

The mission was clear: change the Council’s minds. Through three consultations with Leeds City Council’s design officers, we offered an alternate vision of sustainable living and well-appointed green spaces. By reducing parking from 15% to 5%, ultimately achieving a car-free scheme, we freed up 2700sqm of valuable space.

Where today stands a fenced-off, hostile environment, we envision an attractive and lively place. By organizing our massing into three parallel bars, the architecture creates natural pathways, connecting the street edge to the heart of the site through three welcoming open spaces.

BEFORE: The scheme that received Outline Planning consent.

AFTER: Woods Bagot’s site for Castleton Works in Leeds presented an opportunity. Currently a disused parking lot in a low-density industrial area, the site is surrounded by lines of infrastructure and a busy arterial road. Initially seeming like a tough site for housing, but benefiting from its proximity to Leeds’ city centre, it sits at key junction in the city’s expanding cycle network, and it will benefit from the expansion of the local tram system.

Woods Bagot’s approach was place-first and ground-up, focusing on the choreography of the ground plan to create a vibrant public realm. Services and waste are corralled out of sight, allowing the towers to frame and activate the surrounding green spaces.

Around the base of the buildings, we introduced a mixture of different uses and façade designs which add depth, activity and human scale to the architecture. In the deep green at the centre, townhouse units cluster around the play area to enhance safety through passive overlook, fostering a rhythm that moves between up and down, creating pocket gardens and terraces which soften the junction between building and landscape.

At the site’s most prominent corner, new commercial spaces energize a plaza, while residents’ amenity areas further activate the street frontage along Armley Road. They are framed arched pre-cast concrete portals, connecting the interior and exterior visually, while alluding the nearby historical roundhouse building.

This ethos extends upwards through the architecture, manifesting as a three-dimensional community infrastructure that supports leisure and wellness. The design incorporates setbacks and notches, which activate the building’s form and create communal terraces, creating places for connection among residents.

“As Castleton Works demonstrates, we—designers, planners, and city shapers—are not passive observers in the housing crisis. We are active agents with the power, and the responsibility, to shape places and craft homes that deliver enduring value to people and their communities.”

WHY: Rising to the Challenge.

As Castleton Works demonstrates, we—designers, planners, and city shapers—are not passive observers in the housing crisis. We are active agents with the power, and the responsibility, to shape places and craft homes that deliver enduring value to people and their communities.

The decisions we make today will ripple into the future, determining the long-term resilience, vibrancy, and success of the places we create.

Britain—and many countries around the world—faces an enormous challenge: a housing shortfall that is far more than a numbers problem. This crisis was not borne simply from a lack of units, but from a lack of homes—homes that serve the needs, dreams, and daily realities of people in the 21st century.

Our work is to rise to this challenge. To design with intention. To build with care. And to create not just buildings, but places that people will truly call home—now and for generations to come.

Designing from the ground up: choregraphing architecture and landscape to create a vital and safe public realm.

The site for Castleton Works can continue the recent regeneration in the Junction into the Armley Road area. Areas marked in green show consented schemes under construction and those in blue show projects with planning consent (original image by VuCity).

Talk to James Khamsi about Beyond Numbers: Turning 1.5 million homes into Resilient Places

Get in touch

James’s two decades of practicing architecture and urban design have taken him
from Toronto to New York and London and span practice and academia. With a focus
on creating sustainable spaces and places, he has global experience of designing and
delivering complex projects across the residential, mixed-use and cultural sectors.

James has been involved in transformational projects in the UK, such as the masterplan for the 2012 Olympics, and in the Middle East. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and published in Azure, Domus, Detail and Volume. He is the author of numerous academic publications and has taught and lectured extensively.

Related