The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) announced plans to set up a nationwide network of 500 accredited assessors, to enable new housing schemes to be evaluated against the Building for Life criteria. CABE will train at least one individual in every local authority in England to use Building for Life as an assessment tool.
Building for Life is already well known as an award scheme and its 20 criteria are used as the basis for the national Housing Audit. Now, increasingly it is being used by local authorities to assess housing design quality at pre-planning stage. For example, all 38 local authorities in the West Midlands are now using it, alongside other authorities including Southampton, Norwich and Doncaster.
The assessors will also assist local authorities in completing their annual monitoring returns (AMRs). The Government has recently included the Building for Life standard in its AMR core indicators for local and regional planning authorities.
Training in the use of Building for Life considers 20 criteria, including the design of public space, integration of car parking and sustainability. Each assessor receiving training will already have an urban design qualification (e.g. architect, landscape architect or planner).
Over the next three years, CABE will provide training, accreditation, support and monitoring free of charge for at least one accredited assessor in each local authority across England.
Floating homes, sunken pontoons and timber drawbridges were some of the innovations presented by architects across the world in a bid to design a flood proof house for the future.
The competition, which was launched by Norwich Union with the support of the Royal Institute of British Architects, aimed to see how architects would tackle the problem of building on flood plains in a liveable, workable and insurable way. ,p>A total of 85 entrants from across the globe delivered plans for a family home and garden, that would form part of a larger residential development situated on a flood plain.
A panel of judges from across the architectural and insurance industry selected four overall winners and at a reception at the Thames Gateway Forum, each received £3,500 prize money.
The four winners were:
While presenting some unique new ideas, from timber-skinned glass living rooms to concrete dados and roof gardens to raised footpaths, three main solutions were evident throughout the entries:
Norwich Union and the RIBA will now present the winning ideas to developers and town and country planners, in the hope that it will stimulate new ideas and solutions on how to deal with homes and flood risk.
