Hinemihi is a Maori meeting house located within the grounds of Clandon Park, near Guildford, in Surrey.  Hinemihi originally comes from Te Wairoa, on the North Island of New Zealand, and her creation was commissioned by Chief Aporo Te Wharekaniwha of the sub-tribe Ngati Hinemihi.  To the Maori who built her, Hinemihi was a physical embodiment of an honoured ancestress of Ngati Hinemihi, and Hinemihi is considered to be a living being. Tukutuku are decorative lattice-work panels.  These workshops will start the process of creating tukutuku panels for the interior of Hinemihi similar to those that were in the house before she was dismantled and shipped to Britain.

A long time ago in Hawiiki, a tohunga (a sacred person) was sleeping in the sun. The tohunga had a boil on his leg which was weeping. Potakatawhiti, a dog, wandered into the village and saw the sleeping tohunga. Potakatawhiti started licking the weeping pus which woke the tohunga and realising that the dog had ‘taken part’ of him, killed, cooked and ate the dog. After some time, the dog’s owner,s brothers Tamatekapua and Whakaturia, noticed Potakawhiti was missing and went searching for the dog. When they called for him could hear the sound of a dog whining. They followed the whining sound and realised the sound was emanating from the tohunga’s stomach. To avenge the death of the dog (as the brothers could not kill the sacred tohunga) they decided to rob the tohunga’s orchard which contained a sacred tree bearing breadfruit (poroporo). At night, using stilts so as to not leave footprints, they stripped the tree. Gleeful of their bounty, the brothers tried again but on the second night they were noticed and chased by the tohunga’s people who became suspicious that poroporo was disappearing. To escape the brothers abandoned their stilts and ran into the sea. Unfortunately Whakaturia was not a good swimmer and was captured whilst Tamatekapua escaped. Whakaturia was taken back to the meeting house and tied him to the top of the poutokomanawa (the centre pole of the meeting house) in readiness to smoke and eat him.

Desperate to help his captured brother, Tamatekapua returned to the village and with some stealth climbed on top of the meeting house. Here he parted the thatched roof to talk to Whakaturia whilst the people below were getting ready for dinner by dancing themselves into a frenzy. After all smoked dinners are a slow cook. Tamatekapua told Whakaturia to deride the hungry hoard below by saying how useless they were at dancing and he could dance much better.  Tamatekapua told Whakaturia that having affronted their ego they will take him down. Once on the ground Whakaturia started the mother of all hakas to save his life, working the dance floor such that he was now dancing besides the door. When Whakaturia fled the meeting house, the two brothers barred the door and set fire to house. (Much like in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds where the Nazi’s are locked in a cinema which is then set alight). The burning of the whare created a battle between two villages and so the brother’s father suggested that the boys build the Te Arawa waka (canoe) and leave the island.

“We shall therefore borrow all our Rules for the Finishing our Proportions, from the Musicians, who are the greatest Masters of this Sort of Numbers, and from those Things wherein Nature shows herself most excellent and compleat.” Leon Battista Alberti (1407-1472)

Today music vs architecture is less about spatial proportion (representation), more about spatial intervention (experience). Blablablarchitecture has always privileged ‘talking buildings’ and therefore rap ‘music’ (recalling Chuck D has always said rap is about the word not the sound) with its speech dexterity, and hiphop, with its sonic sampling / appropriation / play-giarism, has often been on high rotation / Recently Played on the office i-Tunes beatbox.

The WHAT_architecture remix competition launched during Clerkenwell Design Week 2012 is thus a celebration of the world of referencing. Judging can be really hard but thanks to you, and public input via our website, we can choose the winners who, in the best electronic music traditions, add something particular to the original essence. The competition is sponsored by Adobe Photoshop. Or really ‘Phonoshop’TM where the process of making sound also influences image.

GALLERY OF ARCHITECTURAL RAPS:

1. NL_Architects vs Claus en Kaan:

2. FILIP DUJARDIN FICTIONS:

The housing situation is pretty depressing – prices are down by perhaps 30% in real terms; additions to the existing stock are running at perhaps half the level required if projected household growth is to be accommodated; and most commentators feel that little of what is being built meets the standards necessary for the next generation. Just as concerning are the likely scenarios were the economy to show signs of significant improvement. If incomes rise then demand for housing will increase against a very limited supply, pushing up prices long before supply can respond; if however credit remains tight, as it has since 2008, then those that can borrow will still put pressure on house prices but first time buyers in particular will find it extremely difficult to enter the market and will be forced to remain in private renting – and pay higher rates.

Current difficulties

The fundamentals behind this inbuilt volatility are relatively straightforward.  Unlike some other European countries often held up as exemplars, we have an expanding population with both healthy indigenous growth and continuing net immigration. As a result we need perhaps 230,000 additional dwellings per annum just to accommodate that increase.  If fewer units are available young people will have to spend longer at home; more households will have to share or live in overcrowded conditions, especially in London and other areas of economic growth; and both international competitiveness and the quality of life will be undermined.  On the other hand, net additions were above 200,000 only at the height of the investment boom in 2007/ 8, and even then new housebuilding output was running at below 170,000. So there has been a continuing shortfall over the economic cycle.

Moreover, what is being produced tends to be smaller than in the past.  In 2009, 60% of completions were of one or two bed units, while 50% were flats – most in the market sector. And we do not keep detailed records of the size of units – everything is thought about in terms of the number of rooms, forgetting that the square metres per dwelling have been falling for decades. As households and their needs change, perhaps the innovation which would most influence behaviour might be to ensure that information on square meterage – and cost per metre – was available as a matter of course to all potential purchasers, as it is in every other country in Europe.

Looking ahead

Looking to the future, the biggest problems in the short term are the lack of funds for developers and purchasers both for owner-occupation and private renting; and continued uncertainty about the future economy and housing market, which is reducing demand and supply while leaving the fundamental tensions unaffected. In the longer term there are concerns about loss of capacity in the development industry; the extent to which land prices and expectations are still out of line with underlying equilibrium; and particularly about the extent to which the planning system can ensure adequate land availability.

The government has put forward over 100 initiatives, including: contracts with housing associations and other providers for 170,000 new affordable homes by 2015;  public land to be made available for 100,000 homes to be provided on a build now pay later principle; a back stop guarantee system by which 100,000 95% mortgages can be supported; and a further 100,000 additional homes funded from right to buy sales on a one for one basis. Most of these initiatives are relatively short term.  The most important longer term initiative is the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) published at the end of March and implemented on the same day.

Future changes
The principles behind the NPPF are clear and potentially game changing.  Local authorities with an up to date plan must agree to all proposals that accord with it. Those without a plan must make decisions in line with the framework which gives a presumption in favour of development.

However, one reason for the generally positive response to the NPPF is that the new framework maintains many of the strongest constraints on development, including brownfield first, the emphasis on town centres, constraints on the use of urban public space, the greenbelt and an even greater emphasis on good design. No planning department will have difficulty turning down a development it does not like.  It may go through on appeal, but the delays and costs will be high.

The problem is not so much the framework but the fact that 44 documents that supported the existing planning system have been replaced or revoked. Doing away with a thousand pages of detailed guidance leaves stakeholders to work everything out for themselves, and core concepts are generally not defined clearly enough to stop those who dislike the outcomes appealing against planning decisions.

Any large changes in the planning system take a long while to work through – for instance Section 106 was not really fully operational for at least a decade. Even if the pro development agenda does eventually become embedded in the planning system, resulting in higher output, there are sure to be long delays and high costs associated with the new regime.