Profitable Neighbourhoods; the key to successful house-building

Are architects allowed to talk about profit? Profit for whom? Profiting how? We are awash with housing manifestos circulating online, following Labour’s promise to deliver 1.5 million ‘high-quality, well-designed, and sustainable homes’. This is clearly the dawn of a new era in UK housebuilding – an exciting one. But as architects, we can’t directly influence policy or invest in prime locations. So, drawing upon our design skills, my practice, Ash Sakula, is rethinking a radical, practical and, most importantly, deliverable housing typology that is one small step towards solving Britain’s housing crisis.

What is this typology, exactly? We call it The Twins. A four-storey stacked and toggled house-on-a-house where everyone gets their own front door to the street and their own green space. This model doubles (or even triples) the density of housebuilder sprawl while remaining within UK climate commitments. Initiated by Ash Sakula in collaboration with residential data platform Realyse, the ARL (Association for Rental Living), and Space Syntax, it aims to make better use of housing land, develop at double densities, and replace car dominance with child-centred, convivial neighbourhoods.

We can no longer afford to continue producing solitary suburban housing. It falls short on many levels and is clearly building up social problems for the near future. Close-packed homes promote the theory of weak links through tight-knit neighbourhoods where community wealth-building is at the core, mothers aren’t stranded, the local economy is boosted and children play safely on the streets. They create neighbourhoods where the hum of children playing drowns out the roar of traffic and where every front door opens to a bustling, tree-lined street.

Our focus is on sustainable material use, enhancing biodiversity and people-scaled terraced housing, allowing for timber frames and reducing upfront carbon emissions. Tree canopies provide natural cooling, rain gardens manage stormwater, and materials are chosen for their resilience and low carbon footprint. Every aspect, from the ground up, is designed to minimise environmental impact while maximising human benefit.

To make a Profitable Neighbourhood, we start with a set of ingredients that sense check the site, identifying location based on connectivity (no further than a 15-minute cycle to a station) and rooted assets to make a place unique. We design in and protect potentially overlooked assets – for example, an edge-of-town station, a witness tree, an abandoned building, a footpath, a flood-prone stream.

The Malings in Newcastle, a pilot project for Igloo Regeneration’s Footprint methodology, was built with access to a small riverside walk. All the ingredients were there; we just needed to engage with the existing, not ignore it. This neighbourhood is a tapestry of housing types that encourage mingling. The density here developed out of modelling, small films and hard work on typologies, levels, and urban grain, on fostering friendships, and kindling a shared sense of belonging. Green pathways weave through the area, reducing reliance on cars and highlighting the beauty of localism.

Profitable Neighbourhoods can bridge the gap between early investor discussions and the communities that live in these spaces. This necessitates a language that is agile and deeply rooted in the land, which is why, in collaboration with Space Syntax, we established what we call density design drills. These dynamic two-hour charrette sessions adopt a life-drawing-style agility, featuring quick five and ten-minute sketches with our digital pen tool, drawing rows of stacked and toggled terraces in a single pen stroke. This method allows for the quick creation of feasibility-style masterplans for Profitable Neighbourhoods, serving as both proof of concept and a form of direct action through drawing.

Each week, we select sites from different parts of the UK and engage in back-of-the-envelope design work by leveraging big data, intuition, and creative tools. This allows us to collaboratively explore and discuss what matters at ground level, envisioning and prioritising the everyday experiences of the people who live in these new neighbourhoods. In the urgency of the climate crisis, we want to make a difference, and we call upon developers, investors, and strategic thinkers to pioneer a decisive shift in housing development through joined-up thinking and, more importantly, delivering.

[This article was first published in the Architects Journal]