Portioning Space, MAUD Pilot Thesis, Emma Twine

Emma Twine Newnham College

Pilot Thesis 3rd April 2017 5,000 words excluding citations, list of figures and bibliography

Submitted in partial fulfilment of MPhil Architecture and Urban Design University of Cambridge -

I’d like to acknowledge and thank Lefkos Kyriakou, Ingrid Schroeder and Aram Mooradian for their input, advice and guidance.

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This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text.

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1: Why Should We Portion Space?

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2: What Space Could Be Portioned?

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3: Why Is Space Not Already Being Portioned?

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4: What Is Portioned and Where?

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Conclusion 50

List of Figures 53

Bibliography

fig A speculative drawing exploring the op might offer for more intense in 4

g. 1 pportunities suburban neighbourhoods nhabitation: fill up, fill out, fill in 5

The project Living Closer Together polemicises the under-occupation of the spaces in and around the large family homes of suburban neighbourhoods, home to almost 85% of the British population, seeking to envisage a radical, equitable and accessible future for a new suburbia. Making better use of this space gives the opportunity to deal with the sustained and serious housing crisis in the south east in a different way. The consensus of why the crisis exists seems simple: we don’t have, and aren’t building, enough homes. But the ‘build more’ approach is revealed as incomplete when confronted with the fact that there are now more bedrooms per person in the UK than ever before (The Intergenerational Foundation, 2011). If the lack of housing is such a widely appreciated hot topic, why all the ‘spare’ space? And what might this suggest about the prevalence of ‘spare’ space in other areas in and around our homes? Living Closer Together intends to challenge why this is, and how this space might be home to more people in the future. Through an exploration of the suburban condition, from it’s context as a primarily middle-class environment to the role of boundaries within suburban homes and neighbourhoods this essay seeks to discuss the means by which suburbanites could be awoken to the societal need for this space, and so to forge a new future for these neighbourhoods. South Woodham Ferrers presents a future where this is the only option. The town is penned in on all four sides by a combination of the River Crouch, the London Green Belt and Marsh County Farm to the south, east and west; and Radar Hill to the north. As a consequence, any new homes can only be sited within the existing town limits. It cannot expand in order to provide more homes. Yet new homes are needed nevertheless: the local authority, Chelmsford City Council, is committed to providing 14,000 new homes by 2036 (Sinclair, 2016). This is a future that sooner or later London will be forced to confront: space is a finite resource; we do not have infinite space. Our housing stock cannot grow exponentially, and neither can our cities and towns.

The old question of where to build remains, but the old answer of the periphery that saw the emergence of suburban areas such as South Woodham Ferrers itself through the last three centuries is no longer an option. The paradox of parallel under-supply and underoccupation suggests that it is not enough to endlessly build new residential space without questioning how that which is already built is being used.

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portion

verb 1. noun 1.

divide (something) into parts and share out.

a part of a whole.

proportional

adjective corresponding in size or amount to something else. mathematics (of a variable quantity) having a constant ratio to another quantity.

fig. 2 Definitions from the Oxford Collins Dictionary 7

...it is bordered to the south, east and west by the River Crouch tributary...

...and to the south, east and west by th Country

fig.

A series of maps detailing the island nature of South Woodham Ferrers: to th (middle, shown in dark green) and Marsh County Farm (middle, shown in l 8

he London green belt and Marsh Farm y Park.

...to the north by the sharp incline of Radar Hill...

g. 3 he south, east and west, the River Crouch (far left, shown in blue), Green Belt light green), and Radar Hill to the north (contours shown at 5m increments) 9

fig. 4 Before-and-after sections exploring the potential to make better use of the space within our homes though the subdivision of large, single-household dwellings into multiple smaller abodes 10

This poses a challenge however, of if living closer together is a necessity, what should it look like? It is immediately obvious from talking to homeowners with ‘spare’ space that people feel very uncomfortable with the idea of inviting people into their home. Active sharing of the home, for example with a lodger, is a compromised solution, unpopular to many homeowners and impractical for many looking for a home; for example, it is almost impossible to imagine a young family ‘lodging’ within a stranger’s home. The cultural importance of the self-contained single family dwelling will be explored later, but the intention of portioning space, rather than sharing it, is fundamental to the discussion of how ‘spare’ space can be better used. What is proposed is not to share a home itself, rather to share out the ‘spare’ space within the home into self-contained parts: to portion.

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The greatest challenge faced is that the ‘spare’ space in question isn’t a matter of entire empty dwellings, but instead of areas of ‘spare’ space within peoples’ homes. This may be a case of maybe a couple of rooms over the accepted ‘space standard’ (which allows one spare bedroom per household; Pannell et al, 2012), but two or three spare rooms across an entire neighbourhood adds up and becomes significant, as a study of South Woodham Ferrers reveals. The under-occupation of the space within people’s homes is made visible in the comparison of average household size and number of bedrooms. The grouping of households around one, two or three people inhabiting large 4 or even 5 bedroom family homes makes the under-occupation of these homes strikingly clear, but also suggests that part of the problem is a flaw in the design of the town in its lack of smaller dwellings. The size of the homes can be explained by how South Woodham Ferrers was built as a ‘pram town’, i.e. a town intended primarily for young families. 30 years on from the completion of the settlement however and a surprising number of the homes are still owned by the original buyers, even though the children must have grown up and moved out perhaps even decades ago. This has resulted in a population drop in the town from an intended population of 18,000 (South Woodham Ferrers Local History Society, publishing date not specified) to 16,453 at the 2011 Census, a drop of over 1,500 residents (Office for National Statistics, 2011). Based on this intended population spread amongst the some 6,000 homes within the town, a density of three people per home was expected. The 9% population drop marked by the 2011 Census suggests that, based on this intended population density, there is space for an extra person in every 4th home, or a total of 517 empty homes if the existing population was condensed. This doesn’t however tackle the ‘spare’ space inevitable at a density of three people per four or five bed home: the opportunity for the better use of space is obvious.

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fig. 5 Map quantifying the 517 homes that could be freed up if the rest of the town was inhabited at the intended density of three people per home.

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one person

two people

one bedroom

two bedrooms

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three p

three be

fig.

Maps comparing the distribution of household size t comparing household size with average number of bedro This comparison suggests a large number of spare bedrooms bedrooms, with average household size trending to smal

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people

four people

five people plus

edrooms

four bedrooms

five bedrooms

g. 6 to number of bedrooms in South Woodham Ferrers. ooms supports the suggestion of a large number of spare s,ller with the two factors trending oppositional to aone another. and number of bedrooms towards higher number.

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fig. 7 Heat map showing the different homes per acre densities within the town.

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What should be considered alongside the sparse population inside the homes is the low density of the spaces around them. The current British housing guidelines advise a minimum density of 16 homes per acre, which roughly equates to one dwelling per 253m2, including roads and other amenities (p. 3, Whitehead, 2012). Even excluding the town centre, light industrial areas, schools and playing fields, train station and other amenities, the conservative and suburban density of 16 homes per acre could provide almost 11,000 homes within the boundary of the town. Instead, South Woodham Ferrers contains 6016 dwellings, counting only the suburban typologies of detached, semi- and terraced homes and excluding the much denser urban typology of flats, whose presence is not be suggested within the guidance of 16 homes per acre. This shortfall of 5000 homes between the town’s density and current guidance emphasises the underuse of the space around the town’s homes, as well as within them. Though it may not be possible or even desirable to increase the density by this degree, these basic sums make a provocative statement about the potential the town has to densify without sacrificing its suburban character (p.222, Barker, 2017).

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This space is under- or un-used and so presents an opportunity, so why is it not already being portioned? A deeper exploration of the suburban condition can suggest a compelling explanation for the paradox of both not enough and plenty space. In Bourgeois Utopias, Fishman defines suburbia as an exclusively middle-class environment (p.x, 1989). Though not all peripheral residential areas can be described as middle-class, such as the council cottage estates of the interwar period, there is a consensus amongst suburban literature, such as Fishman (1989), Jensen (2007) and Archer (2005), that suburbia as it exists in the cultural imagination is of a middle-class identity (p. 6, Fishman, 1989). The importance of this fact stems from the role that suburban neighbourhoods played within the cultural and social development of the middle-class mindset: “from its origins, the suburban world of leisure, family life and union with nature was based on the principle of exclusion” (p.3, Fishman, 1989). Suburban neighbourhoods can be seen as an attempt by the ballooning new middle classes to cement their standing within the social hierarchy and overcome their “insecurit[y] about their own dignity as men” (p.41, Sennett, 1970). “Suburbia can thus be defined first by what it includes — middle-class residences — and second (perhaps more importantly) by what it excludes: all industry, most commerce …, and all lower class residents” (p.6, Fishman, 1989), thus defining middle-class identity in contradistinction to the working classes below them and the upper classes above, “drawing together, … confirming to each other their sameness & coherence in a common image” (p. 41, Sennett, 1970).

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fig. 8 Some of the large detached houses of Collingwood, South Woodham Ferrers 19

fig. 9 These illustrations from the Essex Design Guide lament the failure in suburbia’s compromised relationship with the country. The Guide intended to provide guidelines for how this “suburban reality” could be avoided, by creating a new Essexian village vernacular aesthetic.

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Suburbia as a middle-class space

Understanding suburbia as a middle-class utopia has several important implications when considering the portioning of space. Of particular importance is the middle-class conception of community, which Sennett asserted is of a specific and unique quality, but first the importance of community in suburbia must be emphasised. Suburbia is a site of paradox: even in name, it exists only in relation to the ‘urban’ that it rejects: “suburbia can never be understood solely in its own terms … it must always be defined in relation to its rejected opposite: the metropolis” (p.27, Fishman, 1989). Suburbia as the ‘urbe in rus’ creates amongst itself idiosyncrasies in how it both aspires to the picturesque image of the countryside and simultaneously augments it into a not-quite-urbanity. The concentration of dwellings creates a contradiction with the original Arcadian tradition of suburbia, in “a new kind of landscape [formed] out of the concentration of villas” (p. 54, Fishman, 1989): instead, a crowded arcadia. This failure of suburbia’s intention to situate the home within the landscape suggests a need to reconsider the horizontal orientation of the home, the opportunities and consequences of which will be explored later in the discussion of suburban boundaries. Though the label advertises a marriage of “the city in country”, suburbia has an “antithetical relationship” with both: “a stance that might be defined as neither-nor” (p.

216-7, Archer, 2005).

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But there is an even greater paradox within the suburbs: the two conflicting priorities of on one side the family, and on the other the wider community. This fundamental duality defines the suburban experience by creating both an inward- and outward-looking quality within suburbia’s daily life. The role of the family, and changing attitudes towards it, has been recognised as one of the key influences upon the emergence of suburbia (p.3, Fishman, 1989), and its continuing importance will be explored later. The promise of a like-minded community has continued importance in the decisions of families moving to suburbia, which, though they represent a retreat from the urban way of life in the city and so from other people, were a retreat made on mass, a “collective attempt” as Thompson put it (p.82, 1982).

There exists in suburbia an expectation of sociability and neighbourliness which stages an intrusion upon the family: indeed, “embracing suburban community life often meant giving up a certain amount of privacy” (p.74, Coon, 2003). “Suburban neighbourhoods provided an opportunity for nuclear families to find privacy and intimacy in a detached home”, but “families moving into the suburbs were expected to be active participants in newly formed communities” (p. 70, Coon, 2003). Just as the suburban neighbourhood itself exists neither as rural or as urban, the suburban home occupies a liminal space between the two worlds of the nuclear family and the wider community. However, this experience of a “private retreat within the community of neighbours” (p.75, Coon, 2003) may not undermine suburban lifestyle but instead create it, the quality of both inward- and outward-looking compounding suburbia’s character as “neither-nor” (p. 217, Archer, 2005).

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fig. 10 Despite the best intentions of the Essex Design Guide however South Woodham Ferrers is still a long way from the “suburban dream: a crowded arcadia.

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The complexity of the relationships existing within these different tug-of-wars creates a complicated, paradoxical suburban identity, which gets even more complicated when one introduces Sennett’s discussion of the middle-class conception of community. Within modern times the idea of community is itself conflicted, an observation that Sennett discusses in ‘The Uses of Disorder’. He describes community as “a deceptive social term” (p.30, Sennett, 1970). To him, “a community is a particular kind of social group in which men feel they share something”, (emphasis original, p. 31, 1970) but in recent decades, particularly within the middle classes, “community [is increasingly] cemented by an act of will rather than an act of experience” (p.33, 1970). The impact of this is a hollow form of community, characterised by an imagined solidarity rather than actual experience, resulting in “the combination of physical proximity and vast social distance” (Watt, as quoted p.32, Fishman, 1989). This community plays a dual role in forming both the identity and the experience of the suburbanite. The community creates a buffer around the suburban home, physically and mentally distancing them from the ‘other’ and from the disorder and confusion of the outside world. Within the space created by this buffering it is possible for the suburbanite to engage uniquely with their family, to “create their own world of family-centred values” (p.51, Fishman, 1989), but also to create a space where they can imagine that they are in control. This community of like-minded individuals serves, through “coherence, structured exclusion & internal sameness”, as a “bulwark for themselves against disorder” (p. 48, p.34, Sennett, 1970).

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This is perhaps the most important myth of suburbia: that it provides a place of safety, where the positive and negative outcomes of life are under one’s control, and where life can be ‘finished’. Sennett recognises this is his assertion that “suburbanites are people who are afraid to live in a society they cannot control” (p.72, 1970). The place that suburban areas hold in the cultural imagination as somewhere boring, stultifying and overwhelmingly dull begins to make sense in its role of protecting and enabling the withdrawal, thus the community within these areas is hollow, devoid of the “actual participation” (p.41, Sennett, 1970) that makes up urban life. Within this safe space, protected by the presence of many similar neighbours, “men could return to their real concerns… the petty, routine, isolated pleasures of everyday life” (p.42, Sennett, 1970). The real revelation of this suggestion is the idea that “the images of communal solidarity are forged in order that men may avoid dealing with each other” (p.34, Sennett, 1970), therefore characterising suburban community not as an active being, but instead as a means giving people the “chance to… hide from one another” (p.35, Sennett, 1970). This aversion to the complexities and contingencies of the wider world is fundamental to the “retreat into a secure, private world” that suburbia represents (p.15, Leadbeater 1989). However the portioning of our space requires an engagement with these complexities and contingencies: the fear of them and resultant retreat into the family sphere sets a direct challenge to this goal and so must be overcome in order to achieve the project’s aims.

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fig. 11 Trends in housing construction in the UK, 1900-1990 26

The consequences of the middle-class utopia for suburban sharing

The character of suburban neighbourhoods as fundamentally middle-class is particularly important in the portioning of space. The suburban home as the site of the social withdrawal discussed above establishes it as the type of home that is least likely to be shared, devoid as they are of the willingness to engage with the surrounding community. The unlikeliness of a shared suburban home goes deeper even than this: Sennett suggests that increased affluence often means decreased sharing, particularly when it comes to things shared with other people: according to him, we use our cash to buy distance from others (p.47, Sennett, 1970). This trend can be seen particularly in the recent trends in construction, with detached houses now the dominant type being built, correlating with decades of increased affluence for the middle-classes. The home itself also occupies a special place within the suburban imagination that should not be underestimated. To the suburbanite, the home is a place of pride, something that Archer attributes to the role that the “Enlightenment’s intensifying regard for the private self” (p.69, 2005) played in the emergence of the suburban home.

“The bourgeois compact villa” with its “tendency to articulate explicitly private spaces, the dedication of rooms to specific purposes, and the genesis of suburbia as we know it today … addressed the broader challenges embedded in new enlightenment ideologies of self, individuality, autonomy, equality, property, and capitalism” (p. 173, Archer, 2005).

As already explored, the suburban home has a self-aware quality: it is the means through which the family within can display for the gaze of the surrounding community; a site “for engaging in activities the performance of which established the dimensions of one’s identity” (emphasis original, p.170, Archer, 2005). The suburban home therefore holds a special place within the identity of the suburbanite, on top of its role in suburbia’s social withdrawal. Much of what Sennett attributes the suburban way of thinking to is the fear of the city, or of disorder. The question of how to open up the ‘spare’ space within the homes of these withdrawing suburbanites is how to overcome this self-protecting self-interest. It is important that we escape the isolated homogenous communities that suburbia can represent: as Fulton put it, “suburban cocoons make cocoon citizens, who define common good as that which benefits those inside their particular cocoon” (as quoted by Grescoe, 2017). For portioning to happen, a larger scale framework is required in order to define residential space as society’s space, and to appreciate the need we all have and act accordingly: ‘our community, our space’.

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The importance of Single Family Homes

The challenge then is how to engage with suburbia to negotiate the barriers to using this space. The context of suburbia as a middle-class space suggests the distinction between sharing and portioning, with the latter an action that is supported by the importance of the family & single family dwellings in suburbia. The cultural changes that sparked the suburban movement provide suggestions for the continuing character of suburban homes, the most visible of which is the dominance of the single family home. As a result of the 18th century increase in the perceived moral vulnerability of children and women within the family group, it became increasingly important to physically distance and enclose the family unit in order to protect them from the dangerous and polluting urbanity, with the result that the family became more “inner directed” and evolved “‘an emphasis on the boundary surrounding the nuclear unit’” (p. 9, Fishman, 1989). “The London bourgeoisie who invented suburbia were … experiencing a new form of family” (p. 9, Fishman, 1989). That the most important boundary within suburbia is drawn around the family is clearly legible in the landscape of suburbia. The pattern of clearly defined territories occupied by one family alone seems to be deeply characteristic, and one that any proposal seeking to engage in a new suburban dream should consider carefully before challenging.

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fig. 12 A section exploring how a series of half levels could open up the family spaces and reinterpret the suburban atmosphere of spatial generosity whilst maintaining distinctions between the different rooms and functions 29

fig. 13 Traditional house plans of the large, detached family homes in South Woodham Ferrers 30

The suburban relationship with boundaries

Looking inside the dwelling can suggest a framework through which to consider the wider suburban neighbourhood. The parlour provides an interesting parable for the future development of suburban character. It wasn’t until the middle of the 20th century that the parlour finally fell out of favour, despite decades of attempts by builders and architects to persuade the public that this one, small, formal and rarely used ‘Sunday room’ should be traded out for fewer, larger and lighter living spaces. This insistence upon separate, functionally defined rooms evolved in parallel with the early predecessors of suburbia, emerging part as an expression attempting to “announce and legitimate certain activities relating to the private bourgeois self and family”, thus strengthening the Enlightenment obsession with selfhood (p. 122, Archer, 2005). The emergence of the living room, whose genesis is credited to the Evangelist Clapham Sect’s William Wilberforce’s family library then reaching full potential in early 20th century American suburbia, is another example of a historic cultural development with continuing relevance, in its symbolism of the social shifts both concerning the family and the changing relationship between leisure and work. An earlier example is the introduction of the corridor into housing plans, which has it’s origins in the Victorian desire to separate servant and served. Or the development of the semi-detached typology, which Lofthouse has attributed to the upheavals of the 18th century, such as Enclosure, that reshaped our relationship with the land and gave birth to “attached” homes (p.13, 2012). Each of these developments in the structure of our homes have parallels today.

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fig.

The vertic

14 cal enfilade

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fig. 15 Comparing the historic layout of compartmentalised rooms, the contemporarily popular open-plan, and an enfilade arrangement where the different rooms are opened up to each other without completely removing all definition: is this arrangement more suburban?

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Each of these examples suggest a relationship between suburbia and boundaries. The proposal explores this through the reorientation of the suburban home from horizontal to vertical.

The typical house plan in South Woodham Ferrers remains traditional, representative of a female-oriented form of domestic labour, with large dining rooms, separate living rooms and the kitchens compartmentalised and kept separate. This is in contrast to contemporary trends for openness, as can be seen in the popularity of ‘open plan’ and ‘loft-style living’.

However open-plan seems completely un-suburban: the removal of all internal boundaries and the resultant complete blurring of the specific functions of the rooms that the home once would have consisted of? The desire to compartmentalise and define different rooms for different activities that emerged in the 17th century and whose influence can be seen in the stubborn popularity of the parlour is a characteristic feature within suburban history.

Instead of complete openness, what might be more appropriate is a vertical enfilade, in which the key family spaces are opened up to one another and yet still clearly defined as separate, using a series of half-levels that the interior spirals up through. Breaking the suburban home into these half-levels creates height, reinterpreting the the atmosphere of ample space that has been cited as an important feature of the suburban promise by South Woodham Ferrers interviewees into the new orientation, alongside the potential for a diverse interlocking of the neighbouring ‘attached’ dwellings. Thereby the consequence of smaller dwellings created by the densification is ameliorated, as using a variety of half-levels presents the opportunity for the creation of 1 1/2 or 2 storey high spaces which maintain a feeling of spatial generosity even within a condensed footprint. This also seeks to introduce an element of Renaudie’s “‘abstract content’” (p.47, Scalbert, 2004), which concurrently seek to encourage the active inhabitation of the resident through the production of awkward spaces, and also to allow room for the vaguer, looser and less defined activities of daily life. The 17th to 18th century invention of the divide of family-shared spaces downstairs and the individual-private spaces upstairs is confused by the spreading of the family-shared spaces across many levels. This serves to break down the privacy divide, subverting the traditional definition within the home in order to blur the expectations of the spaces. The staircase, which Archer defines as a central player in the development of this divide (p.99, 2005), is broken up and assumes a monumental role, symbolic how it opens up the existing homes and makes the new spaces created accessible as dwellings. Such an approach is also of conceptual use within the wider neighbourhood, as has been explored in the site plan by replacing the central spine of back garden fences with a garden space shared amongst the neighbourhood, again subverting the existing boundaries in order to question our use of and rights to space.

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fig.

A site plan beginning to explore the new relationships created within the nei the technique of blurring the spatial distinctions might be tr 36

16 ighbourhood between the existing homes and the portioned homes, and how ranslated into replacing the garden fences with shared spaces.

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Relationships between homes: How can private space create an awareness or engagement with community?

The single family home dictates a boundary surrounding that which is shared and that which exists within the domain of the individual family unit. To maintain this existing dominance of the familial unit, which is arguably central to the suburban identity of the homes, neighbourhoods and residents, key domestic functions such as the kitchen, living room and bathroom remain within the single use of one family. Thus, the perimeter of the home is relatively unchanged. The suburban sharing of space: portioning; therefore takes place at the scale of the relationships between homes, and the boundaries of how these are expressed, policed and negotiated. The space that is shared is done through an increased proximity of dwellings and families, rather than through the physical presence of others within the home. At the scale of the wider neighbourhood, these important boundaries can perhaps be subverted in order to engage the suburbanite with the societal feeling needed for the process of sharing space.

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fig. 17 The moments & rooms that define suburban life: relaxing in the peaceful living room; a mother watching her children play through the kitchen window; quiet (or boring) streets; driving through the neighbourhood; ‘a family that eats together, stays together’ in the dining room; everybody’s in the garden.

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fig. 18 A map and photographs exploring the character, presence and distribution of attached homes in Collingwood, South Woodham Ferrers.

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The language of “attached homes” is one already familiar within suburbia (p.13, Lofthouse, 2012).According to Thompson, “detached and semi-detached houses of single family occupation are of the suburban essence” (p. 8, 1982). The beginning of the popularity of the semi- and detached housing typologies, as opposed to the terrace or in more modern times the flat, within the middle classes began to emerge in the early part of the Victorian era (p.59, Jensen, 2007). This popularity can be attributed to the importance of the self in Enlightenment thinking, and the increasing desire to distance oneself and ones family from the dangers of the city, other people and the wider world. In the new typologies of the “compact bourgeois villa” (p.173, Archer, 2005), whether semi- or detached, the middle classes sought “something compatible with their position in society” (p. 66, Jensen, 2007).

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fig.

Composite perspective and section exploring the stacking and interlocking detached homes, the relationship between ‘front’ and ‘back’ is subverted, there hoping to build a broader awaren 42

19 g of portioned homes in the streetscape. In the augmenting of the suburban eby serving to further confuse the division of space between ‘mine’ and ‘ours’, ness of the societal need for space.

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Despite their conjoined nature, within each of the characteristically suburban housing typologies it is obvious that each is decidedly a house. It is important that the proposal seeks alternatives to the portioning of space than the traditional method of subdividing into flats, the unpopularity of which can be seen as contributing to the popularity of suburban areas.

This unpopularity has its roots partly in the fear of disturbance that such close neighbours might provide, but is also representative of the suburban householder’s desire to express themselves through their home. Though the suburban home celebrates and creates about itself a family-centred privacy, the house and surrounding garden is a physical presence that represents the family within, thus negotiating their relationship with the surrounding community. This character of having a facade for one’s family, the proclamation that it is “the space of one’s [family’s] own” (p.139, Barker, 2009) seems key in the expression of the morality and identity of those dwelling within: “this is my very own house” (p.214, Barker, 2009). The visible expression of each individual dwelling, something that seems to define whether a dwelling is a house or not, can therefore be seen as important within the inward- and outward-facing ‘janus’ nature of suburbia. The portioning of homes into different houses, using the vertical orientation previously discussed, maintains the suburban relationship with the ground and the garden. The nature of the attachment between the vertical homes provides an opportunity for playing with the relationships between the different dwellings. Such proposals might seek to fragment the boundaries themselves, or to remove them completely. The plans below illustrate the dividing one dwelling into numerous smaller, interlocking homes, serving to greatly multiply and complicate the divides between the homes. In doing so, the proximity of the neighbouring dwellings is made explicit, with the shape of the neighbouring dwelling made visible as the new dwellings carve up the existing house. This serves to assert the nature of space as always being in some way shared with another: that we each have an equal right to space, and that no one person can override another’s right. In this way the over-complicated boundaries of the party walls within the structure impress upon the homemaker ‘our community, our space!’, thereby forming an awareness within residents of the social value of space and the importance of being considerate with it.

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fig. 20 Diagrammes exploring the different forms of attachment and how portioned homes might differ from them.

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fig.

In this series of plans the interlocking nature of the homes becomes clear, wit the different dwellings, expressing the pressure for space that each exerts upon 46

21 th boundary between the dwellings of the party wall contorting up between n the other and the societal relationships inherent within property ownership.

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Suburbia can therefore be seen as a site of great complexity. It can never be defined as one thing: rather it exists in balance with what it is not, what it is a reaction against. The suburban home seeks to create within itself a space of familial privacy, but is dependent upon the wider homogenous community for the security of the family dwelling there. The home presents an opportunity for the freedoms associated with realising ones selfhood, but the realisation is expressed through an act of performance to a wider community. This establishes suburbia as a place of paradox and sets a challenge to any interventions to engage with the conflicting nature of these aspirational neighbourhoods, in a hope to avoid steamrollering suburbia’s appeal and charm. An appreciation of the issue of under-occupation has been expressed by the Government in the recent controversial Bedroom Tax. Though deeply flawed in its punitive aggression towards the most vulnerable and lack of accountability of private homeowners despite them making up 82.7% of under-occupying households (p.5Wilson, 2016), an architecture for the portioning of space has the opportunity to create a solution that homeowners and hopefuls might aspire to. The suburban condition itself is also facing significant challenges in the years to come. Affordability has historically played a large part in the popularity of these areas, allowing many to purchase a property where the opportunity hadn’t existed previously.

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In recent years however even suburban areas are beginning to feel the impact of the upswing in house prices in the south east. Despite South Essex’s history of cheapness, South Woodham Ferrers has experienced one of the steepest climbs in house prices in the last 10 years, at an average of 350%. This means that many of these large homes are becoming increasingly out of reach of the middle-class families they were built to attract. Another threat lies in the suburban home’s ambition to enclose within itself the nuclear family, yet this form of family is in decline, challenged by many different less traditional forms of households. The gauntlet is therefore thrown down to explore how these neighbourhoods might develop and change in the future, both to reconnect with what made them popular in the past and to discover what their new relevance might be, but also to maintain an awareness to the societal escapism that writers such as Sennett and Archer warn they have potential to represent. This essay suggests that it is this societal escapism that poses the greatest threat to the sharing of space. Any architectural solution presenting means through which to open up and access this space must first grapple with the suburban attitudes and culture that play their role in the important charm of suburban areas, but put such a utopian proposition in danger.

In an environment already populated by so many idiosyncrasies and paradoxes however, maybe the suburbs are a good place to start.

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fig. 1

Own illustration, 2017 p.4-5 fig. 2

Definitions from the Oxford Collins Dictionary: Available from: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/proportion and https://en.oxforddictionaries. com/definition/proportional [Accessed on: 30/03/2017] p.7 fig. 3

Own maps, 2017 p.8-9 fig. 4

Own illustration, 2017 p.10 fig. 5

Own illustration, 2017 p.13 fig. 6

Own illustration, 2017 p.14-15 fig. 7

Own illustration, 2017 p.16

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fig. 8

Photographs sourced from Google Street View [Accessed on: 28/03/2017] p.19 fig. 9

Illustration from p.8 of The Essex Design Guide by Essex County Council (2005) p.20 fig. 10

Illustration from p.102 of The Essex Design Guide by Essex County Council (1973) Photograph sourced from Google Street View [Accessed on: 28/03/2017] p.23 fig. 11

Trends in housing construction in the UK, 1900-1990 Data sourced from p. 21, Jensen, 2007 p.26 fig. 12

Own illustration, 2017 p.29 fig. 13

House plans and photographs sourced from Rightmove adverts of houses for sale at the time of writing, 2017 Available from: Mereworth Road: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-64368266.html Inbonnie Road: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-64435181.html Haddon Mead: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-63537908.html [Accessed on: 28/03/2017] p.30 fig. 14

Own illustration, 2017 p.32-33 51

fig. 15

Own illustration, 2017 p.34 fig. 16

Own illustration, 2017 p.36-37 fig. 17

Own illustration, 2017 p.39 fig. 18

Own map, 2016 Photographs sourced from Google Street View [Accessed on: 28/03/2017] p.40 fig. 19

Own illustration, 2017 p.42-43 fig. 20

Own illustrations, 2017 p.45 fig. 21

Own illustration, 2017 p.46-47

52

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