DEVELOPMENT OF FLATS

Evening Star, Issue 22895, 1 March 1938, Page 3

DEVELOPMENT OF FLATS

■HEN PLANKING TENDENCY In extracts . from their book, ‘ The Modern Flat, ’ F. I!. S. Yorkc, A.R.T.8.A., and- Frederick Gibberd, A.t.A.A., state that the _ origin of the flat dates from the period when the influx of former country dwellers in search of work in industrial areas had so concentrated the density of population in towns that the increased demand for land, and its consequent rise in

value, made it unreasonable to build every individual urban bouse on its individual plot. _, _ Flats wore built on the Aventino m ancient Rome as early as 4.55 8.C., and in later times, flats in high buildings became necessary in walled cities such as Paris and Edinburgh, where population grow within inflexible boundaries. Until the lift was invented, flats in multistory buildings were too inconvenient to be popular in places where two ! or three story houses could still be found, and there was no real development imuntil the early ’fifties. Flats built as a speculation in Westminster in 1851 were described at the time as supplying “ what lias long been a desideratum in London, namely, complete residences on floors as in Paris and Edinburgh.” Tho flat, developed as a compromise, necessary to enable a great number of people to be housed on a small but expensive ground, was not at first considered as a now and better typo of home that might revitalise tho town and save the countryside, but as a substitute for the traditional house, flattened out Du to one floor, so that a block of flats was treated as a stack of superimposed bungalows. Frontage is 1 lie expensive Item in land cost Frontage moans light and air, and in order to obtain enough of it economically, and more of it than existed on the street, it had to bo created—inside the building. So the early flats were planned around internal courts. To-day there is a tendency for tho plan to open out, and for the totally enclosed internal court to disappear, and, although many ideal schemes have been prepared, and it is now generally accepted that tho aim should be toward tall buildings, single flat thicknesses, without courts or areas and with wide spaces between the blocks, the general attitude of the speculator has not changed. His demand is still for the greatest number of flats on the site, and Ills architect is forced to prepare his scheme with this end in view, so that he must commence his work by fitting in a number of units on the site and think of these units as dwellings afterwards, rather than consider tho individual flat as a proper dwelling unit from the outset, This results in amazing virtuosity in planning, but not the provision of proper homes for human beings.