Floating neighbourhood and M25 mega-city among plans to solve London's housing crisis

Canal view: One of the bold proposals
Handout
Matt Watts15 September 2015

Floating neighbourhoods, a mega-city near the M25 and building homes on top of hospitals, schools and libraries have been proposed as solutions for London’s housing crisis by leading architects.

The ideas were among 200 entries for an international competition where the winners will get the chance to put their plans in front of the Mayor of London.

The awards was organised by think tank New London Architecture to come up with innovative ways to solve the lack of homes in London.

Ten winning ideas will be announced in October, with winning submitters invited to join a Greater London Authority working group to examine how their ideas can be applied to real London sites to deliver future housing for the capital.

Flat plans: CGI mock-ups of the designs have been released

Among the ideas are Baca Architects’ entry to create 7,500 new fixed-placed floating homes on the city’s canal network, which they believe could be completed in a mere six to 12 months.

Floatopolis, a larger, more utopian vision to transform London’s famous docks and sites on the River Thames into water neighbourhoods, was worked on by architecture studio dRMM.

They propose the floating neighbourhoods would also include lidos, open-air cinemas, workspaces, cafés and schools.

Other architects explored filling in unused land, with ideas ranging from brownfield sites to repurposing rooftops.

Proposal: Around 200 entries were made in the competition with a chance for plans to be put before the mayor

WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff suggested a total of 630,000 new homes could be delivered by delivering housing on top of existing public buildings such as hospitals, schools and libraries, totally solving the crisis.

Bell Phillips Architects proposes adding modular housing to the flat roofs of post-war housing estates, whilst Akira Yamanaka Architects’ submission aims to create micro-housing in the gaps between terraced and semi-detached homes.

Architects explored filling in unused land, with ideas ranging from brownfield sites to repurposing rooftops

Global architecture practice NBBJ presented one of the more dramatic transformations of the London streetscape by replacing a selection of roads with rows of new dwellings.

Property consultants GL Hearn’s idea is for a mega-city near the M25, supplying a vast number of new homes as well as new workspaces, retail, public realm and infrastructure links.

Lord Bob Kerslake, Chair, London Housing Commission said: “The scale of the challenge is so big that we genuinely need some fresh thinking.

“There are a lot of new ideas here particularly new approaches to tenure and off site construction.”

Peter Murray, chairman of New London architecture, told the Standard: “Its clear that traditional ways of building new housing by recognised developers is not going to create enough new homes for London. The ideas presented here are not pie in the sky but genuine solutions to the housing crisis I’m sure will be taken seriously.”

Chairman of a new Commission on Affordable Housing in London Lord Kerslake said in June at least 50,000 new homes are needed in London each year to keep pace with demand.

According to London Councils, since 1981 on average fewer than 17,000 homes have been built each year in London.

A hundred shortlisted ideas for the competition will be on display in a free public exhibition at the NLA galleries in The Building Centre in Fitzrovia from 15 October.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in