Who will 33,000 architects house this year?

What follows is a bullet point summary of the PowerPoint presentation posted here to download as a pdf. If you would like me to give an updated version of the presentation to you and your colleagues, please email me at abley@audacity.org. Our professional failure to build is not about to spontaneously come to an end anytime soon.

• There are about 33,000 registered architects in Britain
• Britain consists of almost 26 million households in 2009
• Let us assume that architects want to produce homes for all
• Shared equally that is a clientele of 785 households for every architect
• Assuming homes last 60 years each architect should replace 13 a year
• More than 240,000 new households want to form every year
• That requires at least 7 new homes every year by every architect
• Each year every architect should produce 20 homes to house Britain
• Not all architects are working in the housing sector of course
• Assume an architect produced 60 homes a year, or 5 a month
• Then 11,000 architects should be busy producing housing
• That would occupy a third of the profession housing everyone
• Every year 60 x 11,000 architect designed homes would be built
• Housing production should be 660,000 homes a year
• In 1968 Britain built nearly 414,000 homes as a post-war peak
• In 2007, the year the housing bubble burst, almost 200,000 homes were built
• In 2008 to 2009 production will be halved to around 100,000
• That is 15% of the number of homes that are required annually
• The market for materials should be many times larger than it is
• A bigger materials sector would boost Research and Development
• 560,000 necessary homes are not being built every year
• 131,000 households are forced to share, and perhaps overcrowd
• Each year 429,000 of the oldest existing homes are not replaced
• Existing housing consumes energy at an average of 300 kWh/m2 per year
• Architects must design to the 34 categories of the Code for Sustainable Homes
• New homes can have a better performance than 100 kWh/m2 per year
• British homes are an average of 75m2 internally, and are not spacious
• 660,000 x 75 x 100 = 4.95 billion kWh could be total annual energy used
• Actual energy = [(100,000 x 75 x 100) + (429,000 x 75 x 300)] kWh a year
• That is instead 10.4 billion kWh consumed in 529,000 homes a year
• Year on year the failure to produce enough homes wastes 5.45 billion kWh
• That lack of building also leaves 262,000 households sharing
• Most of the 100,000 homes built this year will not involve an architect

The architectural profession should be arguing to produce 660,000 homes annually. British architects show few signs of wanting to do so. Happier talking about the moral imperative of environmentalism, which they hope to express as an aesthetic, most architects seem to have retreated from production to become either Techno-Hedonists, Anti-Machine Survivalists, or worse, Misanthropists. Materialist architects need to challenge that.

We cannot assume that all architects want to produce homes for all.

There are substantial sections of the architectural profession who do not think that it is their business to house everyone. To some extent that is explained commercially. Popular housing requires little architectural input, and architects find it hard to make a living off the cost of construction at £800/m2. Some housing architects make a better living by pushing build costs up to £1,200/m2, or higher if the client will pay.

Many architects couldn't care less about raising the productivity of the construction workforce. Some oppose doing so. There will be a section too that thinks population reduction is required. Materialist architects are in a serious minority at present. Greens are winning at the moment.

Obviously Materialist architects are limited in what they can do as professionals to challenge the regression of Green Capitalism. Most architects are also employees of other architects as employers. The demand to raise housing production must be made politically, and is unlikely to be in the interests of employers. However, Materialist architects who want to build had better get organised to challenge the firmly established professional retreat from production. And soon...

Ian Abley 04.09.2009

An earlier version of this presentation was given at the University of Westminster, School of Architecture and the Built Environment on 12 February 2009. Part of the Technical Studies Lecture series organised by William McLean and Pete Silver. SABE, www.wmin.ac.uk/sabe/, is located at the University of Westminster's Marylebone Campus, opposite Baker Street tube station in central London. It has 1800 students with around 90 permanent teaching and research staff. In addition it has a large number of visiting lecturers from industry and the professions.

My thanks to Will and Pete...

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