Paul Karakusevic is a founding associate at Karakusevic Carson Architects, based mostly in London. For greater than 20 years, the agency has labored nearly completely within the UK’s public and social housing sector. It has amassed a mess of awards, together with Greatest Public Housing Design Specialists 2020, and it was twice named Housing Architect of 12 months. Karakusevic is the co-author of Social Housing – Definitions and Design Exemplars; Public Housing Works; and, most lately, Retrofit Social Housing: A Sensible Information for Native Authorities and Registered Suppliers of Social Housing.
Karakusevic visited Australia amid a heated debate over the destiny of 44 public housing towers in Melbourne that the Victorian authorities introduced can be systemically demolished and changed. ArchitectureAU requested Karakusevic for his opinion on the difficulty.
We’ve all the time adopted a technique of, if it’s a very good constructing that’s structurally stable, principally in the best place on the positioning, and gives smart density and good lodging for residents, then it’s completely logical to maintain that constructing.
Eradicating buildings and changing them is extraordinarily costly, disruptive and complex. It may possibly take 5 to 10 years to undergo that course of. So in the event you can refurbish, it’s significantly better to do this.
For me, resident security, satisfaction and high quality of life ought to be completely major within the dialogue, somewhat than any ideology.
How pleased are the residents? In the event that they’re very dissatisfied with the situations they’ve been residing with, then clearly that’s a really robust place to begin for both deep retrofit or rebuilding.
Architectural benefit is essential for me, as an architect and a designer. Was [the building] rigorously designed initially? And if it was properly designed, was it properly constructed?
What’s the situation of the constructing, the construction, the material? What’s the situation of the mechanical and electrical providers, if there are any?
Deep retrofit of a constructing – maybe to Passive Home requirements – has a carbon footprint of about 50 to 60 p.c of that of a brand new construct. So it’s not and not using a carbon price. And if it’s important to try this a number of occasions, it might be higher to only crack on and do the best [new] constructing. It’s actually difficult and actually nuanced at a per constructing, per web site and per neighborhood stage.
An additional complexity happens when a constructing is just a really low proportion (say 10 to 12 p.c) of the positioning. Personally, I feel that these websites may very well be intensified significantly. Way more public housing may very well be constructed for native residents in Melbourne and the broader state by way of higher planning.
Land utilisation for the general public landowner is essential. Are they getting finest worth out of their land when there’s so many individuals desperately needing housing?
I do know it is probably not very modern to say this, but when there’s a nasty constructing of medium scale sitting awkwardly on the positioning, I feel that constructing ought to come down and get replaced by fantastically designed, well-built new housing that may final 300 years.
If a very good constructing might be retained, then I’d clearly retain it. But when a nasty constructing is sitting within the flawed place on the positioning, and the price of refurbishing that dangerous constructing is 50 to 60 p.c of a brand new constructing, and that constructing is taking on beneficial land within the metropolis or the town fringe, that constructing ought to be eliminated.
After the residents have been rehoused domestically, I’d change it with extremely well-designed, fantastically constructed, well-specified housing that makes use of the positioning cleverly.
So that you’re creating extra inexpensive housing – genuinely inexpensive housing – that’s owned and managed by the town or state.
On plenty of our present initiatives, we’ll construct a brand new constructing that the residents can transfer into (and most residents are very pleased to maneuver into a brand new, purpose-designed, fantastically made house). After which, when the [original] constructing is empty, the council will take a look at refurbishing that constructing, after which they are going to repopulate the constructing with their tenants.
When the land occupation is lower than 15 p.c, there is no such thing as a want for the residents to go off-site. Individuals can keep of their communities, in the identical faculties, the identical neighborhood centres – all of these advantages that we all know come from protecting communities collectively. Sure, there’s going to be change. But when the neighborhood can keep collectively, it’s all worthwhile.
That’s one of many causes I began to get on this sector. As a result of I assumed, there must be a greater approach to do that that’s extra community-focused.