The Housing Design Handbook ─ A Guide to Good Practice

How well have architects succeeded in building housing and what lessons can be learned from their triumphs and failures?

The Housing Design Handbook will give you a complete understanding of what makes successful housing design. Through the analysis of work by Levitt Bernstein and a wide range of other UK practices, it illustrates good design principles and accumulates a wealth of knowledge in a readily accessible format for the first time.

Written by a recognised authority in the field, the book provides:

• a range of cases to illustrate the way that different issues in the design of housing have been approached and with what degree of success
• a review of the place of housing as the most significant built form in the urban landscape
• an understanding of the importance of achieving a sense of place as the bedrock of social continuity
• a discussion of how flexibility might be achieved in order to accommodate future changes in housing need, if wholesale demolition and replacement is to be avoided
• more recent examples which explore why certain social groupings are more resistant to design innovation than others and why there has been such an architectural breakthrough in market led, higher density urban living.

David Levitt examines the ideas behind the schemes and assesses how successful and sustainable those ideas have proved, making this an essential reference for professionals and students practicing and studying the design and commissioning of housing.

David Levitt co-founded Levitt Bernstein architects in 1968. At the same time the two founding partners started what is now one of the largest charitable housing associations in south-east England. As the practice has grown to over 100 people the scope of its work has increased to include urban design and major regeneration projects as well as every kind of housing.

David Levitt has been involved in research on housing policy and standards and on family housing in high density urban situations. He is currently 'design champion' on the board of Catalyst Housing Group, a board member of Design for Homes, a member of the CABE Enabling Panel.