Samuel Hughes

867 new homes to replace a car park and shopping arcade in Peckham. Rejected by the council (and opposed by the local MP, Labour environment minister @Miatsf). standard.co.uk/news/london/pe…

Gentle density in Westminster, 3 storeys plus mansard and basement, terraced, high plot coverage, setback only to light the basement. Simple brick facades enlivened by contrasting brick tones, tall sash windows, and white-painted joinery. Notice that the council has used finer…

St Georg, a dense mixed use neighbourhood of Hamburg, varied fabric of 3-7 storeys, an interesting mixed of different styles and periods. Notice how the pavement irregularly projects into the carriageway, so that the traffic lane winds down the street rather than running…

New from me @WorksInProgMag about a great idea to improve transit all around the world (but especially in Britain) – the tram-train. By running trams onto suburban railway lines, cities can get big transit networks at comparatively little cost. worksinprogress.news/p/tram-trains

Just finished in Potsdam. The Plögerscher Gasthof was originally built in 1754, damaged in the War, and demolished by the communist authorities in 1958. The local government has been gradually rebuilding historic Potsdam since the 1990s, this being a recent example.

Europeans often think high-rise is necessarily ugly, which is actually an illusion resulting from almost all European high-rise being built after 1945. I wonder if 'streets in the sky' are subject to a similar illusion, associated by bad luck with postwar planning.