As the Design Council is set to promote good home design a number of housebuilders are already discovering the value of design quality.
Flick through the pages of the Design Council's new book Smart Design: products that change our lives and you'll see Sony's Aibo robot dog, the British Airways Club Class seat and Apple's ever so sleek-looking iBook computer, but you won't see a home. In spite of the fact that housing has a greater impact on people's lives than any other product, no homes are included.

"My personal view is that our houses are a disgrace," says Clive Grinyer, author of the book and director of design and innovation at the Design Council. "There's a lack of inspiration and a great underestimating of what the public wants."

You might think therefore that the Design Council has no interest in housing, but the DTI-funded body is planning to bring it onto its agenda. "One of our jobs is to look at how design can be used effectively across UK business," says Grinyer, and that includes housebuilding. Recent work by the council on the needs of the country's increasingly ageing population and on designing out crime have also brought it closer to the home.

The council hopes to have several research projects with a housing theme by the middle of next year. These will not be dedicated to promoting lofty architectural ideals; the council promotes good design as useful and profitable.

"We promote design as customer focussed. We've looked at how hospital buildings can be beneficial to wellbeing. If you look at the car industry, that shows there is a case for developing innovation because it can increase your competitiveness," says Grinyer. As such he sees the Design Council's interest as complementing that of organisations like Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment.

But in advance of the Design Council's work, housebuilders are already discovering that design pays, thanks to the pressures of PPG3 (see boxes). PPG3's focus on higher density and better design quality is forcing housebuilders used to standard housetypes through some steep learning curves, but ones that can have a pot of gold at the end.

From executive cul-de-sac to layouts for lifestyles

David Wilson Homes is following the lead of car manufacturers by coming up with concept house designs, and in true carmaker tradition the drawings are shrouded in secrecy. Homes will, however, be coming to a site near you early in the new year as the company is trialling four concept house designs throughout its regions in England and Wales. There鈥檒l be nothing surprising about the houses from the front elevation; the two three-bed houses, a four-bedder and a five bedder are elevated to suit the vernacular. It is the internal floorplan and rear elevations that differentiate the product. The 2100sq ft four-bed unit is effectively turned through 90 degrees, having a narrow frontage but being deep enough to accommodate a glazed courtyard area. The house has a study and small formal lounge to the front, separated from the rest of the ground floor by a door. This door leads to the informal section of the house where open arches provide the only separation between dining, kitchen and living areas. At ground level, formal and informal areas are also separated by the courtyard area, which has glazing extending up through the first floor where a bridge connects master bedroom/guest suite to children鈥檚 bedrooms. To produce the designs the housebuilder scoured Europe, the US and Australia in search of ideas and has asked buyers what they want. 鈥淲e noticed in the US that homes often look small at the front, but are bigger behind. By turning the house 90 degrees we can get privacy, and it has given us the opportunity to get sculptural with the building,鈥� says Richard O鈥橞rien, group design director with the company. The new designs will be teamed with modern materials: timber faced doors, chrome ironmongery and glass balconies. Reaction of planners to the concept houses has been welcoming. 鈥淲e鈥檝e not had to change a single design for the planners,鈥� says O鈥橞rien. The completed concept houses will be subject to the scrutiny of existing David Wilson buyers, non-buyers, professionals who make up the target market for the product, David Wilson staff, and selected architects and other building professionals who will be invited to carry out a technical review of what they see. Once that process is complete the concept houses will be sold, in competition with conventional houses against which O鈥橞rien believes they may well fetch a premium. O鈥橞rien is confident that the concept houses will progress to the David Wilson portfolio, and if they do they will herald a broader market and a new design direction for the company. 鈥淎s people get to live in these houses, we think they will become more accepting of modern design. We鈥檒l then be able to become even more contemporary.鈥�

Differentiation through design

Kings Hill in West Malling, Kent is a multi-developer site that reflects clearly the impact of PPG3. It was initially planned in pre-PPG3 days with low density housing alongside large quantities of commercial space. With detached executive homes already lining its perimeter, the core of the site is now being reinterpreted to higher densities to create a 鈥榲illage centre鈥� and Kings Hill is planned to have 1850 homes and 2m sq ft of commercial space. Mindful of PPG3 and the fact that other housebuilders across the site are focussing on large family houses, housebuilder Sunley and its partner in the Lacuna scheme, Environ Country Homes, opted to build smaller homes, in a more densely knit street pattern - and planners encouraged them to do it in a more contemporary design style. The first two of 175 two, three and four-bed units at its Lacuna site have just been completed. 鈥淭his has taken six months longer than a normal project. When you are dealing with PPG3 you have issues like overlooking. It鈥檚 been a huge learning curve,鈥� says Andy Wibling, md of Sunley. 鈥淲hen you鈥檙e producing contemporary design, you can find simplicity hard to achieve,鈥� says Anthony Dowse of Environ. The homes鈥� design, by architect Clague, is externally a modern take on Kentish clapboard vernacular with lots of extra glazing. Internally, living areas are designed as free-flowing spaces with open plan living areas and dining halls, rooms and windows are sited according to their views and even washing machines are concealed in utility cupboards. Sunley believes it is getting a higher price for its homes. 鈥淧eople are saying this is new and original,鈥� says Anne Fendi, Sunley鈥檚 sales and marketing director. Sunley now hopes to ally innovative design with new build technology by becoming the first UK housebuilder to sign up to the Canadian timber frame Super E-House programme, and build a unit from manufacturer MIC-Alouette. 鈥淲e think factory build will give quality benefits, be easier to manage and will be faster. A two-storey house should be watertight in three days,鈥� says Sunley鈥檚 Wibling.

From volume housebuilder to design-led developer

鈥淲e鈥檒l be looking for modern simple architecture. Minimalism and glass are probably the two drivers.鈥� That鈥檚 not the kind of statement you expect to hear from a regional md of the nation鈥檚 biggest volume housebuilder, but Graham Dodds is selling to the design-literate in the London market. 鈥淲e are having to forget we鈥檙e Wimpey, and think like a niche developer,鈥� he says. As a group, Wimpey is going through a design shift, with the North Eastern region inviting fashion designer Wayne Hemingway to help create homes. Wimpey has reinvented its London division, shifting its emphasis from social to private housing. Current schemes come from a mix of sources: Britannia Village is a longstanding Wimpey site, three sites came from the acquisition of Alfred McAlpine, more are being acquired. The first flagship of the new division is likely to include Dodds鈥� favoured minimalism and glass in a design by architect James Burland proposed for a site in Battersea, west London (shown above). The division expects to build 190 units in its first year, but it will be 2004 before the new design-led product really comes through the pipeline and by then the region expects to be turning over 拢100m.

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