Cottage designs : awarded premiums in the competitions conducted by the Royal Institute of British Architects with the concurrence of the Local Government Board.

Date:
1918
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cottage designs : awarded premiums in the competitions conducted by the Royal Institute of British Architects with the concurrence of the Local Government Board. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    health and amelioration with the minimum of increased outlay—in other words, if there is still to be an accepted meaning in the word “ cottage ’’—then it is worth while to seek a solution of the genuine cottage problem. That problem, we may be satis- fied, is not one of unlimited expansion, but of the skilful adjustment of the contending forces. The solution of such a problem is a perfectly worthy one, and in publishing the results of the competitions it is desired to point out that the necessity of balancing cost against requirements has been kept strictly in view; also the fact has not been lost sight of that certain other antagonistic considerations have to be balanced with equal nicety if the perfect cottage is to be the end achieved. | It may be indicated in connection with this competition that, in endeavouring to discover the perfectly planned cottage in each respective type, it was necessary to pass over many very interesting designs on the ground that their interest was due to attractions of a subsidiary, incidental, or exceptional kind, and it may even be complained that the premiated schemes exhibit on the whole the dullness of mediocrity rather than the sparkle of genius. This is natural in a competition for perfect types : but it is hoped that in the preparation of actual housing schemes there will be found opportunity for features of incidental and local interest which would scarcely have been acceptable or permissible in standard types. To secure a competition it was necessary to establish a basis on which competitors could work. That basis took the form of the set of conditions set forth above; and the promoters of the competition are perfectly aware that the conditions themselves are open to criticism. There are many and various views as to what is required in a cottage. It is impossible to harmonise all these views; for one reason, because different classes of tenants and different districts of England take divergent views as to requirements. It is therefore with no sense of failure, but rather with an increased sense of the complexity of the problem, that certain features are held out as capable of improvement even in those designs which most worthily received the honours of success in the various classes. To take an example already referred to. The conditions prescribed that in the grouped houses in Classes A and B there should be one house of 18 feet frontage. The experience of the competition served to prove in a most useful way that this frontage, though just workable in Class A (which has three bedrooms but no parlour), is inadvisably narrow for Class B (which has a parlour). The problem, it is true, has been courageously dealt with by the competitors, but the results have convinced the assessors that in practice the sacrifices made to secure success are too great. The conditions discouraged, without forbidding, the introduction of “ back- additions.” Such additions simplify, it is true, the problem of the Class B house of narrow frontage, and on the whole the conclusion has been come to that if so narrow a width is ever essential for this type of house the back-addition is a regrettable