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caliwag

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Ugly new homes


caliwag

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This is modified blog from the first one I added referencing a small, underplayed article in the Sunday Telegraph of 3 September, which I did reference, possibly breaking a rule...or I pressed the wrong button! So you'll need to google at your own leisure. It caught my eye because in the title are the words 'Ugly Homes' and 'Nimbys'...well what is the definition of an ugly home for starters. We all have our own definition of same: mine would be ill-proportioned, jumble of materials...or too busy and poor landscaping associated with too much tarmac...I won't go on.

 

The suggestion is that local communities, get together, with a 'design code' assembled by an 'expert' from the planning office in consultation with local residents. Can this be possible? Out of two hundred residents, you'll receive precisely 200 diverse, and no doubt daft, views, including 'no we don't want any development'. Surely this can only be carried out through a parish council...whose final view can only be advisory anyway...just like a planning committee can avoid a highway's engineers report if desired.

 

This all sounds time consuming, a delaying tactic to any development or application, ridiculously long- winded, and politically/socially unsound.

 

Take a quick look at the description in my blog about an Edward Schoolheifer house in London...sadly that would fail all all Design codes at the first hurdle...it's got a flat roof (shrieks of horror from the assembled nimbys)...careful what you design!

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Our National Park issues a design guide - which when you read it/follow it basically says you can only build a Northumbrian stone farmhouse. As there is a planning committee, then I suppose in some ways its a community decision (though not all on the committee live in the National Park) However, I've no great disagreement with this as since you can still of course use modern materials (like SIPs in our case), double glazing etc (though many older homes here are insanely not allowed to retrofit double glazing, even if its in wooden sash windows which look identical to the rotten ones they replace - but you can bet the folks who made this rule live in warm economical-to-run homes themselves though) and the interior can of course be whatever you wish, and few if any Grand Designs type outer I've ever seen would just not work in this particular landscape. Unfortunately though it does also stop even little quirks like a salvaged small church window I wanted to use on one side.

 

As you can see, they er, stuck rigidly to their own design rules when they built a new visitor centre.....    

Hypocrisy.jpg

Edited by curlewhouse
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