Iroko Housing Cooperative

View of the communal garden with the surrounding development.

The Iroko Housing Cooperative was completed in 2001, there are 59 homes, 32 five bedroom houses, 6 three bedroom maisonettes and 21 one and two bedroom flats (including one flat designed for a wheelchair user) all designed around a communal garden. At basement level there is a public car park and on the ground level are two corner shops and parking for residents of the cooperative. The brief was to fully exploit the site’s potential for larger family homes with individual gardens whilst also providing for smaller families. All the homes have private open space, gardens, terraces or balconies, but a shared garden was essential. The cooperative was designed on low energy and sustainable design principles, solar panels were incorporated into the design to provide free hot water to residents for most of the summer and reducing demand on heating for the rest of the year. Heat recovery, ventilation systems and low energy double glazing reduce energy consumption and bills whilst providing better air quality.

Man no longer houses himself, he is housed! And suburban architecture today seems to reflect the ideals and ideas of the architect rather then the inhabitants, Le Corbusier said that people need to learn to live together and taught how to live properly, but I personally do not think that this is the case, why should we be told how to live, and what to live in, because it is the individual at the end who has to live there, so why should he/she not have a say in how their house is designed. Housing has become a commodity bought and exchanged, mass produced like a kettle or iron, ‘the house is meant to be a tool for living’ and everybody lives differently so therefore the same tool is not going to work the same for everyone. It seems to be that the wrong people hold the reigns of control, and the idea of mass housing is floored by the general inappropriateness of the design process, human actions and therefore interaction needs to become a bigger player in the design of our housing, maybe by de-consumerising the process of housing we can finally build housing that works!