Social Lives in a Built Environment

In an ever altering environment, the need to anticipate social change is crucial to ensuring that the infrastructure that supports individuals as well as communities is in place.  Reading the research material recently published through Adam Urbanism was a reminder how tough the relationship can be between designers, architects, developers, planners and government in creating a positive built environment.

"Tomorrow's Home" ( Lily Bernheimer- Space Works Consultancy and ADAM Urbanism) is a timely reminder about the need to understand and act upon social lives in anticipating and creating flexible and happy work/ home environments. The research predominately looked at the socio-economic changes affecting the Millenials- young adults born towards the end of the last century, effectively an 18-34 age group.

The study looked at the differences between the aspirations of this generation and the previous one.  Where home ownership was feasible based on average incomes, it would seem that this generation will continue to see rental as the only way forward with mortgages and housing stock unavailable.

Workers still migrate towards urban areas with greater employment options, however there is also a greater element of self employed working from home.

There is always the issue of multitasking work and home space.  It appears new housing stock still needs to take into consideration the need for larger living spaces.

While agricultural farms were isolated in many respects, those same families enjoyed social interaction with other farms.

Today individuals, working alone, share their lives with online support , some  via social network groups prompting real interactions.

The creation and development of outside spaces is important. Parks, gardens, areas to gather and chat. The "KIOSK" idea from AJ and various at Bologna Water Design being actually a very good idea.

Great humanitarians and industrialists Robert Owen, the Cadbury family and Lord Lever all created great "towns" for their workers with enhanced living conditions, compared to local housing, in New Lanark, Bournville and Port Sunlight respectively. They considered the needs of their workers first, then realised the environment. Truly front runners of town planning in a built industrial environment.

Now too often town planners meet the requirements of a political party, developers are greedy about maximising units of land in often inappropriate sites ( flood plains eg) , architects are concerned with price they can achieve per square metre to satisfy clients - often compromising the finish to suit the budget - and interior designers are brought in to make impossible spaces work for the inhabitants.


It is time for policy and decision makers to take heed of such information as contained in the Tomorrow's Home report, and properly plan and implement living conditions that will enhance lives and be flexible to support near future generations.

What is Interior Design

Le Corbusier said that "a house is a machine for living in".

Ruskin said " In my house there is no attempt whatever to secure harmonies of colour, or form, or furniture.... I am entirely independent for daily happiness upon the sensual qualities of form or colour--when I want them I take them either from the sky or from the fields."

Robert Owen, Lord Lever, the Cadburys are all great visionaries who changed the way we live and the homes we live in. Charles Mackintosh,well his chairs may not have survived but his design does.

The term Interior Design may have first been used to describe the intensity of decoration that first found its way into the places that could most afford it- the churches.  The exultant extravagance of an organisation full of gilt and gold, whilst their neighbours struggled to find candles they could afford.
I doubt interior design referenced including a nook for a candle in some cave dwelling.

But wait, weren't the best interior designers also architects, philanthropists,artists, town planners?


You have four walls, a ceiling and a floor- what can be so difficult about decorating that? And you are right, watch any of the design programs on television and what a chore it becomes.  I have been involved in a 60 Minute Makeover where we supplied an  item for free 6/8 weeks before.
Paint a room beige, take current supplier colour trends and you have it.

But will any of the current popular "interior designers" be remembered in 50 years?  Maybe quite literally they have looked at 4 walls and a floor and thought "neutral".  The last group of people I saw worth calling themselves interior designers belonged to Memphis Design. Or maybe now people start to realise that interior design is not just pink this season, purple next- but part of a way to live and function well.
Interior architecture.

Interior design may be about creating a beautiful  space- but it is all about the "machine" that helps us act and work and live to our best ability.

There are many people who do that with intuition, product knowledge and understanding how a client lives , albeit on a singular and small scale. But really some just don't understand the principles properly.

More Memphis

Memphis was, is a philosophy, a way of living.

"Memphis says that the design is never the "solution" to a problem, because no problem is ever a motionless event that can be isolated and grasped, but a changeable, versatile event continually revolving in the midst of other problems also in motion"- Memphis, Barbara Radice

They are the punk rational town planners/ designers. They designed towns, houses, furniture, fabrics, electrical items. They didn't want to create just a product, but an entire way of living.

Ettore Sottsass, Nathalie du Pasquier,George J.Sowden, Marco Zanini were the key players. They not only were exemplary designers, but great collaborators.

Most of all they had a dream- to create the perfect environment.

Related article - http://allyinteriors.blogspot.com/2010/08/memphis-design.html

High Street Shopping

I have read recently that the Government have called in Mary Portas to save our High Streets ( http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/business-news/2011/05/18/prime-minister-calls-in-shops-expert-mary-portas-to-halt-high-street-decline-86908-23138472/)



She's asking all businesses, local authorities and shoppers to make their views known.

Well, on the Wirral we have events called Area Forums. They are widely advertised and in some areas pretty well attended.

We have paid for Retail Consultation Plans and Strategies for at least the 6 years I have been involved.

It's not just tarting up your shop to make it look better for 5 minutes. All credit to local Hoylake shop featured re fruit and veg, but- as Mary Portas said in her twitterline the same evening- "can't get a decent cup of coffee"- but you can, she was looking for Costa or Starbucks.

The Government is bending like Blair and bowing to popular tv watching public.

That is not the answer. Every area has it's own diverse need- seaside coastal zones is mine- far different from the mess in Edinburgh right now, but I remembered when that city inspired me.

I think my earlier post re New Towns is something to be taken notice of- but I feel the Government are not thinking straight.

picture http://www.jimtheartist.co.uk/ My shop was the middle one

New Towns New Living

My Interior Design story has an involved past. Brought up in New York, lived in Malta, educated in Scotland in different places, university in Edinburgh, then south east, north west , north east England. I have been around a bit.

As much as I left my Town Planning degree midway to do interior design, I know my roots are still there. I am as much involved with the story of my adopted town West Kirby as I am with sourcing fabrics.My life has been spent talking to people, discussing and in true Librian fashion me digesting then replying.

The environment in which people live in, be it one room or a town has a profound impact on the way people feel comfortable, at ease and able to do what they do best. Philanthropists like Robert Owen, Lord Lever, Cadbury family and Titus Salt were incredible people. When people were dying from disease and poor conditions in back streets- these people realised a healthy workforce made an efficient and productive workforce.

Many people following this blog might be aware of Port Sunlight on the Wirral- but might never have heard of Robert Owen and New Lanark in Scotland- a truly beautiful town down a very steep road.

Then of course you had the innovative concept of New Towns after the Second World War. Harlow, Glenrothes, Runcorn, Milton Keynes. A lot of roundabouts- but the beginnings of concept Satellite towns and spaces. And a use for concrete as seen in projects by Le Corbusier.

Lower Earley isn't one of my favourites, then neither was the mass build by some developers. Countryside in Essex were one of the first to buck the "estate" look- houses painted different colours, a mix of styles, what looked like streets and not cul de sacs. Then they had doors opening onto street- parking round the back.

If we didn't have the framework, the interiors couldn't possibly work.

Memphis Design

In 1982 I went to an exhibition in Edinburgh of work by a group of talented designers and architects collectively known as Memphis. 

Vibrant, fun, funky- they turned  design on its head and way out of the 70's . They were the punk generation of interior and product design. The concrete box design that came out after the war and carried into the 70's , partly as a result of the Bauhaus movement was not what these ambitious and talented innovators had in mind. 

I had just moved to Edinburgh having spent a few years in a concrete new town full of roundabouts and clipped grass. I was now living in olde worlde Edinburgh and partying to the very eclectic music scene that existed.  I think  the same year I bought into Memphis I also bought a Charles Rennie Mackintosh poster which is now framed and in my diningroom. I still have my Cab Calloway and PIL albums- we're taking serious ecelecticism.

Ettore Sottsass  was the leading figure of the movement. I remember Nathalie du Pasquier for her amazing patterns in fabrics and carpets.

Lots of cheap materials, playful colours, fun and quirky.

You'd struggle to find anything original on Ebay- it is serious collector material now.

As a one off piece it's beautiful. I think Sottsass himself described the design as like cake, don't have too much of it around

Interesting to me was looking back at early notebooks and seeing how often I used one piece in a design scheme. Forgotten how much I loved it!

Build 2 Sustain

Some might say climate change is the issue- make the problem bigger than it might be and possibly inhibit emerging nations to compete because Western world put blocks on them.
Some might say the hockey stick theory is incorrect, that sunstorms and time has told of severe fluctuations of weather over a longer period than we have recorded.How much IPCC information was not biased towards a government result

Some might say Gaia right- but she still needs to look out for solar flares.The Earth billions of years old being able to shake problems off like we are a flea in her back.

Wasting energy is wrong anyway. It might not  change course of history, but might make all our lives  right now better

http://www.build2sustain.com/blog/2010/3/15/ashrae-1891-is-the-most-important-story-in-green-building-to.html