Posts Tagged: hta
Allsop CPD 15 January 2014
Doing a Private Rented Housing presentation with Paul Winstanley in the bar of Wigmore Hall in London.
PRS is a hot topic so we had a good turn out and the Allsop guys were engaged. The same questions around the relevance of our US visit to the UK market remain: why rent it when you can sell it to an overseas investor for a pile of cash? Mostly though, I think they were interested to see how he’d wangled a cracking trip to the US.
Same folk, different jobs 10 January 2014
Edinburgh’s cafes survived the recession I think. They’ve got the same people in them talking about the same stuff, they’ve just survived in different ways and ended up in different jobs.
Coming back to work after two weeks off, my colleagues look like Dracula.
A 360 Degree Appraisal of the Board. 11-12-13
Appraisals are a colossal waste of everyone’s time, says Forbes magazine. Everyone gets one in HTA, except some of the board. I don’t think they should miss out, so I did one.
It’s not quite 360, but why would you put yourself through that?
My friend the 225 who I see a couple of times a week these days.
Folk – 2 December 2013
James Lord at the Whisky Society (after the Dome and the Dogs). Tomorrow we will be talking about the future but for now we aren’t thinking too far ahead.
Innes getting into a proper seat.
HTA Sketch Club November 2013
This is from the steps of Malcolm Fraser’s Poetry Library, from the lottery era. The steps are for listening to outdoor poetry readings I think, but there’s not much call for that in November. It makes for an interesting raised view point.
This is pretty much my favourite place in London: the platform level of St Pancras. The platform is raised up to let the railway pass over the adjacent canal and the columns on the ground floor were set out to suit beer barrel dimensions. It was built as a proud little but of the Midlands in central London. We went with HTA’s sketch club and Peter Ctori talked us through some of the history, from an engineer’s perspective. My colleagues sketches are on
Lastly some houses in Combe Down, near Bath.
Life’s Too Short at Urban Design London – 21 November 2013
I spoke at an Urban Design London event about the fun we’ve been having designing for how people live, with Fizzy. Life, Places, Buildings, as the Scottish Government says.
This is Fizzy’s Mark Allnutt combining a provocative presentation with a pitch for some land. James Pargeter and Rosemary Slater are listening. I’m listening too, but that’s a cracking view across the reservoir back to the city. It’s the long horizontal strip window that makes the view, but we don’t do them in housing anymore, everything’s vertical. Why’s that?
It’s time we got on with PRS, and maybe it’s time we got over the Georgian window.
Boom or bubble? 12 November 2013
The economy has changed: we are flat out busy. A mood reflected in a marketing presentation from Bryan Sabin of Higgins.
For balance, a man in orange specs reading Tory paper speculation on another housing bubble.
Boston & Chicago with ULI – October 28th -31st
The ULI, the Urban Land Institute, is a good thing: it provides a forum for different disciplines to talk together about the built environment and think about how to make it better. I went on our visit to Boston & Chicago, looking at the new private rent sector that has taken off in the US. The same thing might happen here. “To know the road ahead, ask those coming back”, or something.
www.uli.org
Here are my sketches from a most enjoyable trip.
27 October 2013
20% of the Boston population is of Irish extraction so flying via Dublin sat me next to a few people with good local knowledge.
28 October 2013
Some cracking buildings, new and old, on Boston Common, the oldest city park in the US.
The friendly Add Inc architects gave us an initial briefing on the sector, with a designers view of the madness of construction cycles. Nice office.
They showed us some of their projects and introduced us to their clients. www.addinc.com
After a complicated presentation with a simple message about maximising yield, we needed a beer so watched the Red Sox get to within a game of winning the World Series. I got to know the place a bit better than I had when I arrived the night before (right sketch).
29 October 2013
Another Add Inc job. For a two bed and a parking space and something to sit and sleep on, it’ll cost over $6k per month.
The CBRE spent a good chunk of time explaining the figures, from the size of the market to the difference between US & UK calculation methodology. To let it all soak in, we headed for Chicago.
Chicago can blow your mind. In the 27th floor bar that we started in, about half of our neighbours were twice as tall as us. You feel right in the middle of it, both horizontally and vertically.
30 October 2013
Chicago Federal Center. Mies Van Der Rohe, completed in 1974. As an architect, you don’t come to Chicago for two days and spend all the time in presentations. So I skived off and spent some time in the presence of this office/ civic complex and (for me) it’s residential equal:
Bertrand Goldberg’s Marina City. If you were going to draw one apartment building and one office, you’d draw the two I chose; they’ve not been bettered.
America’s quite a harsh society I think, and the flipside of the aspirational luxury we’d visited so far was Mercy Housing in the suburb of Austin. We met a committed team, honest and open about their successes and failures, in an environment that was attractive to look at, but terribly hostile in reality.
Over a typically huge American dinner, I met a lawyer who’d known Bertrand Goldberg. Later, I think I lost at pool.
31 October 2013
On the final day we visited two contrasting places: the regeneration of the old Sear’s Catalogue factory (they moved out into the world’s tallest building) in contrast to the latest in private rent apartments, bursting with creative ideas. The energy of the place was summed up by Greg Mutz, the developer’s CEO. His “just look at this! Isn’t it amazing!” enthusiasm was hard to resist. The three way discussion Greg participated in was an inspiring closing session.
Fascinating, inspiring and exhausting. It filled us with ideas for what to do over here.
When can I go again?
Sketching in the Olympic Park
Walking round the Olympic Park with HTA Sketch Club admiring the set piece buildings and retreating to Hackney Wick for a pint and review of our work. I didn’t get much drawn but for other people’s super views of the velodrome and other sites go to:
http://www.hta.co.uk/news/posts/september-sketch-club
Steve Tomlinson of the London Legacy Development Corporation showed us round.
Back at Stratford International a week later enjoying it’s Futurist drama.
HTA Edinburgh’s New Office 26 September 2013
21 Slater’s Steps, our new office. 
We’ve swapped an old building on the New Town for a new one in the Old Town. Seems good so far: bright, spacious, peaceful; and the few sceptical staff seem to be enjoying it too. Lot’s still to sort out though, so we’ll see how it goes.
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