New Office for Place is ‘not Cabe 2’, says government design advisor

The man overseeing the set-up of the government’s new housing design advisor, the Office for Place, has rejected the suggestion the body is just a reheated version of Cabe, the design quangoscrappedby the coalition in 2010.

Nicholas Boys Smith, chair of the advisory board overseeing the set-up of the unit, said the Office for Place was “not Cabe 2”, and was being set up to achieve different things.

Boys Smith also said that the aim was that the Office for Place, currently a unit of around a dozen staff within the housing ministry, would become an independent body.

The body waslaunched last month by housing secretary Robert Jenrickalongside a series of tweaks to national planning policy designed to embed the government’s “beauty” agenda in to the planning system. The government also published the final versions of its newNational Model Design Codeand National Model Design Guide.

Boys Smith, who set up the think tank Create Streets before heading the government’sBuilding Better Building Beautiful Commissionwith Roger Scruton, said that while Cabe had focused on promoting design reviews of specific projects, the Office for Place was instead likely to take a role accrediting local design codes drawn up by councils and developers.

The body,announced last year, will also undertake research on placemaking and focus on sharing best practice.

Speaking to Building Design’s sister title Housng Today, he said: “I do think this is different to Cabe. The world has moved on. What Cabe did successfully was embed the practice of design review. But when Cabe existed, and subsequently, we’re not creating enough good places. We need to do more.

“凯布以前做不到的事情现在可以做了。你可以更容易地做一些研究——广泛的数字参与的机会已经彻底改变了。我们处在不同的位置。

“地方办公室不是凯布2号，它的设置不是为了凯布，它的设置是为了满足我们现在的需求。”

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Asked whether the body would take a role accrediting local design codes, Boys Smith said the board hadn’t made a definite decision but that it was “highly probable we will”. He added the board was in discussions with government over the exact final form of the body, and whether it required statutory powers.

他说，虽然制定地方法规和开展研究将是该机构最初的重点，但它最终也将成为政府的顾问，并培训专业人员实施其住房设计议程。

Read the full interview in Building Design here.