Gummer's Law - self-build

Guy_Montag

This is somewhat aimed at planning_officer, but everyone is welcome to join in - let's have a nice pub style chat.

What would people consider would make a house "truly outstanding and groundbreaking in design and construction"?

Thus allowing me to plonk a f'ing great eyesore in some secluded valley. Actually, I'm slowly, very slowly, developing a plan for a rather unusual & hopefully sustainable* house.

However, without knowing how to "work" the planning process it will stay a plan for the extreme distant fufture.

*Obviously a house itself cannot be sustainable, but by buying enough land to go with it; to rely as far as possible on solar, wind, water & wood power; to locate it within 10(ish) miles of a centre of employment - for cycling purposes.

Doozergirl

Guy_Montag wrote: »

What would people consider would make a house "truly outstanding and groundbreaking in design and construction"?

Throwing about £5000 per square metre at it should produce something half decent!

Doozergirl

Seriously though, something truly outstanding and groundbreaking could only be produced by an outrageous architect in conjunction with a client with huge balls and very deep pockets.

How can anyone know what groundbreaking is unless they are a design professional?

Not of traditional design brings to mind something square and white, invisible guttering, strategically arranged on it's plot to make the most of the sun with big South facing windows where the living areas are and little ones in the North.

Heat Pumps, underfloor heating, all of that stuff. "Zero Carbon" is the way of the future apparently, so I guess that is the way to go and where to place emphasis for planners.

tomstickland

How can anyone know what groundbreaking is unless they are a design professional?

Anyone with some talent and ideas plus a determination to research could be groundbreaking.

bostin

GM
I haven't got time to add a great deal at the mo and TBH my knowledge on this area of planning is very limited. If you haven't had a chance to look at the 'policy' directly, do a search for Planning Policy Statement 7 which will give you a little bit more detail in terms of policy (but not much).
I recall reading somewhere that there have only been a handful of these dwellings been permitted since PPS7 came out. In the good ol days, when previous planning policy was out (PPG7), it would have been a lot easier to advise. Basically you would probably have got pp if you could find the cash for a large pastiche manor house. Now it's over to the post modern genre of architects ;-)

Doozergirl

tomstickland wrote: »

Anyone with some talent and ideas plus a determination to research could be groundbreaking.

In design? How would you know the ground hadn't been broken before or how can people without knowledge of architecture genuinely appreciate what 'groundbreaking' is?

Is groundbreaking the stuff you read about in magazines that not many people have done or is it something entirely unique?

When it boils down to it, it's probably still going to be made of bricks and mortar. Do you have to make it look different or actually BE different?

Meatballs

You can get a wallet made from gaffer tape, why not a house?

Doozergirl

Meatballs wrote: »

You can get a wallet made from gaffer tape, why not a house?

Careful who you share that idea with; they might nick it!

Truly groundbreaking :rotfl:

Meatballs

Straight down the patents office for me tomorrow.

ManAtHome

Must be cheaper to "earn" a peerage (and therefore be exempt from planning regs) than pay for legal representation at a planning committee meeting?

Anyway thought Gummers Law was about cynical political use of your relatives...

harryhound

I have a memory of a TV program, probably an old edition of C4's "Grand Designs".

If I remember correctly they took the top off a peak in the Pennines built the house and then covered it over. There were some windows left from the principle rooms peeping out through heather. The lesser rooms had to make do with a skylight and there was a little patio (see Moorish architecture for real design and function of patio).

That was truly a ground breaking design and going to work in the morning would have been all down hill.

Harry

The only real solution is to build a new zero carbon home with a U value of 0.1 W/m2K (watts per sq meter per degree in English) in the roof walls and floor, but we don't all want to live in a south facing greenhouse built into a mound of earth !