Hello!

Welcome to the Blocktype Newsletter. As the general election approaches with housing at the top of the agenda, new ideas for how we can build more homes are frequently in the headlines. One of the most interesting of these is the re-branding of parts of the greenbelt as ‘grey belt’ by the Labour Party. The extent to which this is just a name given to poor quality greenbelt, or a whole new policy designation will be fundamental, but the question of exactly how much land we need, still remains unanswered.

Underlying decisions of how much land we need, is a question of what density we should be planning for? If we look to meet our housing need with mostly terraced housing, we’d need about 3,000 Hectares a year, but if we take a ‘gentle density’ approach we’d need a third of that. Unsurprisingly, housing typologies matter.

Euan MIlls (CEO + Co-founder)

Can 'beauty' make the planning system more certain?

There’s been a lot of discussion about beauty and architectural style as the panacea to overcoming nimby sentiment recently. There is an opinion amongst some in the industry, that if we design our built environment to look like the historic towns and villages we love so much, no one would complain about new development. This theory hasn’t followed through in the King’s proposals for Faversham, where despite the traditional styling of the masterplan and architecture, the locals are still up in arms over the 2,500 homes proposed.

At Blocktype, we steer clear from discussions about elevations and architectural style. We believe good design is more than just what buildings look like. We think things such as the depth of flooplates, location of front doors, and building orientation have a much bigger impact on the quality of a place than the building's style. All Blocktype typologies are expertly designed with this in mind. The same floor plans can be made into either neo-classical or post-modern buildings, but regardless of the style the quality of the flooplans is guaranteed.

Is this the future of building height policy?

Few things excite us more than clearly worded, unambiguous, measurable planning policies. The City of London has started consulting on their next Local Plan, and their building height policy isn’t only simple and easy to understand, but they are making the 3D files available publicly so anyone can use them! You can download their building heights 3d mesh policy here, and add them to any software!

Wouldn't it be great if every planning authority had such clear and measurable building height policies? Should we add this to Blocktype?

Should residential floor plans be standardised?

An interesting study on the evolving apartment floor plans in Sydney by Philip Oldfield and Hazel Easthope confirms what we’ve been seeing in the UK for a while. Developers are all moving towards standardisation of their floorplans. Whilst the authors see this as problematic, standardising floor plans can have many benefits. Not only does it make construction more affordable, and open the doors to modern methods of construction, it also has the potential to reduce uncertainty in the planning system. If we know what the planners want, that’s one less issue for us to argue over.

The London Housing Design Guide and the NDSS (nationally described space standard go a small way towards this, but what if we went a step farther, like the GLC went in 1976 when they published their Greater London Council preferred dwelling plans?

🚀 BLOCKTYPE UPDATES 🚀

1. Design your ideal floorplate

We’ve just launched one of our biggest updates yet! Many of our users have been asking to have more granular control over the unit mix of your proposals, so we’ve done just that. You can now decide exactly how many units and of what size you want on your typical floorplate, and explore precisely how this impacts your building footprint and your Gross Development Value. If you’re an existing user, you’ll be able to use this new feature from today - we’d love to know what you think.

2. Download your Blocktype layout as a vector file

A few architects have been asking us to create a feature that allows you to download your Blocktype layout as a vector file, so they can import it into other CAD programmes, and style it or use it as a base for a 3D rendering. You can now download your layout as an SVG, just click on the SVG icon in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. We’d love to know how you're using this data and if there’s anything else we can do to help. Email us with your suggestions here.

3. Places at Pace conference

Last month co-founder Euan Mills spoke at the Office for Place's ‘Place and Pace’ conference on the importance of using technology in planning. A great write-up of the event by Chair Nicholas Boys Smith can be seen here.