Why we hate the creeping suburbs


This is the second ‘Barrattification of Britain’ article which set HemingwayDesign off on its now two-decade long urban design and housing adventure. It was the Barratification and Wimpeyfication of Britain tirades that resulted in Wayne Hemingway being asked to appear on Newsnight in a debate with national housebuilders. Immediately after that we were approached by the CEO of Wimpey Homes (now Taylor Wimpey) and within weeks we were designing our first large scale housing development The Staiths South Bank in Gateshead, followed shortly by Wayne Hemingway becoming Chair of Building for Life and then a board member of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment – that Geography and Town Planning Degree did get some use in the end.

Looking back some of our views in the article were a tad naïve, but the article sure made a splash and led to good things for HemingwayDesign – hopefully we have contributed to some improvements in what national housebuilders produce. You can occasionally find decent masterplanners, architects and landscape designers working now on larger developments and decent public space and streets, ecology, choice of elevations and materials and open plan living is increasingly being offered.

See what the BBC had to say about our war on Wimpeyfication here.

To see how our views matured see the blogs tagged housing here.