"Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same
There’s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one…"
Every house is the same... This area is not far from where I live; my community is pretty much the same but a much smaller collection of houses. I wondered why the houses were all the same, so I did a little research and found just a few of the main reasons why they were like this:
1) In the 1930s and 1940s, Britain highlights the way in which architectural design was affected by the necessity of concealing buildings from enemy planes. The expectation of warfare prompted the release of national guidelines for the siting, layout, and form of new buildings. Not only did camouflage techniques evolve in response to new defense needs, but the larger architectural debate was affected. The new “self-concealing architecture” re-appropriated and at the same time distanced itself from contemporary modernist architecture.
2) Council houses were built and operated by local councils to supply uncrowded, well-built homes on secure tenancies at reasonable rents to primarily working-class people. Council house development began in the late 19th century and peaked in the mid-20th century, at which time council housing included many large suburban "council estates" and numerous urban developments featuring tower blocks. However they also tended to be unimaginatively designed, and rigid council rules often forbade tenants "personalising" their houses.
In realising the little diversity of housing styles in London, I became more aware of the great work being done by many architectural firms, to improve the quality of housing by designing beautiful, affordable homes and then by making them available to the wider public.
Here are some examples:
PRP Architects
