Five go mad
The team at Edinburgh agency CuthbertWhite never fail to amuse (and humiliate themselves) with their annual Christmas card – most infamously, its own cheeky version of the Athena tennis girl. This year, only surveyor Gavin Scott got a bum deal: the quintet dressed up as Enid Blyton’s Famous Five with the tag line “Five See the Wood For The Trees”, with Scott headlining as Timmy the dog.
Are you being served?
There’s little more satisfying for the proletariat than seeing the high and mighty sweat and toil. Last week, at the first Young Architects and Developers Alliance gathering at U+I’s Albert Embankment development site, SE1, 400 thirsty rookies were served drinks by some of the great and the good they work for, who are far more accustomed to being waited on themselves. These included (L-R) Glyn Hurrey of Scott Brownrigg, Julia Barfield of Marks Barfield, Peter Griffiths also of Scott Brownrigg, and Richard Upton of U+I, as well as Uncommon and YADA founder Martyn Evans. “Service!”
Nearing extinction…
Innovation in property moves at such a pace it can be difficult for the dinosaurs to get their heads around. And if you ever wondered how fast it moves, there is always a helpful analogy being bandied about. Earlier this year it was “big data is like teenage sex”, courtesy of Placemake.io co-founder Nikhil Vadgama. Now we have Sir Edward Lister to thank for a recent pearler about modern methods of construction for housing. The housebuilding industry is in a “VHS-Betamax period”, he said. But there is a small problem with that: “We don’t actually know what the VHS product is.” The Homes and Communities Agency chairman was speaking at an Estates Gazette roundtable.
A bungalow by any other name
Diary does not like to judge, but we were nevertheless somewhat surprised by the Smart Move report, released last week by Conservative London Assembly member Andrew Boff. While aware that the London housing crisis needs novel solutions, his suggestion that bungalows should do the trick has raised some eyebrows. “Modern space-saving designs such as stacked bungalows ensure the space on available plots of land are maximised,” it said. Is it us, or is that not just a block of flats?
Homes for Londoners
Make no mistake, housing is at the top of the GLA’s priority list for Sadiq Khan’s time in office. The agenda is clearly never far from the mind of assistant director for housing Jamie Ratcliff who, when constructing a new playhouse for his daughter last weekend, tweeted: “I assembled this #precisionmanufactured house today. I hope my daughter likes sleeping in it #ukhousing #homes for Londoners.” Now that’s dedication to the cause.
