Building Better, Building Beautiful

As part of a mission to building better and Building Beautiful, the housing minister Kit Malthouse has called for a “golden period of housebuilding” with housebuilders “building the conservation areas of the future” to win over communities. Sending a message to the recent Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s Better Design for Better Places conference in Birmingham, Malthouse said that with the increase in housing output, he was seeing more resistance to development from a design perspective. “People are feeling what’s being designed is ubiquitous and not fitting in with communities,” he explained.

With the government’s target of 300,000 homes a year, “there’s going to be no part of the country untouched by construction,” Malthouse continued. Under the government’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, launched last Autumn, he said the focus will be on beauty and design and he hoped to “persuade” the industry to collaborate with residents to create places that would enhance communities and instil pride.

The conference, which addressed various aspects of design quality and what constitutes beauty in the built environment, also featured discussions on the challenges for the government in delivering design quality. These included defining good design, sustainability and the housebuilder role.

Lets see what happens in the coming times…