Across the country, thousands of old buildings lie forgotten and neglected, tangled up by red tape and development restrictions. Many of these orphaned properties are steeped in history and are of outstanding architectural interest, yet are slowly being left to rot.

Architect George Clarke is passionate about our architectural heritage. He travels the British Isles meeting the stubborn romantics who want to breathe new life into the architectural treasures he unearths on his journey. His mission is to help them transform these undervalued gems into brand new homes fit for 21st century living.

Restoration Man watches as these wonderful buildings – from windmills and ancient towers to gate lodges and medieval churches – are transformed. But threatened by spiralling budgets and the credit crunch, plus the stresses and strains of working with old structures and confusing bureaucracy, none of these projects are an easy ride.

George has found streets of houses caught up in red tape in areas where thousands of people are on housing waiting lists. He’s met owners of properties that have been empty for years. And he’s met people on the sharp end of the housing crisis – ex-soldiers sleeping on sofas, single mothers in overcrowded conditions and families from a professional background forced to give up on the dream of ever owning their own home.

“It’s a crying shame that there are 350,000 long-term empty properties in the UK while 2 million families desperately need a home.” says George.

“What I have seen has convinced me more than ever that urgent change is needed – and we can’t just leave it to the government and councils to sort out our empty homes problem.”

Britain’s Empties: Some Home Truths

• We’re currently building 100,000 fewer new houses than we need every year.

• The coalition has made £100 million of funding available to refurbish empty homes, but even this will only bring 3,300 empty homes back into use over three years. This un-ambitious target is just 1% of the number of long-term empty homes.

• Over 85% of Britain’s empty homes are privately owned and any solution to the problem needs to address these owners. Many empty home owners would be happy to find occupants for their houses if only they had some help. It is important to find ways to help them get their houses back into use.

• Britain’s 350,000 long-term empty houses are a wasted asset to both the country and their owners. Given the huge demand and need for homes, Britain could do way better in this regard.

The Solution: Fill Up Britain’s Empty Homes

The government has announced its intention to introduce a range of measures in England to bring empty homes back into use but George reckons what they are doing doesn’t go far enough. And while devolved national governments in Wales and Scotland are considering action on empty homes, they are currently lagging behind the work being done in England and certainly need to do more.

We’re proposing two simple but effective changes that will give individuals and communities the power to take on Britain’s empties and the resources to get them back into use:

1. A law change to give communities and individuals the power to turn abandoned properties in their local area into homes for people who need them.

2. Access to low-cost loan funds for people who need financial help to get empty properties back into use.

Show your support for our campaign to fill up Britain’s empty homes

Sign Up: The campaign will be kicking off over the next two months. Until then, keep up to date by liking the Empty Homes Facebook page

George says the last government made efforts to regenerate, under John Prescott (pictured), but the figures didn’t add up
‘You have some privately owned properties where the owners have fallen on hard times, are in negative equity and can’t afford to sell. They can’t rent either if it is an older house, with maybe a boiler that needs replacing. So the house just sits, but the more it does so, the less habitable it becomes. It’s a vicious circle.
‘Then there are the entire streets and estates – often local authority owned – that are no longer habitable. ‘That is despicable. The last government made efforts to regenerate, under John Prescott, but the figures didn’t add up. Now it is too late for a lot of areas. Any architect or developer would balk at the idea of getting involved.’ The idea of entire estates going under horrifies George. He grew up in a council house in the then new town of Washington in the Northeast, and his mother still lives in the property.
‘It’s only now that I realise how lucky we were. Our estate was built as part of the slum clearances of the 1960s, and it worked. It really worked. We had very little money, but we had a well-designed three-bedroomed house, with a garden front and back. The sense of community was amazing. Can young families starting out today expect the same? Of course they can’t. Things have become so polarised. My house is worth a ridiculous amount of money, yet I don’t see how my children will ever be able to afford properties of their own.’

Thanks to the Daily Mail for the interview with George – read their full article here.

The House Beautiful Awards 2011 was held this year in one of England’s finest Art Deco buildings, Freemasons’ Hall in London. The awards comprised 26 categories, commending not only the UK’s top TV personalities but also 2011’s best homes products and retailers.

In addition to the three reader-voted awards, an impressive panel of judges, including experts John Rocha, Jeff Banks, Sophie Conran, Naomi Cleaver, Oliver Heath, Nick Munro, Lisa Stickley, Simon Boyle, David Domoney and Tommy Walsh, joined forces with House Beautiful Editor Julia Goodwin to select a further 23 category winners.

Dunelm Mill won the prestigious Home Retailer of the Year Award. Other winners included John Lewis, which scooped Online Retailer of the Year; the Red Star range by Emma Bridgewater won Best of British; and Lisa Stickley, picked up The Editor’s Award for her outstanding design in fabrics and ceramics.

House Beautiful Editor Julia Goodwin says, ‘In tough economic times quality and value are vitally important in making good products and services stand out from the rest of the crowd. The House Beautiful Awards recognises excellence ­– pointing consumers towards the best of the best.’

George also met the Prime Minister, Boris Johnston, many government minister and the boss of Urban Splash developments, Tom Bloxham MBE.

All of this was for George’s Empty Home Show which transmits on Channel 4 this coming December.

Photography by Thomas Stewart

Read the full Grand Designs Magazine article here

Ask most people what they think about basements and they’re likely to say ‘dark, damp,
dank, dingy’ – or pretty much anything other than ‘airy, light-filled, bright’. And really it’s
no wonder, given that basements are, by definition, below ground level. Imagine, then, my surprise when I walked into architect George Clarke’s basement to shafts of sunlight flooding the rooms. The white, sun-drenched space is so gloriously open that you quickly forget it’s an underground lair.
George, presenter of Channel 4’s The Home Show and Restoration Man, lives with his wife Catri and three children, Georgie, 8, Emilio, 6, and Iona, 4, in an end-of-terrace house in Notting Hill. They bought the property three years ago and had already completed a full refurbishment when they decided to embark on the basement build last year. Their brief was simple and straightforward: some much-needed extra square footage for an office and guest bedroom, plus additional storage capacity.

Although George leads his own architectural practice and build company, and has considerable experience of new-build and commercial basements, he was in uncharted waters with this project, as he’d never before dug beneath an existing home. So he called on London Basement Company to manage the excavation. ‘Always go with a specialist, well-established company,’ he urges. ‘It’s an engineering exercise and you need a lot of specific experience and knowledge.’ And he’s just as persuasive about the importance of hiring an architect for the design phase.

Excavation
The house sits on clay, a soil that’s notoriously hard and slow-going to dig, which meant that the excavation took six months. Once the concrete shell was installed, in came George’s men to sort the design. Extending from underneath the house, out under the rear patio, it’s a simple plan, with a large guest bedroom and en-suite bathroom to the front of the house, a utility room, masses of cupboard space and an extra WC off the central corridor, plus an open-plan living space to the rear of the house. ‘My biggest design tip is frighteningly simple and important,’ says George.

‘Stick absolutely all the services and boring rooms in the middle, where there’s no light.’

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Grand designs
As with many successful grand designs, glazing is the key to the project’s success. The bay window in the front bedroom, which overlooks a lightwell, is as large as possible. To the rear, George has fitted one skylight in the middle of the large room (just outside the bi-fold doors on to the patio) and thanks to the exterior staircase that provides access from the garden, much of that side wall is glass.

‘Work as creatively as you can to get lots of light and ventilation,’ he says.
The build and fit-out cost £350,000; no small sum. A major cost came from having to dig through the
front garden to avoid destroying the recently refurbished house (in which the family lived for the entire project). ‘I would have saved a fortune if I’d done it at the same time as the house refurbishment,’ explains George. His advice is that if you’re buying a run-down house, make sure that you do the basement first and make it as big as you can afford.
Although it cost several hundred thousand pounds to build, the additional space has added a whopping £900,000 to the value of his home, in addition to the enjoyment it’s brought.

The whole family utilises the space, whether it’s the kids doing their homework, George working or everyone watching DVDs in the cinema. ‘I used to come home and the living room looked like a bomb site,’ says George. ‘Now the living room and kitchen are immaculate and quiet, and the house works as a family home for the first time.’ GD

Suppliers

• George would like to send special thanks to Carpetright www.carpetright.co.uk
• Project team Architect and interior design George Clarke & Partners 020 7404 6757
• Excavation London Basement Company 020 8847 9449; www.londonbasement.co.uk
• Electrician Liam McCartney liam@mc-cartney.com
• Fixtures and fittings Lighting iLight 01923495 496; www.ilight.co.uk; The Light Corporation 01442 216 200; www.lightcorporation.com
• Carpet Carpetright www.carpetright.co.uk; Westend Velvet Collection in Silver Birch at Westex Carpets 01274 861 334; www.westexcarpets.co.uk
• Tiling Terra XXL tiles in warm porcelain white by Mosa tiles, Netherlands +31 43 368 94 44; mosa.nl
• Exterior tiles Baycliff Lord sanded tiles from Burlington Stone 01229 889 661; www.burlingtonstone.co.uk
• Bath and washbasin Duravit Vero 0845 500 7787; www.duravit.co.uk
• Taps Hansgrohe 01372 465 655; www.hansgrohe.co.uk
• Wardrobes Ikea 0845 358 3364; ikea.co.uk
• Office shelving 606 Universal Shelving Systems designed by Dieter Rams for Vitsoe 020 7428 1606; www.vitsoe.com
• Furniture Lounge chair Lounge chair and ottoman by Charles and Ray Eames for Vitra 020 7608 6200; www.vitra.com
• Side table Side table by Eero Saarinen for Knoll 020 7236 6655; www.knoll.com
• Kitchen dining table Oval dining table by Eero Saarinen for Knoll (as before)
• Kitchen dining chairs DSR chairs by Charles and Ray Eames for Vitra (as before)
• Flower picture Fabric from The Cross 020 7727 6760; www.thecrossshop. co.uk
• Black desk Classic desk by Bruce Burdick for Herman Miller at Alternative Office Source www.alternativeofficesource.com
• Office chairs Aluminium Group by Charles and Ray Eames for Vitra (as before)

The Green Deal, which is part of the proposed Energy Bill, could benefit the 72 per cent of homeowners who are keen to reduce their home’s energy usage. It aims to encourage consumers to make their homes more energy-efficient, by providing all of the upfront finance for the improvements with a loan that will be attached to the property’s energy bill.

To help people understand a bit more about the Green Deal, George has teamed up with Pilkington Glass, who are lobbying the government to get double glazing included on the legislation. George and Pilkington Glass MD, David Pinder took part in a live web interview to discuss what the Green Deal will mean for the average householder and why it’s shaping up to be the most important mass home improvement programme for generations.

In case you missed it, you can watch again here:

For more information on how to make energy efficient upgrades to your home and top tips from George, visit: www.pilkington.co.uk/motyourhome

After being in partnership since 1998 with the successful, London-based architecture and design practice, Clarke:Desai, the two senior partners, George Clarke and Bobby Desai have decided to restructure their business, in order to pursue different business ambitions.

Clarke:Desai has completed a wide range of projects throughout London. From award winning Art Galleries to Master Planning projects,andan incredible portfolio of private residential and commercial projects, including many for high profile clients such as Simon Fuller and Jamie Oliver. They have also contributed an enormous amount of time to academic institutions in the UK and abroad.

Clarke says, “I’ve had a fantastic time at Clarke:Desai and I’m proud of all the projects we have completed over theyears. Bobby is one of the most talented designers in the business and he’s also one of my closest friends. But, as you can imagine, my media work has taken me in a different direction and I now want to start a new company that isn’t just about architecture, but also covers all aspects of the design, build and property development business. My new company George Clarke + Partners will allow me to do this as well as make successful TV programmes.”

Desai says, “George has been a wonderful business partner over the last 12 years and friend for even longer. We have had many great times and design adventures together. George’s passionate interest in the relationships between TV media and design has been a growing focus of his attention, so this restructuring is a natural evolution of our practice and a formalisation of the way we have been working for many years. For my part, establishing Desai Architecture gives me the opportunity to focus the business on my passionfor great architecture,urbanism and design at all scales. This new structure will also provide space to re-energise our international focus. I wish George every success with his new venture George Clarke + Partners. ”

Nearly two million British families don’t have adequate housing, and yet one million homes lie empty across the country. Fired up by this senseless waste, George will set out to raise awareness on the issue and offer practical solutions for those affected.

The UK’s housing crisis has had a devastating impact on thousands of people from a wide range of backgrounds – and some of those featured in the series have shocking stories to tell: an elderly couple forced to move because of a right-to-buy scheme, single mothers who remain on waiting lists for years, and young people who simply cannot afford to leave home despite having employment.

George will be examining the problems and suggesting possible new solutions. He’ll be seeking to lobby central government and local councils urging them to up their efforts and join him in his campaign to make a real dent in the number of long term empty properties in the UK.

George is a long-term supporter of Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity.

He says, “The empty homes problem across Britain is something I’ve been passionate about for many years and I’m delighted that Channel 4 has decided to commission such a ground breaking programme. It is a privilege to be at the centre of something with such amazing power to really make a difference to the lives of many people, not to mention breathing new and much needed life back into some beautiful but neglected properties. ”

The yet to be titled show will air later this year and be executive produced by Jo McGrath at Tiger Aspect. It has been commissioned by Channel 4 Features Commissioning Editor Katie Boyd.

Garages are quite often packed with mountains of boxes, lawnmowers, kids bikes, tools, Christmas decorations, extra fridges and feezers and quite often the odd kitchen sink. Cars are often left on the driveway so the garage is used instead for storage. For me, this is a waste of space. A simple decluttering of the garage would quickly show that we actually don’t need that much storage space and it’s so easy to buy a simple garden shed from your local home improvement store to keep the lawnmower and bikes.

The garage can be converted into prime, usable space for your home.  Before you think about converting the garage speak to your local estate agent to check that it is the right thing to do in your area and that you are reducing the value of your home by doing it.  Obviously, if you live in an area with very little off street parking or you need your garage for highly secure parking then a garage space may add a premium to your home so converting the garage may not be the best idea.

If there is sufficient parking and security is not much of a problem then converting your garage can be a cost effective way to transform your home while adding value.

There are a few very important things that you need to do before starting any building work.  Firstly, make sure you have carefully designed the interior spaces to maximize the potential of the converted garage space.  Does your family need a larger living space, a larger kitchen dining area or can the space be better divided into a number of functions such as a large utility room off the kitchen with a new home office or additional bedroom for guests on the ground floor?  These are all important questions you need to consider. Once you have finalized the design you need to make a planning application to the local authority to convert the garage into useable space.  A local architect will help you with this.

Your architect or builder will also have to help you with the technical specifications of the new garage to satisfy your local building control department.  Many old garages are only built of a single skin of brickwork, which not provide the thermal performance your external wall will need to satisfy the current building regulations.  Most garages need an a new skin of block work built up to the internal face of the old wall with an insulated cavity in between to make sure that your new converted garage spaces are warm and dry.

As you can tell, even the most simple garage conversion means that you have to jump through a number of hoops to make sure you have all of the design, local authority permissions and technical knowledge in place.  But garages that are wasted, underused areas are a tragic waste of space.  Get the new design right and you will not only improve the quality of your home, but you will also add considerable