How to make a killing with a filling

If you’re looking to develop a tricky city site, paying a visit to an ‘urban dentist’ could be well worth your while

One morning last summer, Ian Dollamore popped into his local deli in west London to pick up some ciabatta and ham. On the way in, he noticed two tatty garages next door. A few inquiries later, he’d found the owner and made an offer that was hard to refuse.

It’s early days, but with luck and planning permission, those sad garages could be replaced by a striking four-storey modern building designed to suit this vibrant part of the capital. After costs and fees, the owner stands to make a £300,000 profit. And Dollamore’s company, Urban Infill, will arrange it all.

Dollamore, 29, is a man on a mission. Trained as an architect before turning to urban design, he sees streetscapes where others see roads and buildings — and everywhere, he sees gaps. At first, these tended to be gaps into which he could squeeze the flat of his dreams; now they are commercial opportunities for his company. He calls the process “urban dentistry”.

He began seven months ago by walking the streets of the capital, searching for “cavities” in need of an implant. Such spaces, he says, are all around us, but not always apparent to the untrained eye.

Once Dollamore and his team have spotted something with potential, it’s back to the office for some desktop research. They track down the owners via the Land Registry website and make the call. The team — which includes urban designers, architects, planners and builders — then draws up plans and submits planning applications on behalf of the owners.

The company will also undertake full building work and provide marketing and strategic advice, offering a free assessment of anything from the family home to an empty garage or an abandoned piece of wasteland. Fees are based on success: Urban Infill charges only part of its ­design fee upfront; the remainder is payable only when planning permission is granted.

Nothing is too small — or too big — to be of interest. “We approached a brewery with one project, building above a pub, and they came back and offered us a different one,” Dollamore says. That scheme, with four flats over another pub, designed to fit in with the surrounding Victorian architecture, could net the brewery up to £4m.

Inspiration comes in part from America, where urban infill is increasingly seen as key to the regeneration of city centres. In cities such as San Francisco, Miami, San Diego, Dallas and Chicago, such development accounts for 25%-50% of all new residential construction.

Dollamore’s company is not the first to spot the enormous potential offered by the small scraps of unused land found in Britain’s towns and cities.

Indeed, some of the most interesting urban homes built by architects over the past few years have been on precisely such spots — not least because of the difficulties involved in finding more conventional plots.

Take Focus House, an unusual zinc-clad building effectively tacked on to the side of a Victorian terrace in Finsbury Park, north London. At the front, the property measures just 9ft across — about half the width of a conventional home — but at the back it opens out to 23ft, creating an extraordinary, Tardis-like space inside. Justin Bere, the architect, has managed to squeeze in three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dressing room and a study. The ceilings are high and there is plenty of light.

The house, which took more than a year of planning and cost £400,000 to build, is also remarkably green. With a shell of Austrian prefabricated solid timber panels, it is influenced by the German Passivhaus concept — which involves insulating homes so well that they require minimal heating.

The project illustrates the constraints that often apply to such tricky infill sites: it took more than 130 drawings to perfect the angles on the asymmetric structure. “The design was generated by the size,” Bere says. “To show respect for the neighbours and gain planning permission, it could not exceed the profile of the existing terrace.”

Although neighbours and planners seemed happy with the house, which was completed in 2006, schemes like this sometimes struggle to win approval. Yet official attitudes are changing, with infill projects increasingly seen as preferable to urban sprawl.

In December, Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, suggested that underused land owned by the Greater London Authority (GLA) might be used to build 30,000 new homes. Johnson has asked the capital’s developers and investors to “put forward innovative and cost-effective measures to maximise delivery on any potential developments on GLA land”.

As a business proposition, this works both ways: developers get their hands on swathes of land in the capital, while London gets homes built with minimal fuss. The proposal would see the GLA act as a shareholder in any new development, with future profits reinvested into affordable housing in the capital.

A similar scheme, proposed by the Homes and Communities Agency, could deliver 1,250 homes in the next three years — 500 of them affordable. As part of the Public Land Initiative, public landowners would take deferred payment in a deal based on a joint-venture model with private investors.

More inspirational — if less obviously practical — is a competition recently launched by the Royal Institute of British Architects to unearth places hitherto not regarded as worthy of development. Working on the principle that it is those who live and work locally who are best placed to know, Forgotten Spaces invites architects, artists, engineers and landscape designers living and working in Greater London to nominate a place, build a case for what the local community could use there, then propose how this could be brought about.

The brief states that the “forgotten space could be small or large — a grassy verge, a wasteland, an unused car park, a derelict building or underpass or flyover”. The only requirement is that it answers a need in the area and serves a function for the local community. There’s a cash prize of £5,000 for the winner, and the competition is open to students, artists, designers and architects in Greater London.

The best proposals will be displayed at the National Theatre, London SE1, from May 25 to July 4, with the results announced on May 26. For details or an entry form, visit architecture.com.

urbaninfill.co.uk

Writers name

Cally Law, The Sunday Times 07-02-2010

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