We seem to inhabit an increasingly polarised country, but I have an old-fashioned view that we all achieve more when we put our differences to one side and work together. I was disappointed then, to read the recent piece in Housing Today entitled ‘Architects hit out at offsite drive’ – the contents of which more than lived up to the headline.
There didn’t seem to be much room for shades of grey in the views expressed by the architects quoted in the piece – perhaps unsurprisingly, given that the event they were speaking at was styled ‘British Housing: The Crude, the Bad and the Ugly’. It was a black-and-white, blanket denunciation of everything about Modern Methods of Construction (MMC).
My aim, as an active participant in the construction industry is to bring people together to improve the quality of our built environment. Although I come here to praise MMC rather than to bury it, I do not dismiss out of hand the comments made by the architects.
The history of prefabricated buildings is a troubled one, in the UK at least. The very word ‘prefab’ conjures up images of leaky, draughty edifices that were very far from the dream homes to which people aspire, and are irredeemably associated with the years of real austerity that followed the Second World War.
It is important to remember, however, that the Airey homes and other prefabs of the post-war years were never intended to last
It is important to remember, however, that the Airey homes and other prefabs of the post-war years were never intended to last, so it is hardly surprising that not much attention was given to how they would fit in with their surroundings, or the quality of the build, or even of whether their occupants would particularly enjoy living in them. There was an immediate-needs crisis and prefabs were one of the ways in which the urgent housing requirements of the population were met.
We have a housing crisis today, too, of course but it is of a different nature and less proximate cause. Very few would deny that we need to build more homes quickly if we are to begin to bridge the gap between supply and demand. At the same time, there is a skills shortage in the industry, with too few people seeking careers in construction. This is something the CIOB, CITB and others are committed to tackling but it can’t be solved overnight, which makes meeting that demand for new homes highly problematic.
Offsite construction can undoubtedly help to square this circle, so it is unfortunate to see prominent architects so forcefully denigrating these methods. The technology involved has improved exponentially in recent years and it makes as much sense to compare today’s offsite construction with the prefabs of the 1940s and ‘50s as it does to compare our clothes and eating habits to those of our forebears.
The challenge, surely, is to work together so that we harness as much as we can of the speed and low cost of offsite methods, while embracing the best housing designs. Architects and designers need to be central to that effort, hand in hand with developers and builders, rather than railing against the iniquities of market forces.