Water torture: leakage problems blight RSHP's award-winning Oxley Woods

摘要

Housing In 2005, the then Labour government launched a competition which aimed to revolutionise housebuilding. The Design for Manufacture contest, backed by deputy prime minister John Prescott and dubbed 'the £60,000 house', was supposed to be major housebuilders' answer to the problems of providing low-cost, sustainable homes for the masses through the use of'moden methods of construction' (MMC). Among the winners, which included designs by HTA, Sheppard Robson and PCKO, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners' (RSHP) Oxley Woods scheme stood out as the most radical. The 122-home development in Milton Keynes was constructed from timber frames and clad with colourful panels and it was down to its 'thorough-going attempt at innovation within the ail-too risk-averse conventional housebuilders market' that the development won the 2008 RIBA Manser Medal.