[I]f more people are going to be working from home, that will further exacerbate Britain’s housing crisis. Shelter last year reported that 320,000 people are homeless and more than 8,000 sleeping rough in London alone. The discrepancy between office oversupply and housing demand is set to increase further. What can be done? Boris Johnson issued the rallying cry ‘Build, build, build!’ in his summer speech, announcing a New Deal for Britain, but Kundoo suggests that maybe more architecture is not the answer. ‘Surely, we have had enough of the Legoification of our world,’ says Kundoo. ‘We need to take time to think rather than just build our way out of this crisis with houses that are not just ugly but leave nothing worthwhile to future generations.’1

Certainly, there’s money to be made imagining what the post-Covid built environment will look like. Demolition of the towers of London may not be the answer, argues architect Richard Hyams of Astudio. Many of them should be reskinned. Which means? ‘Reskinning is a process that utilises the existing frame of a building and extends it to meet new demands for space, energy efficiency and other factors. It would be a cost-effective solution to repurposing commercial buildings for residential use, and deliver affordable housing at a faster rate than new builds.’ Such a reskin revolution is being spurred by liberalised planning laws. What is called ‘permitted development’ allows offices and shops to be converted without planning permission. 

....

• 1. A better blueprint, she suggests, is the repurposing of old industrial buildings. ‘In Berlin, they became artist’s studios and apartments. The buildings were of high quality and were readily converted for new use with minimal environmental damage. So much better than demolishing and building something new.’ It’s a story that during the 1980s and ’90s repeated itself from Berlin’s Mitte to London’s Shoreditch and New York’s Lower East Side: artists colonised buildings nobody wanted any more, created a real-estate vortex that drew in sourdough bakers, beardy baristas and microbrewing hipsters and thereby kick-started a real-estate boom that did nothing to help solve homelessness but made some people very rich. Perhaps Canary Wharf, if it becomes unfit for purpose — Barclay’s is reportedly considering terminating its lease for its building in North Colonnade to cut costs — might become the new Shoreditch. Or maybe, suggests Kundoo, those speculative towers — cheese graters, walkie-talkies, gherkins, not to mention the one Docklands nicknamed ‘Thatcher’s cock’ — might ultimately be gutted. ‘There are lots of materials in them like steel stresses that could be recycled as the basis for more sustainable buildings,’ says Kundoo.