"Forever Home"
Artist residency proposal
INTRODUCTION
The intent of the work is to explore the relationships between people and habitable structures; how people perceive buildings and how they can interact with residential properties in a variety of different ways. This body of work that we propose for our 2016 Creative Residence is a continuation of our 18 month design investigation into the housing poverty currently affecting the UK. Land security and housing scarcity has been identified as an acute need in London.
Housing poverty is a documented crisis across the UK. It is reportedly particularly acute in London.
Our Creative Residency therefore facilitates us being able to focus on how to provide design led houses at prices people who live and work in London can afford to buy. Our team will begin our work with London and the Home Counties. We aim to expand our work to the major northern cities in the UK, including Manchester and Leeds in 24 months.
This proposal is copyright to R Walters /
Associated Media Ltd
We are focusing on providing solutions to meet this need because there hasn't been a policy to relieve this pressing problem tabled as yet. Furthermore, it is an ongoing suggestion in construction press, the rate of building new homes is down. Further more, there has been recent reports which claim a generation of people in Britain will not have the opportunity to buy their own home. Worse, the quality and standard of new homes built in the UK is often very poor. People are forced to live in very tight, dark places, spiralling rents and increasing evictions.
Our work will be influenced by self build companies/ professionals and “self builders” who design the interior spaces of their homes “off plan”. As well as the designers and professionals who use algorithms and bio-mimicry to design architecture, kinetic architecture and settlements in response to crises, needs and disasters.
VISION AND INTENTION
We propose to run a creative residency program to inspire innovative solutions to London's housing crisis. We have been researching for the past 18 months & wish to build on the past 6 months of collaborative making. We've designed our multi-disciplinary program to achieve this through a multi-channel approach. We combine research and planning policy analysis with a narrative of the contextual study of what it means “to dwell” in the City. We test our philosophical position informed by this process with prototype testing, community/public engagement and feedback series of events and staged experiences.
Mission
It is intended the artist residency would meaningfully intervene in the current social and political climate to facilitate positive and inclusive contribution and ownership of the event and housing solutions by local communities and residents; many of whom currently feel disaffected, disenfranchised and unempowered. We aim, not only to produce useful research analysis and recommendations to present to policy makers, but to also give people “hope”, a collective voice & input that can bring long-term solutions, work towards change, instead of feeling disillusioned.
Proposed artist residency partners Patrick Dent; Roxanne Walters, 1 assistant
Proposed offsite residency collaborators Ray Anderson Images, Nick Miners, Stefan Stefano, Construction for Youth, Building design centre, The School of Life
“ I'm sure Roxanne will do really well. She clearly has got the
drive and some fantastic work going on” - Mhairi Grealis Writer, Director, currently collaborating on Streatham's Fun Palace http://www.stagejobspro.com/uk/theatre-professional/profile/mhairi-grealis
Problem/need
There is well-publicised shortage of housing in the capital and nationwide. In addition to people not being able to afford property. Another problem is - people who DO own properties; but the current owners are not using their houses to their full potential as homes. These properties therefore remain uninhabited, as there is little or no incentive to bring them into meaningful use.
Challenges for property owners can include:
payment of Empty property premium, other taxes (or fines)
theft, vandalism, squatting or other criminal activity
the cost of letting a property can cause a decrease on returns/ investor yields when the property is sold
may not have the time or money to manage the property
enforcement notices from the council
a property's fabric, structure and services such as heating, gas or water can fall into disrepair because the property has not been used for a period of time; negatively affecting the selling price of a property
the need to balance an investment portfolio by securing the best asking price for a property to get sustainable returns on money invested into a property.
