SCOTLAND’S HOME OF THE FUTURE An Intro- and responsibility in behavioural rules, duction to our Approach e.g. tenants must not create disturbance/ nuisance and must enter and exit in a Where do we live? manner which does not give the land- lord grounds for complaint. The disposi- Living in the “periphery” or run-down inner tion of residential buildings according city often has little pride of place, and we to planning standards (planning regula- need to discuss the innovation of the nature tions, space norms etc.), and standards of tenure (care, pride, ownership etc.), of of human need (sanitation/hygiene, se- ecological density, of variation and mixture curity/safety), and their configuration in (diversity and flexibility) in these locations. a unified exterior form and facade is thus Encima / Above:Ian Ritchie the duty of the architect in the sense of This discussion inevitably raises the question society and the city. This approach has of “time”. The time we spend living here, liv- to be relaxed. The nature of living in the ing space versus living time. If living rather city is changing. than subsistence time is increasing, will it be spent in the living space of the unit or the Part of the art of residential design is un- living space of the city? At the moment we derstanding and balancing the private have no measures. and the public elements in a manner which is urban, not suburban, privately It is vital that we, as designers, investigate spatial in itself,yet publicly defining ur- better the nature of the way we live and will ban space (consider washing hanging be living in housing units. on the balcony). The formal unifying em- phasis of urban facades until the arrival Observations on the teleconnected indi- of reinforced concrete was always verti- vidual and the housing unit. cal. Verticality still dominates most cities. Capital, expended by individual families Individuals may be passing more and more led to the architectural diversity of medi- time in global virtuality, and as a result, aeval towns. Only when capital was used the local reality acquires a greater impor- to buy large areas of the street and city tance and demands much new thinking. did uniformity take place - (Cubitt in Bel- The physical world of the housing unit and gravia, millworker terraced houses etc. its public spaces will always be physical, The invasion of the N.American “parcel” solid, sensual, and perhaps the domain of has led to the decline of the party-wall the slow, slow world of social discourse can as the dividing/ordering mechanism of become a haven against the faster, faster, the facade). rough-rough-passage that characterises the competitive world of work. Not every- Unity of facade results from the con- one will want to work from home, even if trolof capital invested across large ar- technology permits and ecological imper- eas of land. Is this necessary? Standard atives demand it more to alleviate travel economic criteria were, and still are, and energy waste. imposed, leading to standard/uniform solutions. The control of these larger ar- Observations on urbanism eas (local authority/state/private) led to uniformity; sometimes successful in an It has been presented throughout history, urban aesthetic sense, sometimes ap- that living in the city was a problem which palling. There has to be an expression of could be precisely defined (eg. Parker Mor- the art in architecture beyond building ris standards, single-use zoning) and solved technology and financial constraint. Yes, by architecture. This is nonsense. This idea ingenuity by the architect in either can goes further in a similarly prescriptive, but reveal this art, but it cannot camouflage totally different direction; social interaction the driving forces behind it. t16518