What requirements can the local authority impose to increase the quality of developments?

– We are very concerned with quality, we architects, says Architect and Managing Director at Fjord Arkitekter, Finn Magnus Rasmussen.

– How can legislation ensure better quality in housing? Do you think there is some mechanism there that means developers have to pull their socks up and build better homes? he continues.

– It looks like there is a sort of sequence in this. You could say that before there was a massive increase in housing prices, larger and more flexible homes were being built. Then space has been very much squeezed to make homes affordable for more people. And now recently we have seen a levelling off in the market again, which we architects and many others hope will lead to developers having to stretch a bit further to sell their flats, that they have to focus on making the homes attractive in different ways, answers Ole Henrik Hiorth. Which, regardless of what you put into the concept of quality, will mean that you have to constantly add, whether it is surfaces, light or ceiling height or whatever you are talking about, you will have to do it to find all the customers. But, is it the case that before developers stretch themselves to create that quality, the market must be saturated? In other words, do you have to get building costs down? Remove regulations so that you can build as much as possible as quickly as possible first. So that you get a bunch of homes that do not have such high quality in order to sort of make it level off, to make it level off. If you let the market be what governs when you start building with quality, answers Architect and Partner at Fjord Arkitekter, Ole Henrik Hiorth.

– I do not believe in that. Requirements are not only set through technical regulations. The local authority can also set requirements in planning provisions. We have a lot of experience with loft conversions and the requirements that have now come with the new Loft Guidelines, where you must, for example, submit detailed drawings 1:10, means that the quality of the drawings (at least I think so) has gone up. If you look at drawings from buildings ten years ago, they can easily look a bit clumsy and miserable. Whereas now they are better, they are more adapted to the building as such. I like those types of requirements. And it is very good for us as architects to be able to say to a developer that you actually have to draw this right down to the detail to precisely ensure the quality that we want, comments Finn Magnus.

– Exactly. For us who are architects, this is excellent, that type of directive from the authorities that we actually have to plan the building much further before we apply, concludes Ole Henrik.