Fri 4 Jul 2008
Design for life
Young or old, single or attached with dependants, the target homebuyer is an elusive quarry and, says Nicky Adams, developers these days need to do their homework to snare their ideal purchaser.It may be England's oldest recorded town, but Colchester, Essex has recently undergone something of a transformation. While once it was compact and stoutly dominated by the Norman castle, today's Colchester is leaking rapidly outwards across the town's former docklands in wave after wave of gleaming new suburbs, most of which have been designed with the express intention of tempting in a new generation of younger residents.
Such social architecture - excuse the pun - is nothing new. Communities have been built to encourage the settlement of particular types of residents for many centuries, and not only in the paternalistic vein of a Bournville or Port Sunlight. Karl Marx first articulated the concept of social superstructures and acknowledged that those societies that were the most economically productive were often the ones that had been subject to a little engineering, or architecture. The fact is, however, that the former docklands of Colchester are ripe for regeneration just at the moment when young first-time buyers closer to the capital are finding it particularly difficult to reach the first rung of the property ladder. They have to live somewhere, and The Hythe, just a few miles from Colchester's centre and its mainline rail station, with its established campus of the University of Essex and attractive river views, makes an ideal new quarter for young buyers.
Of course, developers here have been working hard to ensure that their designs are right on the money when it comes to tempting in the first-timers. Having already notched up two developments in the town so far, Barratt Eastern Counties' latest, Colne View, is targeted ingeniously and unashamedly at the youth market, right down to the name, which borrows heavily from an already familiar young person's must-have. "Barratt's iPads are compact, ergonomic, smart and priced well below most one-bedroom apartments," says Managing Director Keith Parrett. "They were designed with young first-time buyers in mind."
Pitched at just under the £100,000 mark, the iPads are something of a novelty in a part of the world that is extremely well connected by both road and rail, with the capital less than an hour away by either. Although the company reports that the iPads are also finding favour with singletons and couples of all ages, it's a fair bet that a substantial proportion of the 69 open-plan, one-bedroom apartments, set on the river right next door to the uni, will be sold to buyers making their first ever approaches to a mortgage lender, or alternatively, the Bank of Mum and Dad.
Steve Read, Technical Director for Barratt Eastern Counties, makes no bones about the fact that the properties have been designed to be "functional, ergonomic and manageable", but within the budget and realistic needs of the young end-user. "The concept of the iPad was to create an ingeniously designed apartment at an affordable price," he says. "It has a proper bedroom and bathroom, and space is cleverly channelled into the most critical living areas."
The interior of the iPad is simple and immediately appealing to the younger buyer, with a flowing open-plan living-dining area separated from the kitchen area by a breakfast bar, ideal for either snacking or studying, and a kitchen that comes ready equipped with an oven and hob, as well as an integrated washer/drier and fridge/freezer. The bedroom has enough room for a full-sized double bed as well as fitted wardrobes - making it suitable for two to share along with the mortgage - and the bathroom has a proper bath. French doors even open from the living area on to a bit of outdoor space, a balcony or terrace, which gives an airiness that is sometimes lacking in smaller apartments, and an on-site gym is another sweetener.But, while those reaching for the first rung of the property ladder are drawn in by the promise of longer lie-ins before lectures and the chance to pump iron without leaving the apartment block, the older market is somewhat harder to impress. Countryside Properties has certainly put in the hours in its quest to get on the right side of the residents it has envisaged for Cliveden Village. Set in the grounds of the beautiful National Trust-owned Cliveden Estate in Taplow, Buckinghamshire, it is being developed specifically as a new community for the over-55s.
The development's major defining factors - the age of the target purchaser and the necessity to remain sympathetic to the surroundings and mindful of the wishes of The National Trust - made the design of the 135 properties that had been approved for construction something of a conundrum for Chris Crook, Managing Director of Countryside Properties (Southern), the company's expert in the creation of new sustainable communities.
"The design of Cliveden Village needed to be exemplary in terms of sustainability, design and specification, as we were working with The National Trust," he explains. "So we carried out our own market research and concluded that concierge-serviced two-bedroom houses and apartments were most appropriate for the site. We provided our architects with a specification brief and they then worked within those parameters, stretching the design boundaries where they felt it was opportune and necessary to do so."
Although a first thought might have been for the new properties to emulate the local vernacular architecture, the homes at Cliveden Village are strikingly contemporary in style. "We have found that the affluent older generation is very much in tune with quality brands and a leisurely lifestyle," says Crook, "and they love the modern design of the properties at the development."
Seven permutations of two- and three-bedroom houses and five choices of two-bedroom apartments are on offer at Cliveden Village, but strictly only to the over-55s. On the outside, the properties are designed to empathise with the woodland setting, with natural coloured and rendered exteriors and geometric windows and doors in solid oak, while the interiors have a clean, modern feel - all open-plan layouts and full-height glazing to take in the wonderful surroundings.
"Our research told us where to position the properties," says Crook. "For example, the houses look out onto courtyards and the apartments have views over the woodland at the boundary of the development." As many homes as possible have been oriented to take their heat from the sun and, to strike a chord with the target purchaser's anticipated green streak, each is equipped with a mechanical heat recovery system as part of the environmentally friendly waste regime run on the site in conjunction with The National Trust. Low-energy external lighting, dual-flush toilets and bike storage are also provided to appeal to the needs of Cliveden Village's envisaged new residents.
So keen was David Wilson Homes to build up a realistic image of its ideal buyer that the company recently embarked on an unusual research initiative aimed at observing the behaviour of a guinea-pig family as they lived in a test house specially built by the developer in Sheffield. Called Project:LIFE, the research was carried out in conjunction with the Universities of Nottingham and Leicester, to provide not only a statistical analysis but also a behavioural interpretation of the family's response to the unusually designed four-storey home.
"Volume housebuilders tend to be conservative," explains David Wilson Homes' Northern sales director, Steve Jackson, "but there were many aspects of house design that we wanted to trial one day, but which we would not have risked in the commercial marketplace, acknowledging that some elements might not be successful. In Project:LIFE our objective was to update, in the most real-life way possible, our understanding of how house design impacts upon people's lives."
The family, chosen from 70 who volunteered, was monitored unobtrusively throughout their six-month stay in David Wilson Homes' test house, as researchers gathered information on how the group dynamics were affected by the interior layout and design of the various rooms. "The need for flexible living, which can accommodate hectic lifestyles and which can adapt quickly as circumstances change, was highlighted by the Project:LIFE research," says Jackson, "and there was a definite preference for multi-level designs, open-plan ground floor living spaces and integrated kitchen/family rooms, as well as balconies and terraces."
The results have been used as the basis of new designs for family houses at David Wilson Homes' Fountain Head Village development, which is now under construction on the site of a former maltings in Halifax. Three-storey homes came out particularly well in the Project:LIFE research and so plenty of these have been incorporated into the scheme, including The Wadsworth, a four-bedroom, three-storey detached, which combines open-plan living areas with flexible rooms that can be used as either a home office, a television room or play room, according to the needs of the purchasing family. The four bedrooms are arranged over two floors to provide families with the chance to "zone" their own space, while a first-floor sitting room and a roof terrace add larger areas for the family to be together.
Judging by the sales of these and other specifically tailored projects, taking the time to research the ideal purchaser - painting a picture of their likes and dislikes, wants and needs, budget or lack of it - is well spent when it comes to envisaging the architecture of our newest communities.
"To create a home, not simply build a house, calls upon much more than technology and design skills," says David Wilson's Steve Jackson. "It requires an understanding of - and sympathy with - the way people live their lives."
Posted by Nicky Adams
in Barratt Homes, Chris Crook, Countryside Properties, David Wilson Homes, Features, Karl Marx, Keith Miller, Steve Jackson, Steve Read on Fri 4 Jul 2008