Alexander Boys Smith applies the theory of Christopher Alexander’s pattern language to the architecture of Leafcutter Ants. In 1977 the architect and theorist Christopher Alexander published his seminal work, A Pattern Language. It set out 253 “patterns”, physical ways in which humanity tends to solve the perennial problem of how to live alongside others in […]
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Tom Bage is a Bow resident. The inclusion of a paragraph on mansard roofs in the new NPPF is welcome news for the millions of people living in pre-1918 properties who would like a little more space or a greener home. I live in Bow, where different groups of residents have spent nearly a decade […]
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Create Streets’ senior architectural designer, Robert Kwolek, considers how important a strong character and identity is to beautiful places with which residents and visitors can fall in love. We tend to like places with a unique identity, those places with a strong, easily recognisable character. Think about the most beautiful places in the world. Usually […]
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Our director, Nicholas Boys Smith’s defence of fifteen minute cities was recently published in Conservative Home. The text was edited down for reasons of space. Here is the full text. Would you like to live in a more prosperous place? A neighbourhood where there are more local businesses, where shops do better, where the air […]
Read more >A senior leader in housing development argues that beautiful streets matter too but highways officials and budgets are blocking them Michael Gove MP said last year that he wants new buildings to be more beautiful. However all too often streets get wrapped up into ‘placemaking’ rather than dealt with as a separate space that needs […]
Read more >Councils nationwide have signed up to climate emergency charters. So far so good. Yet all too often we find that sustainability targets and ambitions to support active travel are undermined by a narrow traffic-oriented approach to design. Many designers are used to working in a world where streets are for vehicular movement and nothing else, […]
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Toby Lloyd, Create Streets fellow, considers an option for intensification of inter war housing estates. Finding a way to add new homes into low density suburbs has long been a holy grail of housing and planning policy. Lacking a decent model for suburban densification we are instead forced to fight ever more acrimonious planning battles […]
Read more >Have you ever heard of Toulouse as a city centre whose improved street design is revolutionising local prosperity, benefiting from and in turn further catalysing the region’s booming economy? Probably not. It is not normally lauded as a case study. But the quality of Toulouse’s street design is staggering. The results are stunning. Walking round […]
Read more >“Look left, look right, the hills are bright” This is south Shropshire, perhaps not a twee emblem of Britain like The Cotswolds, but blessed by more rugged combinations of hill, river and light. A.E. Housman was preoccupied by their interplay in this agricultural Midlands county, and his line above, taken from A Shropshire Lad, is […]
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Create Streets’ senior architectural designer, Robert Kwolek, describes a visit to Hampstead Garden Suburb and explains what we can learn from the North London early 20th century community, revolutionary in its time and with plenty of lessons for us today. You can read the full essay here. You don’t have to visit many new housing […]
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