generative

design
for
affordable
housign
in
London
Content
page
Introduction
 intr
oduc
tion
 chapter 1
The
problem
 able to be bought or rented
by people who do not earn a
lot of money

What is affordable housing?

buildings for people to live in,

used especially when talking
about their price or condition

In the era before social or council

housing, options were very limited
for those who did not own property.
But changes in government, as well
as a couple of world wars, have
seen the approach to affordable
housing go back and forth between
capitalist and socialist ideals over
the decades. (BEE Breeders, 2010)
(Cuming, 2016)

Affordable housing includes social rented, affordable rented and

intermediate housing Gov.uk, 2013). Affordable rented housing
could be let by local authorities or private registered landlords.

The rent for an affordable housing is no more than

(Designing Buildings Wiki, 2020)
80%
of the local market rent

As a reference of the price of rents in real number,in central London

an 80% affordable rent could be around £2,400 monthly. Although, in
Oxford or Brighton, it could be up to £1,000 monthly for a three-
bedroom property.(The bureau of investigative journalism, 2015)
 2021

Current Housing Situation in London

This is a summary of key patterns

and trends across a range of topics
relevant to housing in London

London is a wealthy city, even though, it has the country’s biggest

housing problems. According to the Strategic Housing Market
Assessment, an estimated 49,000 new homes are required each year in
London to 2035 due to population growth and the existing backlog of need.

The majority of Social problems are not new, they have

a history behind, and they are not fixed, they change over
time. They happen, change and evolve for a variety of reasons.

On the whole, there will never be just one single reason why
a social problem emerges: a number of factors tend to come
together to highlight a problem. No one cause is ever at play.
Rather like a major accident, there is never one factor that
leads to the incident but a whole host of causes that happen
to collide at a particular moment (Isaacs, 2014, p. 10).
Growing Population

The last 2000 years of London’s history have been one of constant
change. It has evolved from a port and river crossing point
to a bustling centre of national government and international
trade. London’s population is probably set to continue to
grow. By the 2020s there are likely to be more Londoners than
at any other point in the history of the city (GLA, 2016)

Anual Population change (GLA, 2016)

 Land Cost

There is strong competition for land in London, resulting in some

of the highest prices in the UK and other cities around the world.
Land values vary considerably in the capital depending on location,
transport accessibility, planning status and many other factors.

There have been sharp rises in house prices in London,

which are much higher than in the rest of the country.

The supply of housing in London has not kept pace

with the growth in the number of households.
(GLA Economics, 2016)

Residential building land value London (GLA Economics, 2016)

 House Prices

Accelerated population and employment growth and a persistent

lack of supply of the number and mix of new homes needed have
left London with very high housing costs. House prices, which
are also affected by the availability of mortgage finance and a
range of other factors, are particularly high in London. Even
when adjusted for inflation, average house prices in London
have more than doubled since the early 2000s and quadrupled
since the mid-1980s. The consequence is that London prices are
underpinned by strong fundamentals of high demand and low supply.
(GLA Economics, 2016)

Index of average house prices, adjusted for RPI inflation

(Source: GLA, 2017)
 Average weekly rents for new social rent and Affordable Rent
tenancies in London (Source: GLA, 2017)

The average house price in May 2020 for London was £479,018
(up 3.3% compared with the same month a year before). For
England, the average house price was £251,973 (up 2.8%) ( Gov.
uk, 2020)

Average price by local authority for England. (Source: GOV.UK, 2020)

 Tenure

The proportion of Londoners who own their home (whether

owned or with a mortgage) peaked in the early 1990s, but
then fell to just under half by the time of the 2011 census.
The private rented sector was previously the largest tenure
in London, but became the second largest tenure today.
(GLA, 2017)

Annual trend in household tenure, London 1981 to 2017 . (Source: GLA,

2017)
The graph below shows the pattern of moves between tenures in London
and tenures occupied by newly formed households from 2012 to 2015.

Overall, around 420,000 households, or one in

eight, move per year in London, with 69% of moves
occurring within or into the private rented sector.

More households move from the private rented sector to

owner-occupation than vice versa, but the proportion
of the private rented sector continues to grow rapidly
because it absorbs many of the new households forming, some
40,000 of the approximately 70,000 that form each year.

Social housing receives about 12% of all transfers and home

ownership about 19% (GLA, 2017).

Moves between tenures in London, average of 2012/13 to 2014/15.

(Source: GLA, 2017)
Brief History of the Affordable Housing in
London

Before Cousil Housing

Homes for Heroes

Post war Housing

Right to buy

Future of affordable housing

 PERIOD BEFORE COUNSIL HOMES
DENOMINATION HOUSING FOR HEROES

14

House price as a multiple

12
of average income

10

1845 1919 1845 1919 1919 1945

Wall
end of Street
current end of Victorian World Clash
main situation industrial Era War I
events large scale slum
revolution massive
social destruction of clearance
migration
problems homes during
housing slums to London war

Type of affordable housing “One Up, One Down” Counsil Housing

People Poverty Desire to own a house

Perception Bad Living conditions Government social attitude

Insecurity new high quality housing

1915 - Addison Act,

Workhouses were provided to those
beginning of social housing
with no other option, they had to
Goverment work 12-hour a day. Experiments in social housing:
Home fit for heroes (1919)
Actions In 1890: “Housing for the working
Classes Act”
Subsidy to private sector (1921)
Housing Act 1930 encourages
mass slum clearances
HOUSING TENANCY

Owner Occupier 80% 33%

Private Renter 20% 34%

Counsil Housing 24%

 POST WAR RIGHT TO FUTURE OF
HOUSING BUY AFFORDABLE HOUSING

1945 1979 1979 2008 2008 2021

Victorian massive
thousands
Era migration end of Victorian
of houses lost worst
housing end of to London industrial Era
by war
end of shortage industrial revolution
revolution COVID
World War lack of slums
slums 19
II materials

Prefab Housing High rise Housing Generative Design Housing

Controversy
Poverty Poverty
Expectations of Labou’s
Poor image of Council Bad Living conditions
promises
Housing
Protests again slum clearance Insecurity

Increased subsidies for councils Workhouses were provided to those Workhouses were provided to those
to build more social housing with no other option, they had to with no other option, they had to
work 12-hour a day. work 12-hour a day.

1948 - Town and Country In 1890: “Housing for the working In 1890: “Housing for the working
Planning Act Classes Act” Classes Act”

51% 64% x%

16% 19% y%

33% 8% z%
 chapter 2
The
concept
 The structure of scientific
revolutions. (Kuhn, T.,2012)

Paradigm Shift

A paradigm defines the legitimate problems

and methods of a research field. It also
has two characteristics: it is sufficiently
unprecedented to attract and enduring group
of adherents away and it is sufficiently open-
ended to leave all sorts of problems for the
redefined group of practitioners to solve.

Crises are a necessary precondition for the emergence

of novel theories. At the beginning, they do not re-
nounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis.

Every problem that normal science sees as a puzzle can be

seen, from another viewpoint, as a counterinstance and thus
as a source of crisis. A new paradigm emerges when either
no scientific theory ever confronts a counterinstance, or
all such theories confront counterinstances at all times.

Once it has achieved the status of paradigm, a sci-

entific theory is declared invalid only if an al-
ternate candidate is available to take its place.

The act of judgement that leads the scientists to re-

ject a previously accepted theory is always based upon
more than a comparison of that theory with the world.

The decision to reject one paradigm is always

simultaneously the decision to accept another one.
 There is no such thing as research in the absence of any par-
adigm. To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substi-
tuting another is to reject science itself. That act reflects
no on the paradigm but on the man. Inevitably he will be seen
by his colleagues as “the carpenter who blames his tools”.

The transition from a paradigm in crisis to a new

one from which a new tradition of normal science can
emerge is far from a cumulative process, one achieved
by an articulation or extension of the old paradigm.

What is a shift?

Scientific revolutions are those non-cumulative devel-

opmental episodes in which an older paradigm is re-
placed in whole or in part by an incompatible one.

When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about par-

adigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group
uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defence.

Since no paradigm ever solves all the problems it de-

fines and since no two paradigms leave all the same prob-
lems unsolved, paradigm debates always involve the ques-
tion: Which problems is it more significant to have solved?

A scientific theory is usually felt to be better that its pre-

decessors not only in the sense that it is a better instrument
for discovering and solving puzzles but also because it is
somehow a better representation of what nature is really like.
 chapter 3
The
metho
dology
 Generative design

It is a methodology and a pro-

cess more than a singular product
or tool.(RevitbeyondBIM, 2019)
Concept

Algorithms

Refine

Select
Constraints
Goals

Generating

Evaluating
Evolve

Generative design for manufacturing works as

presented in following image, basically allows to
defined high-level goals and constraints, with
the power of computers and automation to explore a
very wide design space and search for a design that
meet the set criteria (Autodesk University, 2017)
 Example

Compiled information about what are project is going to

Concept be about. Determine the set of criteria for the project.
It could be done by research and literature review.

Cube 50 x 50 Chanfered Cube

In this example, 4 cubes are going to be chafered

randomly and placed in a grid.

square 1 x1

Grid 100x200
 Define mesurable goals, such as views to the outside,
Goals daylight, interconnectivitym adjacency preference, etc.

For this example it is preferred to have volumes of

different heights that intersect each other. At least
one of them must be free

Constraints

b1 Building 1
Cube 50 x 50
b-x x-displacement
b-y y-displacement
b-height Height
b-chamfer Chamfer

b1 Building 1
Cube 50 x 50
b-x x-displacement
b-y y-displacement
b-height Height
b-chamfer Chamfer

b1 Building 1
Cube 50 x 50
b-x x-displacement
b-y y-displacement
b-height Height
b-chamfer Chamfer

b1 Building 1
Cube 50 x 50
b-x x-displacement
b-y y-displacement
b-height Height
b-chamfer Chamfer
 Using dynamo in Revit,the following script generates
Generating the different possibilities for the arrangement of the
four buildings previously defined, and constricted as
specified before.
Evolve

Algorithms

In this example it has been set 150 different possible

solutions:
 The solutions can be further constricted by adding
Evaluating filters to the parameters previously defined:

Refine
Select After all the filters indicated in the graphs above,
there is only 5 posible solutions:

This is the solution that meets the

desired goals and design parameters.
 chapter 3
The Site
 Sainsbury’s

Bus Stop
 chapter 2
The
evaluation
One of the limitations in the develop of these paper is the simualation
of the automated results of the computer. There is not going to be a real
computer script, but instead it is presented a pseudo code, that reflects
the concept, ideas, constrincts and parameters in a draft and logical way,
as a set of steps to follow for the creation of a programming script.
Entry Primary Adjacency

Kitchen Secondary Adjacency

Dining room Undesired Adjacency

Living room

Bathroom

Bedroom

Circulation
Even though, there are many solutions for the automated distribution of
the spaces in the flat, the focus will be in one of them randomly selected.

SELECTED Automated Generated

Flat Floorplan

Automated arrangement of flats

Modified arrangement of flats by human intervention

Automated arrangement of flats

Modified arrangement of flats by human intervention

Automated arrangement of flats

Modified arrangement of flats by human intervention

Automated generated facade

Modified facade by human intervention

Automated generated facade

Modified facade by human intervention

BIBLIOGRAPHY

-Autodesk University (2017). Generative Design in Architecture.

In the Innovation Zone at AU with David Benjamin. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmAY6qycBsk (Accessed: February 14,
2021)

-BEE Breeders (2010). The history of affordable housing in London.

Available at: https://beebreeders.com/the-history-of-affordable-
housing-in-london (Accessed: February 14, 2021)

-Cuming, E. (2016) “Slums: Reading and writing the dwellings of the

urban poor,” in Housing, Class and Gender in Modern British Writing,
1880–2012. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 23–72. doi:
10.1017/CBO9781316576830.002.

-Designing Buildings Wiki (2020) Social housing vs affordable

housing. Available at: https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/
Social_housing_v_affordable_housing (Accessed: February 18, 2021)

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London consolidated with alterations since 2011. Available at:
https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/the_london_plan_2016_
jan_2017_fix.pdf. (Accessed: January 2021)

-GLA (2017). The 2017 London Strategic Housing Market Assessment.

Available at: https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/london_
shma_2017.pdf (Accessed: January 2021

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Available at: https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/
economic_evidence_base_2016.compressed.pdf (Accessed: January 2021)

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at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-house-price-index-
england-january-2020/uk-house-price-index-england-january-2020
(Accessed: February 20, 2021)

-GOV.UK (2013) Affordable housing supply. Available at: https://www.

gov.uk/government/collections/affordable-housing-supply (Accessed:
February 20, 2021)

-Kuhn, T. S. and Hacking, I. (2012) The structure of scientific

revolutions. Fourth edition, 50th anniversary edn. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.

-RevitbeyondBIM (2019). Using Generative Design in Construction

Applications. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=A2TKx6CrZjE&t=646s (accessed: 14 January 2021)

-The bureau of investigative journalism (2015). What is affordable

housing. Available at: https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/
explainers/what-is-affordable-housing-a-bureau-guide (Accessed:
February 18, 2021)