Barton Willmore鈥檚 Ian Tant on how a housing obsession bagged a place on the prestigious Wolfson Prize shortlist
As I write this, I鈥檓 basking in the glory of my practice, Barton Willmore, having been selected as one of the five shortlisted entries in the Wolfson Economics Prize 2014. The competition asked entrants how they would deliver a garden city that was visionary, economically viable, and popular. Pleasant though this is, I really need to pay tribute to the small team of people within Barton Willmore who put the submission together. While the partners gave the go-ahead to put time and resources into the submission and many people within and beyond the practice contributed to the ideas and the debate. The serious thinking and hard work was contributed by James Gross, Kathryn Anderson, Kevin Parker, Mark Sitch, Robin Shepherd and Jenni Montgomery - brilliant job, all!
In fact the ideas that underpin the submission come from wide-ranging experience in the planning, design and delivery (and the latter鈥檚 the most difficult part) of new towns and cities and new neighbourhoods across the UK and internationally (including China, where they鈥檙e not only planning new garden cities, they鈥檙e building them). For those who are interested, our submission can be seen .
When the prize was announced in late 2013, it was too good an opportunity to miss to develop our thinking on a wider stage
The Barton Willmore approach is not a masterplan for a garden city 鈥� it鈥檚 a routemap for delivering a substantial number of these throughout the country. It starts by seeking to tackle the problem of gaining national and local support for new places, thereby de-risking the proposal for developers and investors. It then looks at the role of landowners and 鈥減atient money鈥� in enabling development and of governance in steering design and construction and engendering local control. There is no 鈥渕asterplan鈥�: each settlement, each development and each place will be different.
The practice didn鈥檛 enter into this lightly; nor is it a one-off event. The concerns and drive that fed into the submission were already there within our teams. Seeking ways to ensure the delivery of new homes in new places is not just an idea 鈥� it鈥檚 an obsession that has gripped us for decades. So when the prize was announced in late 2013, it was too good an opportunity to miss to set out those ideas and develop our thinking with the hope of putting that on a wider stage. And recognising that this isn鈥檛 just a design matter, we assembled a core team of urban designers and planners with help from all disciplines within the firm to develop the ideas and create our submission.
Being shortlisted is just the start: now we need to develop our ideas and the challenge is to transform the clear thinking that underlies the submission into delivery on the ground. Winning the prize would be terrific but the real prize will be seeing new homes under construction by their thousands in new places of real quality and, yes, beauty.
Ian Tant is a senior partner at Barton Willmore
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