The nucleus of the Family is changing and the requirement for the family house has rooms which are hardly ever used. You may see the pockets of derelict buildings in your town centre or in the parts of the city where only the brave may enter, maybe it might be a litter driven getaway who knows what's going on?, but its all happening in our cities and the out of sight out of mind won't work on us! no sir, no madam we are wide awake in the UK and we have seen all the political annotations of Rembrant and the ghoolash of Kandinsky with the resemblances of messy blonde hair, thrown in.
The great house builders of our nation are trying to mass produce in conservation areas, but the conservation team are not having it! No sir" the roof profile may not exactly work. Ok, ok I get it!
So as we grow, our houses are becoming our ghost rooms, is there a need for such a large space? are we going to let the kids move out when they are 18? will they go to University to be pre-programmed for the unreal world? or shall we just kick them out?, as we need our tranquily and peace time, just like fine wine as it matures with the reminisce of the taste of wooden barrels and an oaklike roasted aftertase.
Technically the kids are now adults according to the Government.
So yes your house may feel like it has rooms that need converting, maybe it does, who are we anyway to say otherwise? But lets look at what's actually happening in our cities and in society in general. We can begin where the cities are shrinking and during the shrinking process the streets are becoming derelict, the Central Business district is so concentrated that the other shops and businesses along the high street are closing down. and the need for change of use arises purely for the sake of policy and again to the disadvantage of me and you lovely folk.
So we have now created pockets which the planners want to fill, i.e. fill the void (our professor Daniel Libeskind may have a few things to say about the void) for the sake of filling, just like polyfiller and now all of a sudden, Crime is on the increase along these ghost streets, the streets of future past, one could say, however, the micro-mass concept of the houses that now have empty rooms may seem like a sanctuary but we are heating the buildings that don't need heating and the CO2 levels are through the roof, so as new policy becomes more like the thought police and the future crime that has not yet happened, planners do actually need Architects! We are actually teaching these new form of hybrid species how to design.
Yes Mr and Mrs Planner we are one up on you now...we actually have our capes and we might as well rescue you all in the process and stich you all together using a John James leather needle and thread, however this is another story.
Do the teams in various departments know whats going on? are we again caught up in the Legislation maze of German type protocol and gridded lines and tick boxes, is this the new form of masterplanning? or are we left with shards of city space that are no longer cities but overdeveloped mass sprawls of mathematical equations that integrate themselves? I will let you decide!