Row breaks out at RIBA over house size campaign

摘要

A row has broken out between the RIBA and a group of some of its highest profile architect members over the institution's relaunch of its campaign to increase the size of new homes in the UK, write Joey Gardiner and Elizabeth Hopkirk. The RIBA last week issued research suggesting that more than half of new homes built and sold last year are not big enough for the people who buy them to live in, with some three-bedroom homes missing an amount of space equivalent to an entire double bedroom. RIBA president Jane Duncan described some of the homes as "tiny rabbit-hutch new builds". However, a group of the most established housing architects in the UK, including former Stirling prize winner Richard Lavington, have hit out at the campaign, dubbing it "a reckless attack on the housebuilding industry, resorting to pejorative soundbite language, and with the possible outcome of alienating an important market for architects' services".