At Home in Britain: Designing the House of Tomorrow
The exhibition 'At Home in Britain' re-examined how we live and speculated on the future of housing in Britain. Taking the cottage, the terraced house and the flat as a starting point and using the RIBA Collections as stimulus, six newly commissioned works from contemporary architecture practices Jamie Fobert Architects, Mӕ, Maison Edouard François, Mecanoo, Studio Weave and vPPR transform these three familiar housing types to reflect the way we live and work in the 21st century.
Here RIBApix features three galleries of these housing types to highlight the huge range of material held in the RIBA Collections. Discover the remarkable variety of cottages often shaped by locally available building materials. Explore the development of flats from model housing and seminal Modern Movement blocks including Highpoint One to post war reconstruction and notorious housing failures such as Hutchesontown C which had replaced the tenement blocks of the Gorbals. Witness how terraced housing functions at all levels of society and continues to be adapted in modern styles.
NOTES: Hutchesontown C was the name given to a so-called Comprehensive Development Area (CDA) of an area of the city of Glasgow, designed by Basil Spence in 1960-1965. The design of the central 20-storey block was inspired by Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitation, Marseille. It was demolished in 1993.
NOTES: This constituent college of the University of Oxford was founded in 1965 as the Oxford Centre for Management Studies. It was renamed Templeton College in 1983. Ahrends Burton & Koralek were responsible for the design of the college facilities between 1969 and 1996.
SOURCE: Builder, vol. 7, 1849 July 14, p. 326 NOTES: Roberts's block of flats for 48 families was one of the early philanthropic housing schemes in London. This is his earliest housing project still standing and featured fireproof construction, access by wrought-iron balconies, and water-closets in each flat - revolutionary for working class dwellings at the time. The block was restored in 1956 by Sir Frederick Gibberd & Partners.
NOTES: The market town of Milton Abbas was demolished in its entirety by the Earl of Dochester between 1771 and 1790. He commissioned Capability Brown the plans for a new village, consisting mainly of cottages lining up the main street. The cottages were designed by Sir William Chambers.
