Live - Work: Understanding the typology
- Gire Calderon
- Dec 3, 2018
- 2 min read
By: Jonathan Tarbatt
Jonathan Tarbatt is an urban designer, architect and qualified Town Planner. He is a partner at BDB Design. He has written several books about Urban design and urban diversity. He has over 20 years experience in the public sector. This article was written academically.
In this article, the author explores the mixed-use buildings used for living and working. He examines its importance, and analyses the multiples approach architects have taken to design this.
The author explains how communities have changed over time and how in the past was common to own your shop and live above. An example used by the author was Blacksmiths, they lived in the same home they work, and they were essential to the community. Moreover, nowadays you rarely see one.
As stated by the author the term ‘work-live’ is used to distinguish residential and commercial activities, the author argues the status of live-work as land use is relatively unclear nowadays and it falls out then and county regulations act. Of all London boroughs just Lewisham actively supports it.
The author discusses the advantages and disadvantages of mixed uses. The main benefits are no commuting, Better use of land and resources and more active streets and spaces. The downsides is that is more expensive to build, and you never leave work. The author mentions that the ideal building typology for start-ups is live-work or work-live.
I believe this type of developments are beneficial for some types of professionals such as artists and architects that want their studio in their home. In my personal opinion, I believe these ‘live and work’ houses tend to damage social relationships, isolate people and create workaholics.
Most of the most successful planned cities and neighbourhoods incorporate a system of mixed-used buildings. As designers, when we design we should try to avoid single-use zones and combine mixed-use blocks. As Jane Jacobs argued that one of the problems with cities, it is that they do not generate enough diversity and they need to implement more mixed uses to give the city economic movement, variety and more daytime uses (Jacobs, 1961). One example is New York and how they implement mixed use in the city. Depending on the zone, mixed-use is implemented differently. I believe these type of typology helps creates a better economic and active neighbourhood.
From the developers, perspective is tough to get a return for these properties due to the VAT in the construction of this properties.
In conclusion, as the author states, Live-work has the potential to generate many features that urban designers promote such as diversity, better local economies, mixed-use, fewer commuters and more walkable neighbourhoods. As urban designers, we need to study what entails to incorporate mixed uses to foster better cities with different typologies for everyone.
Questions
Do you think mixed use in cities helps the economic development of the city?
Is it healthy to live where you work?
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