Month: February 2018

We are now recruiting for a highly motivated and talented Senior Architect and Part II Architectural Assistant to join our team in Queens Park, NW6 and our Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham offices.

About you:

• You have a minimum of 5 years professional UK experience (2 years for Part II Assistants and Technologists)
• You can demonstrate strong technical knowledge, construction detailing and job running experience
• You will have a solid understanding of UK Building Regulations
• You have experience working on RIBA Stages 1-7 (Stages 3-7 for part II role)
• You are experienced in writing NBS Specifications
• Proficiency in Vectorworks is an advantage
• You are experienced in using Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign)
• You have 3D modelling experience using SketchUp
• Your standards of accuracy, presentation and communication with internal teams and external clients are very high
• You will have a positive outlook and be articulate with an ability to think responsively and clearly
• You can analyse problems carefully and create successful solutions
• You have an ability to work independently as well as with the team
• You have experience working on a variety of residential projects including high-end residential schemes.
• You are flexible to travel and work from both our offices in London & Birmingham, depending on the businesses requirements

What we offer:

• A competitive salary.
• As an office we offer regular CPD’s and are committed to the well-being, health and development of our staff.
• Regular team evenings, attending lectures and exhibitions.

Salary dependent on experience.

No agencies or phone applications please.

Due to the high volume of expected responses, only successful candidates will be contacted.

To apply, please state which position you are applying for and send your current CV and A4 format portfolio of recent work (max size 5MB) to info@hubarchitects.co.uk.

The Dengie Peninsula is a territory bounded by the waters of the Rivers Blackwater and Crouch and the North Sea, on the Essex coast.  There’s a very particular walk, where you park the car in Bradwell-on-Sea, and head out on a road amongst farm buildings and a static-caravan site, until the road becomes a track and takes you to a venerable masonry box overlooking the sea.

This is the Chapel of St. Peter on the Wall, and it is one of the most ancient buildings in continuous use in England. It was built around 654AD on and most probably from, the remains of an abandoned Roman fort. Remarkably, it’s still used as a place of worship today, although we’re told it has done duty as a barn at various points in the intervening centuries. When our vision adjusts to the gloom inside, the interior is as fascinating as the exterior, with dozens of clues as to the reconfigurations, renovations and repairs that it must have undergone.

Back into the fresh sea-breeze, the path bends around as coast becomes estuary. The route is dotted with the remains of concrete machine-gun posts from the Second World War that have now become indistinguishable from the various interventions that now defend the waterline from the highly present cycles of erosion by season and tide, rather than the mere possibility of human aggressors.

The bird life is abundant in the watery landscape that we walk through, and we see curlew, sanderling, a kestrel, redshank, cormorant, little egrets, lapwing and grey heron. The palette of the water, the scrappy vegetation and the sky draws our sight outwards. Our eyes relax and a beam of sunlight suddenly illuminates the beach on Mersea, far away on the other bank, in a strip of golden yellow.

Soon two large structures loom into view. They are uniform, in smart grey corrugated metal cladding which is more-or-less legible against the stormy clouds as they pass behind them. They house the twin Magnox reactors, in their original buildings, of the Bradwell Nuclear Power Station, which was switched off in 2002 after 40 years’ service providing electricity to Southend, Colchester, Chelmsford and beyond. It’s been being gradually decommissioned since then, and the reactor buildings were over-clad as part of this process. The power station was sited here due to the low agricultural value of the land on an old military airfield, and the plentiful cooling water from the sea.

It takes a long time to approach and appreciate the old power station on foot, and when you’ve passed it, you’re almost at Bradwell Marina (reputedly developed by Roger Moore, Bobby Moore and Sean Connery in the 1960s) before a return to the village and a warm pub in the fading daylight.

There’s a strange and rather alarming set of relationships in time, between these two very substantial and presently coincident found-objects in this timeless, bleak and beautiful estuarine place: a Saxon house of worship that has borne witness to 1,300 years of man’s activity in the landscape; and a curious temple to physics which could take twice its active lifetime to fully and safely decommission, and which was in addition to generating electricity intended to produce Plutonium isotopes for nuclear weapons, with radioactive half-lives of over 24,000 years.

By M. Jardine (HUB Architect)

HUB have just secured planning permission for a two storey front extension for a detached property in Stanmore.

On Monday 5 February 2018, members of HUB Architects attended an evening debate about the Mayor’s new London Plan, which is being prepared to set out the key policies to guide London’s spatial development for the next 20-25 years, addressing major challenges such as the provision of housing and sustainable transport for the growing city. The London Plan is a strategic plan that shapes how London will evolve and develop. All planning decisions should follow London Plan policies, and it sets a policy framework for local plans across London. The draft version of the plan was issued for public consultation in December 2017.

During the evening the main issues being discussed from the draft London Plan included how we should shape the London of the future to create a high-quality environment where people want to live, how we should plan for major growth, accommodating an increasing population, delivering more and better-quality housing, enhancing green and public places, supporting businesses and providing efficient and sustainable transport to move around the capital, whilst protecting London’s rich heritage and existing communities.
Jules Pipe, Deputy Mayor for Planning, Regeneration and Skills and James Murray, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development and other GLA representatives of each party were joined by panels of built environment professionals including Ben Derbyshire President of the RIBA and other leading commentators, to discuss what the new London Plan means for the future of London.
Up to 1,000 Londoners, including professionals, academics and community representatives attended the evening to engage through Q&A sessions and regular online polls throughout the evening to contribute to the debate.
The Mayor’s policy is 520 pages long and sets out his vision is for growth that is to be driven by increasing housing numbers whilst maintaining a high quality of design and refusing poor design. The development is to be economically sustainable, socially inclusive with a commitment to building 50% of new homes being affordable, and to be zero carbon by 2050. The vision is for a more socially integrated city focusing on health, a high quality of design, vibrant culture, providing jobs to existing communities, excellent data communications and sustainable mixed use developments. There are 47 places highlighted for growth and 9 growth corridors.
Good design quality in housing is to be set out with specimen designs including for the height to width ratio of streets, and the ratio of fenestration to walls. Place making and community engagement will be at the forefront, encouraging good neighbourhood design and public realm between buildings and active ground floors. Increased densities will be encouraged in places with good public transport links, including in the suburbs, and car free developments and densification will be possible where development is close to good public transport (PTAL 0-1). It was highlighted that Brown Field sites often require expensive cleaning up processes before development can occur and can be expensive if bridges are required to access the site, but surely houses in places where they are wanted closer to Central London is preferable to building new homes tucked some distance away from London in the Green belt that only adds more journeying.
The London Plan proposes developing 65,000 houses per year, which the Mayor proposes will not involve developing the Greenbelt, and will be feasible through optimising the density of development. A £250 million fund is to be set up to bring more land forward for housing. There would be a vision for development of housing in areas, such as the Old Oak Common site in West London, which would include a transport interchange for Cross Rail, the Great Western Railway line and HS2.
The RIBA President discussed the crisis in quality of design that has occurred with Design and Build procurement, which has caused problems in the life of buildings, and the need to reach a quality outcome. He was in favour of suburban densification in the 20 London Boroughs highlighted, with design codes and design reviews to ensure a high quality of design.
The new draft London Plan can be downloaded from the following link (copy and paste into your browser): https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/planning/london-plan/new-london-plan. Consultation on the London Plan is currently open to all. All comments must be received by 5pm on Friday 2 March 2018 and can be made online at www.london.gov.uk/new-london-plan. There will be an Examination in Public in Autumn 2018 and then the final version of the London Plan will be published in 2019.

by P. Knudsen (HUB Architect)