Housing Standardisation: The Architecture of Regulations and Design Standards

公平地获得负担得起和设计良好的住房是公正社会的根本。然而，仅在英格兰，估计每年就有34.5万套新房的需求。住房不平等以及市场无法向得到补贴的行业提供像样的住房，以满足不断变化的用户和家庭需求，新冠肺炎加剧了这一问题。在英国，已经有大约31%的成年人在第一次封锁期间因住房条件而经历过心理或身体健康问题，超过10%的人因为缺乏空间而感到抑郁。越来越大的压力要求提供更多、设计更好的住房，这要求重新评估住房的使用、设计和质量。然而，将实践主导的研究、建筑学术研究和其他学科的住宅研究结合在一起的设计研究非常缺乏。尤其是指导住宅设计及其监管的证据基础是如何确定和限制创新的，几乎没有受到关注。这种知识差距对建筑学来说至关重要，英国皇家建筑师学会和英国住房证据合作中心认为，证明住房设计价值是一个紧迫的问题。尽管人们对住房可以产生的积极影响达成了广泛的共识，但人们往往不清楚设计的具体含义以及建筑所扮演的角色。尤其是建筑和设计对于我们大半生生活在其中的房屋的价值，以及它们是如何由法规和标准或定义它们的外部因素决定的，都没有得到足够的理解。事实上，我们对普通住宅是什么样子，或者是什么决定了它的设计，知之甚少。这个项目考察了建筑住房如何通过设计管理实现标准化，特别是在补贴住房部门。它探讨了以下问题：什么是规范住宅设计的设计治理手段，以及从支撑空间、技术和社会推理的基础上产生了哪些基于证据的设计和决策？典型的住宅设计是如何通过设计控制、类型偏好和社会规范来标准化的？设计管理、设计控制的定义和评估以及典型住宅设计之间的关系在多大程度上是与时间和地点相关的，或者可以转移的？本项目通过对英国设计治理和住宅设计方法的历史比较，以及对智利、西班牙、瑞士、荷兰和中国典型住宅设计的国际比较来研究这些问题，这些典型住宅设计代表了当今在不同设计治理、住房市场和补贴住房背景下使用的最常见的设计控制。对住宅设计的背景决定因素进行全面分析，并重新评估空间、社会和技术推理与住宅设计研究之间的联系，将评估从中可以吸取的教训，以应对当今英国的住房挑战。虽然有大量从建筑设计的角度进行的研究，但这些研究在很大程度上与其他学科的住宅研究脱节，而其他学科的研究往往忽视设计问题。特别是对政策如何与设计管理和技术研究相关，以及这如何决定典型的住房设计和可用性的问题，关注得很少。这些问题通常被认为是建筑实践的问题，不值得历史学关注或批判性研究。为了解决这一问题，该项目开发了一种综合的跨学科审查和设计历史，以了解住房设计、设计治理和由不同住房研究形成的证据库之间的关系。这将进一步促进对住房研究和建筑设计研究进行更具包容性的历史学和方法论修订。

Equitable access to affordable and well-designed housing is fundamental for a just society. Yet, there is an estimated demand for 345,000 new homes per year in England alone. Housing inequalities and a failure of the market to supply decent housing to the subsidised sector that meet changing user and household demands is exacerbated by Covid-19. Already around 31% of adults in Britain experienced mental or physical health problems due to housing conditions during the first lockdown, with over 10% feeling depressed because of a lack of space. Growing pressure to deliver more and better-designed housing requires a re-evaluation of housing use, design, and quality. However, there is a great lack of design research bringing together practice-led research, architectural academic studies, and housing research in other disciplines. Especially how the evidence base informing housing design and its regulation is determined and limits innovation has received little attention. This knowledge gap is critical to architecture, with evidencing housing design value recognised by the Royal Institute of British Architects and the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence as an urgent problem. Despite widespread consensus on the positive impact that housing can have, what is specifically meant by design and what role architecture plays is often unclear. Especially the value of architecture and design to the homes we spent more than half of our lives in and how they are determined by regulations and standards or the external factors defining them, is insufficiently understood. In fact, we know surprisingly little about what the average home looks like or what determines its design. This project examines how architectural housing is standardised by design governance, especially in the subsidised housing sector. It explores the questions: What are the means of design governance to regulate housing design, and what evidence-based design and decision-making emerge from the underpinning spatial, technical, and social reasoning? How are typical housing designs standardised through design controls, typological preferences, and social norms? To what extent are the relationships between design governance, definition and assessment of design controls, and typical housing design contextual to a time and place or transferable? This project examines these questions through a historical comparison of design governance and housing design approaches in England and an international comparison of typical housing designs in Chile, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and China that represent the most common design controls used today in different design governance, housing market, and subsidised housing contexts. Providing a comprehensive analysis of the contextual determinants of housing design and a re-evaluation of the links between spatial, social, and technical reasoning and housing design research, the lessons that can be learned from this for housing challenges in England today will be assessed. While there is an abundance of studies from an architectural perspective of design, these are largely disconnected from housing studies in other disciplines that, in turn, tend to disregard questions of design. Especially little attention has been paid to how policies relate to design governance and technical research, and how this determines typical housing design and usability. These issues are commonly dismissed as a problem of architectural practice, undeserving of historiographical attention or critical study. To address this, the project develops an integrated and transdisciplinary review and design history of the relationships between housing design, design governance, and evidence base as shaped by diverse housing research. This will further enable a more inclusive historiographical and methodological revision of housing studies and architectural design research.