Lifetime Homes, the Code for Sustainable Homes, Secured by Design, Housing Quality Indicators, British Standards, Building Bulletins, Planning Policy Guidance Notes and the 14 parts of the Building Regulations are only a few of the statutory standards and guidelines that architects face when building within the UK.
It is a dense minefield of rules and regulations that governs everything from the dimensions of windows to the pitch of rooftops, the depth of stair treads to the gradient of slopes – even where to position light switches. From overlooking distances to rights to light, every aspect of a brand new building was quantified and calibrated before the designer even sets pen to paper.
But does all this red tape hinder architects, or are these the type of constraints under which creativity can thrive
It is a matter posed by architects Liam Ross and Tolulope Onabolu of their contribution to a brand new exhibition at London’s RIBA gallery – Venice Takeaway: Ideas to switch British Architecture. The show brings work to London that was first exhibited inside the British Pavilion on the Venice Architecture Biennale last year, curated by the British Council, where 10 teams of “explorers” scoured the globe to source ideas that can influence the profession within the UK – from collective housing in Buenos Aires to standardised school building in Rio.
Ross and Onabolu travelled to the Nigerian capital of Lagos, to determine how a less regulated building culture fares. Although town is a seemingly chaotic frenzy of ad hoc urbanism, their research unearthed the obscure LSPD Regulation 15, which defines the town-wide setback rule – the space every development must step back from its legal boundary. A regulated no man’s land between buildings and the road starting from three to nine metres, this buffer zone actually turned out to be probably the most lively and dynamic portion of the city’s fabric. It’s an intermediate zone packed with the ancillary structures of security posts, guards’ houses, generators, storage and utility buildings on one side of the fence, while the road-side space is stuffed with temporary users – food vendors, garden centres, mechanics and non secular spaces.
“It allows Lagosians to take personal responsibility for themselves,” write the architects. “Nothing is legally sanctioned within this zone, yet – somewhat counterintuitively – anything can happen. The setback is a legally defined zone of additional-legal tolerance.”
Diagram showing a person’s reach in terms of window size: ‘Windows need to be tailored to the scale and shape of a small elderly woman’
Their work contrasts this example with the impacts of the over-regulated UK setup, targeting the express example of windows – namely British Standard 8213-1:2004 for the cleaning of windows. This innocuous sounding piece of steerage specifies that each one windows need to be cleanable from within, by women aged 64-75, without the usage of ladders or cleaning devices and without stretching. Through photographic surveys and measured diagrams, they chart the profound impact this rule has had on contemporary housing, resulting in a proliferation of low, poky windows with protective Juliet balconies.
“We aren’t just serious about the physical outcomes of those rules,” says Ross, “but what economic side-effects they have got, and the way they have an inclination to formalise existing patterns of inequality.”
They talk about that the regulation is also avoided by the customer using a “factoring agreement” to transfer the danger of window cleaning to a pro contractor – meaning that it’s the low-value housing developments who suffer.
“Suddenly the folks that live within the cheaper blocks are deemed unable to be making their very own judgments about leaning out of a window,” says Ross. “These regulations are fortifying existing class definitions.”
Since the Venice Biennale, the pair have continued to develop the work with students on the University of Edinburgh. Examples shown in a pinup space as component of the RIBA exhibition include fascinating insights into the origins of fireplace regulations, that are bizarrely regarding the time it takes to play the national anthem.
a regular results of British Standard 8213-1:2004 for the cleaning of windows
Statutory escape distances still date back to the British Fire Prevention Committee’s report on a fireplace at Edinburgh’s Empire Palace Theatre in 1911, which was taken to be a model of best practice, as a result of the safe evacuation of the audience – who left the building within the time it took the band to play the national anthem, ie 2.5 minutes. This time is then translated right into a linear escape distance by a formula that pertains to lots of variables, from room area to the dimensions of departures – in addition to the presumed shoulder-width of the escapees. “Scotland has more conservative travel distance requirements than England,” they note, “because Scots are presumed to have broader shoulders than their southerly neighbours.”
It is these quirks and inconsistencies of regulations that intrigue the pair. “We’re interested in how these rules were generated,” says Ross. “While the project is sceptical concerning the empirical data that defines the explicit parameters of regulations, it is usually attracted to what the productive outcomes are – the type of ‘accidental architectures’ that emerge.”
• The controversy would be continued on the RIBA on Tuesday 5 March, at Constraint and Creativity: Is Red Tape the Enemy of Architecture Liam Ross can be joined by Tom Mullarkey from the Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents, Piers Gough of CZWG Architects, Alex Ely of Mae Architects, Tim Gill of Rethinking Childhood, and Finn Williams of Common Office. The exhibition runs until 27 April, and Guardian Extra members should buy tickets for the talks on the discounted rate of £5.
