Piers Taylor: Good Design Doesn’t Cost
the Earth
Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham, this redevelopment is cen-
tred around two glass residential towers that mirror the towers of the power sta-
tion, originally built in 1904. Working alongside Formation Architects, who are de-
signing the fitout of the power station, Chelsea Waterfront is the first development of
this scale on the north bank of the Thames in over 100 years. It opens up to the river
with beautifully landscaped gardens and is set to become a destination in its own right.
The Hammersmith & Fulham side is heading fast towards completion in mid-2019, with the clad-
ding for two low-rise buildings nearing completion whilst the 37-storey tower is progressing well.
Farrells Principal Terry Farrell commented: “We are delighted to have been granted plan-
ning consent for the redevelopment of this site. Combining contextual modern architec-
ture with quality placemaking, Chelsea Waterfront will bring new life to the north bank.”
Planning
a building
project?
Wishing your budget was
bigger? You may be sur-
prised to hear this, but a
smaller budget can actual-
ly result in a cleverer de-
sign that better suits your
needs.
In my experience, when a
designer has a restricted
budget, they often find the
project more interesting
and intellectually reward-
ing, and come up with
better solutions, than if
they had unlimited funds.
In such a situation, design
can’t afford to be lazy; it
has to work hard to devise
smart yet economical solu-
tions.
It baffles me why people
think good housing design
has to cost the earth. Some
of the UK’s best-designed
cities consist of mass pro
duced housing, built from
standard pattern books and
created to be lived in by
ordinary people. These are
simple, inexpensive build-
ings, with lots of natural
light, excellent use of space
and good relationships with
adjacent buildings, all of
which leads to a high stand-
ard of living.
The biggest issue for any
new housing project is how
to use land efficiently to
create better houses, while
making the most of the
available space. Historically,
the best houses were often
land-efficient and high den-
sity. However, many new
developments in the UK are
low density, land-hungry
and car-dependent.
Clever construction
We also need to use materi-
als more efficiently, and be
smarter with construction.
There’s a pretty unimagi-
native approach to mate-
rials and construction in
mainstream housing in this
country; most new hous-
ing developments tend to
either use a stud frame or
cavity wall, or a hybrid of
the two. They always have
plaster, paint, ceilings at
2400mm, bull-nosed skirt-
ings, architraves, pitched
tiled roofs, plastic eaves
and fascias, and the small-
est possible windows. If
your house does have small
windows, a roof window
will give it a new lease of
life, by increasing daylight
and improving ventilation.
Conventional construction
is designed to conceal poor
workmanship, which is cov-
ered up with layers of add-
ed finish. Timber-framed
buildings, for example, are
often clad with masonry
on the outside, and on the
inside with a sheathing
board, then plasterboard,
then skim, then paint.