Altered Estates

At a time when the borrowing cap on Local Authorities has been lifted and the quality of the nation’s housing is in question, the 4 Housing Architects will be revisiting and building on their work from 2016 on Altered Estates. Please join HTA, Levitt Bernstein, PTE and Andy von Bradsky for one of our Tuesday Talks for presentations followed by a chaired Q&A with Ben Derbyshire. 

Altered Estates: how to reconcile competing interests in estate regeneration

Estate regeneration in the spotlight
In the 1960s and 70s nearly three million homes were built by local authorities in Britain. Many of them incorporated new ideas about town planning, the design of the home, and methods of construction. It is these estates which have been – and continue to be - the main focus of subsequent major regeneration initiatives.

Regeneration specialists know that the issues are complex, but most would at least agree that design can contribute to the social and economic success or failure of places.

The four architectural practices behind this report have been involved with the regeneration of housing estates for four decades - they started to advise communities and local authorities on estate improvements soon after the last concrete panel was craned into place in the mid-1970’s. Since then they have worked under successive political initiatives and funding models to improve, remodel or replace dozens of estates in London and around the UK. They have seen what works and what does not.