Sheila Hawkins writes about the marvellous home-making work of the Broadwindsor Group Parish Community Land Trust with some additional thoughts from Alison Ward of Middlemarch Community Led Housing and Nicholas Boys Smith. At the beginning of September 2023 families with smiling faces began moving into to their brand new homes at Northcombe Lea in Drimpton, […]
Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor discuss the genesis and ongoing success of their traditional design course at Kingston University as it passes its thirteenth birthday. In 2011 we established the first traditional design studio in a RIBA accredited mainstream educational institution for over 80 years. At Kingston University we have pioneered a course of traditional […]
Create Streets’ senior architectural designer, Robert Kwolek suggests how we might add warmth to our streets in winter through lighting. Christmas lights add a welcome cheer to our streets and buildings when the days get darker and shorter as winter closes in. The warm glow on our streets and buildings provides a welcome contrast to […]
Hastings resident, Dr Graeme Davis, reflects on his recent attempts to create a new home… If Hastings Town Council had not demolished the heart of Old Town Hastings it would probably now be a World Heritage Site. Slum clearance in the 1930s allowed the Council to buy, at minimal cost, 191 old houses in the […]
When you think about it, nearly all of our happy Christmas clichés depend on traditional towns, walkable streets, beautiful houses and vernacular homes with (let’s be honest) slightly antiquated approaches to keeping warm. Here are six components of the traditional Christmas. I’m not saying you can’t enjoy these in the deep countryside, the wide suburb […]
Finn Carew of developer Native Land examines the barriers. It is no secret that London is facing a severe housing shortage. While the city needs an estimated 83,000 new homes per year, we are building less than half that. London’s population is growing fast. Over the last 10 years it has grown by an additional […]
Lauren Botterill asks if big changes might flow from computer games’ clicks and bits… Video games aren’t just a fad. And they can be more than just games. But can they help us to ‘gain valuable insight into the social psychology of the historical moment’ as one writer put it?1 Many argue that they are a […]
Nicholas Boys Smith makes the case for gentle density Why, asked Evening Standard Property Editor, Prudence Ivey, in a recent article should we build more Georgian terraces? Isn’t it just backward looking and faintly low status? Who would want to be that? So why should we? Let’s examine the reasons. First of all, people like […]
Nicholas Boys Smith reflects on the important international lessons of the Strong Towns movement. On Monday 9 October 2023, the Create Streets team were lucky enough to be able to host breakfast for Charles Marohn, president and co-founder of the American charity, Strong Towns. We were also joined by some excellent developers, officials, architects and […]
Nicholas Boys Smith reflects on the future for Euston Station. How do we fall back in love with the future? How do we build bridges and stations in years not decades? How can we recreate a culture which says, “crack on “not “stop there”? How do we move forward without squandering precious energy upon buildings […]