Date: 30 September 08
Author: Caroline Ednie, Web Editor
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A new concept for a total house building system that’s designed to help tackle the shortage and affordability of housing, as well as providing a "future urban living" model, is currently emerging in a small architect’s practice in Edinburgh. Anabo - a term which derives from the biological process of anabolism, essentially the creation of living organism from small components - has been originated by, and is currently being developed by architect Andrew Stoane.
Essentially, Anabo will be available to potential house buyers via the company’s website, where customers will be able to find a location; order a house; configure it to their own requirements; and arrange the finance. Within 10 days the house should be ready to be occupied. Prior to this process the company will have bought the plots; obtained planning permission; and laid building foundations in preparation for customer’s online orders. Buyers will be able to buy the smallest Anabo house online for as little as £40,000.
Stoane has received funding from the Edinburgh Pre-Incubator Scheme (EPIS) and the Edinburgh Technology Fund to support the launch of Anabo. A prototype house for is currently being planned in Edinburgh and a pilot scheme is due to be up and running in Scotland next year. The ultimate aim is to expand the Anabo housing concept into global markets.
In discussion with Web Editor Caroline Ednie, Stoane describes the ideas behind the groundbreaking Anabo concept and how its application could change the volume house building landscape - and the future of affordable housing. The project is revealed here in full for the first time.
“The very nature of architectural enquiry means the needs of consumers will be satisfied through quality of build and space. Anabo not only launches architecture into the market but uses the architecture to give the consumer choice by leveraging the inherent flexibility from modular construction”
Source: Anabo Marketing Plan
"The idea for a high volume and low price solution to housing has been with me for a long time – I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of how architecture might be a product. Of course there is the truly individual, site specific, bespoke house at one end of the spectrum and this represents most of my career. However, there is a whole other world in which architecture tends not to involve itself – this is the world of high volume, market driven housing – the world of the GENERIC. Architecture can solve real problems here. Not only can it really help make a better future but it can also secure an important position for itself in that future and, at the same time, help people to understand, from experience, what it has to offer.
The origins of Anabo
The idea of introducing architecture to volume housing has always been with me, really ever since reading about the Citrohan house as a student. I bust a gut to put together an exhibition in 1995 and pitched the idea of a contemporary solution to volume house builders. They all pretty much laughed. The idea of anabo, as a specific project, emerged when I was invited to take part in The Highland Housing Fair (the 2007 housing design competition, run by the RIAS to raise standards in innovative and sustainable housing). It wasn’t until I looked at the project in detail that I discovered that you were actually pitching designs for the right to buy a £100K site – the site wasn’t a given.
This is OK until you realise that the average price of a three-bedroom house outside Inverness is about £180K. So that means that if you buy your site for £100K then you have £80K left to build a house, pay your fees, make some profit and pay all the peripheral legal costs. I thought that this would be pretty impossible unless you find a volume house builder or developer who’s prepared to do it at a loss. Trying to do this myself didn’t stack up.
In light of this I felt that my challenge was to try and design the cheapest house that I possibly could and came up with a prototype that came in at £60K. The idea was all about prefabrication, embracing factory and modular production. The Anabo concept involves very little work being carried out on-site, and there are no wet trades, which keeps costs down. The houses are clad in ‘Trespa’ cladding panels - 3650 x 1860 off the shelf. And where you need a window, you just miss a panel out and insert a screen instead.
Then I began to thinking that there might be a future in this idea. I thought of it in terms of a business idea and over the next six months I worked on it as much as I could at the same time as running a busy architectural studio.
Funding
Eventually, I put together a presentation and took this to the Edinburgh Pre-Incubator Scheme (EPIS). This is an initiative, based at Edinburgh University and partly funded by Scottish Enterprise, which offers a support mechanism and provides an interest free loan, for technology-based disciplines. The big advantage of EPIS is that not only does it offer support but offers unlimited access to a particular university department that is appropriate to your project as well as a business mentor. It is an extremely useful organisation. This EPIS scheme coupled with a grant from the Edinburgh Technology Fund allowed me to actually start working on the project more seriously.
Anabo v Volume House
The Anabo house is a product with a very clear identity and a type of house that possibly isn’t familiar. It breaks the mould of volume house building. I believe that the volume house building product in the UK is completely outdated and not consumer driven. It needs complete rethinking. I see the identity of Anabo as more akin to a consumer product – a car or an iPod, for example. An iPod is a beautifully designed product that comes in different colours, with jackets and different accessorizing opportunities but the essence of the product is still the same- it’s still beautiful and really thoroughly thought through. For that reason, anabo is very careful not to promote ‘self-design’, but it does allow consumers to configure homes to respond to their lifestyles and lifestages – to who they are.
Market
I see the market for Anabo as segmented broadly into two groups. There’s the need driven market and the aspirational market. The need driven market desperately needs affordable housing – the average house price is around £200K and the average salary is around £27K- that’s unsustainable. I think at the root of that unsustainability is that fact that we have come to think of our houses as our pension fund. As John Henley said recently in the Guardian “We have succeeded in commoditizing what should be a fundamental human right : to have a roof over our heads …” We are now experiencing the consequences of this, as are the banks and mortgage lenders, who were only too happy to cash in with cavalier disregard for the long term effect.
Demand for housing is constantly increasing, driven primarily by demographic trends and rising incomes, but the housing industry is completely incapable at the moment of meeting that demand. This lack of responsiveness has brought about a long-term upward trend in house prices which is clearly coupled with lack of affordability. The dire consequences of this, both macroeconomic and social, are recognized by the Government Commissioned Kate Barker Review, a major review of the housing industry carried out in 2004. This is where the target everyone talks about of 3 million new homes by 2020 came from. Year after year we are failing to get anywhere near it.
It’s an amazing indicator of how the housing industry performs when some figures estimate that there is around 30% dissatisfaction with new housing. In any other industry the companies would be bankrupt. It is a shocking indictment. But there seems to be a tolerance driven by desperation to get on the housing market and on the property ladder. A CABE Housing Audit in 2007, assessing nearly 300 schemes built in the last 5 years found 82% were inadequate on design quality and around a third were considered so poor they should not have received planning permission.
“Anabo allows consumers, for the first time, to have a choice - low quality fake bespoke, or a genuine acceptance and enjoyment of what pre-fabrication can offer”
Source: anabo marketing plan
Recently there has also been a lot of emphasis on building the wrong type of high-end flats and urban models. But actually what we desperately need is a low cost model that can deal with the first time buyer. Anabo is driven by need and attitude. There is a huge place in the market for a consumer driven house model that introduces architectural ideas into volume house building.
Demographically, I see ‘generation Y (age 18-28) as the main market for Anabo (although not exclusively – downsizers could also be a big market) which is why its web based origins is such a critical part of the business idea. I envisage this demand from a younger market, for two reasons. Firstly, there is a desperate need for affordable housing for that age group, and secondly, this group are generally much more receptive to new ideas. I have strongly received this feedback from focus groups. I believe that people of this age group don’t particularly aspire to living in a house that their mums and dads live in. They would be happy to accept Anabo’s design, and they are totally familiar with the new technology that it embraces. It responds more to how they see themselves.
Anabo’s marketing and branding plan, written in collaboration with Emma Hunter, has been a really important exercise. We have carried out extensive consumer and market research as part of this first phase. Anabo recognizes the absolute importance of its BRAND, being true to the values and delivering the promise through everything it does. It recognises the need for a completely new type of house, responding to the values and lifestyle demands of a new generation of house buyer.
Anabo’s raison d’être
The long-term ambition of the company is to do EVERYTHING itself. So there will be factories producing every element of the build, with warehouses ready to distribute, so when you click your mouse everything will be ready to go there and then. The company will own land with infrastructure in place - the concrete slabs will be in place and the planning permission will be in place – before construction of the Anabo houses. It shares a synergy with the car industry, for example if you consider the contemporary car and the choices that you have from the engine to the wheels and upholstery, there’s no reason why that can’t happen with houses.
Design Concept
The Anabo house itself is essentially a series of pre-fabricated components that will arrive on site and be put together by a team of people who know exactly what they are doing. As soon as you have to employ a joiner, electrician and plumber, decorator and so on then you’ll have lost the original idea.
Construction will be achieved by means of a timber frame; screens; and cassette (prefabricated modular system) floors using locally sourced timber. External panels are made from Trespa, which you will have seen in countless office buildings throughout the world but rarely on domestic buildings. It’s very ecological too – made from wood pulp and bound together with organic binding agents. It’s highly durable and low maintenance. Additionally, fixtures and fittings can then be chosen from a number of options.
On the website you will choose the colour, room configuration, privacy setting and even your tree (the tree is included within the house as an alternative to a big garden. It also acts as a screening device). Another simple element of the design is that the bottom row of panels on the west (living area) elevation is missing and the top row of panels on the east (bedroom) side has also been missed out. This device effectively tracks the light throughout the day, yet at the same time allows for maximum privacy. This is something that volume house builders have, time and time again, failed to recognize the importance of. It is completely fundamental to the quality of domestic life. The configuration also means maximum privacy. At the moment there is more glazing than standard, however this has been offset with super insulation.
There is a misconception amongst volume house builders that architects only design bespoke and very expensive houses. For me the really interesting thing about this project is that the architecture in this is all about economy – it’s all about how we can make the product affordable and still maintain its essential qualities of light and space. That’s where all my architectural investigation has gone – it has not gone into making it expensive and complicated – it has actually gone into making it affordable and simple. So if I have acquired any intelligence in 20 years of architectural study, that’s what it’s gone into – making better, and cheaper homes for more people. That’s what I have to offer.
The three Anabo house types
There are three house types at the moment: 40; 80 and 120 square metres. All are based on the same modular system. Target prices for the products are around £1,000 per square metre. The land will be attached on a leasehold tenure, with a monthly ground rent payable to the company.
In all of the houses there is a service core that sits in the middle of the plan, containing every service and technical element in the house. The position of the core then defines the other spaces around its perimeter. The opposite of the typically cellular traditional volume build speculative house. It’s a simple but fundamental modernist principal going back to Mies Van der Rohe.
Model 1 is aimed at single person or couple (or students or parents looking to buy a house for their kids)
On ground level to one side of the core is a double height living space into which a workspace looks (this is located above the stairs). On the other side of the space is a kitchen (all the appliances are sunk into the wall of the core). In addition there is a little laundry area and toilet.
The library is located on the stair. There are two reasons for this: one is economy, sinking it into an unused space; the second is an architectural one, potentially sitting on the landing looking at books is a lovely thing to do. It’s an area to pause halfway up the stairs.
The stairs then lead up a bedroom and there is also a workspace and a linen cupboard around the core as well as a shower and toilet.
Model 2 is the type proposed for the prototype early in 2009. It is aimed at couples or couples with one child. It has two bedrooms (or one bedroom and a studio), a patio with tree and a terrace on the upper level.
Model 3 is the bigger, family type with three bedrooms or two bedrooms and a studio, or one massive bedroom and a studio - if you want to configure it differently. It also has a patio with a tree and a planted wall. The tree and planted wall bring nature deep into the house. Imagine being able to slide back a glass wall in the bedroom and picking an apple from the tree or watching the colours as the seasons change or even sliding back the bathroom wall and bathing as though you’re outside, privacy maintained, not by blinds or curtains, but by foliage. These experiences are really important to Anabo.
The Anabo Community
Where it becomes interesting is the potential for the Anabo community to become really involved in how they fit into it. Not only do you configure your house online but you also decide where it goes relative to the framework of the scheme. One of the Anabo products will also have a workspace on the ground floor – for an office, shop etc. so there is opportunity for the neighbourhood to create itself – for commerce and enterprise to occur. If the area needs a hairdresser, someone will start one.
The embedded console in the house not only controls all the house systems such as your heating and solar roof, but will also allow residents to communicate with their local neighbours - and eventually their global Anabo neighbours. In addition it offers the consumer the opportunity to buy new things, reconfigure their house, be aware of new Anabo products on the market, report a fault, or request a service. Modular and prefabricated buildings do, of course, exist already but I’ve never come across it in such a homogenous joined up way. Anabo is a whole lifestyle solution. I see it as consumer led, not industry led.
Future
The next major milestone for Anabo is fast approaching and involves building a prototype (which I have a site for) and thereafter the pilot scheme, of maybe 10-20 houses. This is due to be initiated in 2009.
I believe that house building is one of the last industries to modernise – its still a dinosaur operating fifty years behind other industries. I definitely think that there’s a long overdue landmark waiting to happen."
Andrew Stoane (1968) is an Edinburgh based architect who has worked on numerous diverse architectural projects. Writing, competitions and experimental work also forms an intrinsic part of the studio’s ongoing research. Stoane regularly teaches and lectures in several schools of architecture and is currently a design tutor at Edinburgh University.
Images courtesy of Andrew Stoane
To find out more visit: www.anabo.org
This is exciting. I agree with most of what you say but I have 2 questons about the business model. First, you seem to be carrying a lot of upfront costs. Could you reduce them by getting a sympathetic landowner (probably a Council or HA) to hold the land & sell it to you plot by plot as needed? Could you also cut inventory costs by partnering a supplier? Their components are guaranted to be used. In return, supply & stocks become their problem. Second,there is likely to be resistance to ground rent & leasehold - can Scots law handle this? Perhaps marketing will be simpler if all of the non-building issues are as familiar as possible. MH
Really thankful to get such types of informations about affordable housing concept. I would be glad to receive more informations in future......