PRP has delved into data from the 1990s to the present day to inform the housing estate of the future.

The practice has published Estate-Regeneration: Learning from the Past, Housing Communities of the Future with publisher Routledge, analysing data on estate regeneration from the 1990s to our modern era. 

‘Much has been written about the history of estate building but little about how these estates should be regenerated’, said the practice. ‘This book seeks to fill that gap’.  

The information in the book is presented as a guide and a learning instrument for students and practitioners, researchers and industry professionals, tenants and homeowners, clients and consultants, so that good practice and the specific search for design quality in housing and regeneration can be more readily realised.

Within the last few years housing has returned, after many decades, to the top of the political agenda with successive ministers pledging major funding programmes to support estate regeneration to end the ‘decades of neglect’ and aid social reform. 

PRP believes that affordability in housing has become ‘an emotive subject’ within this agenda, ‘with some considering that social housing provision has become housing of the last resort whilst for others it has the potential to become housing of the first resort, especially when it comes to first-time buyers in the South-East of England’. 

Estate-Regeneration describes 24 regeneration schemes from across the UK and the design philosophy and resident engagement which formed each new community. A number of essays from a wide range of industry experts and scholars amplify the learning experience from some key estate regeneration initiatives and provide observations on the broader issues of this sector of the housing market. 

Divided into five chapters, the book goes through the history of estate-regeneration, from PRP’s perspective, starting from the initial wave of estate-regeneration that commenced in the 1990s and the more pragmatic era of the early 2000s to our modern era with the introduction of private sale cross-subsidy. 

The book concludes with a visionary chapter on the future of estate-regeneration that takes into consideration the changing patterns of family life, adaptive typologies and wellbeing, which includes the impact of the current pandemic, the fall of the high-street and the return to the village, and the rise of multigenerational living and home working. 

Brendan Kilpatrick, Senior Partner at PRP and co-author, said the most rewarding aspect of estate regeneration is receiving the gratitude from those residents whose day-to-day existence has changed for the better. ‘This book aims to ensure that the estates of the future remain permanently liveable, through multiple generations, so that the comfort and security of a new home and the energy of a revitalised community permeate through the life of the estate.”

Manisha Patel, Senior Partner at PRP and co-author of the book said: “The life of an estate is like life itself. It is complex, it needs nurture and it needs renewal. Our estates are part of the incredibly rich housing lexicon that the UK possesses. Regeneration will always be needed. As long as the residents within a community are empowered to choose the direction of that regeneration, including the provision of appropriate typologies for genuinely affordable housing, then the estates of the future will remain in safe hands.”

PRP has worked in the field of estate regeneration since the mid-1990s, its first multi-tenure, mixed-use estate regeneration project in the late 1990s saw the refurbishment of parts of the Darbourne and Darke-designed Marquess Estate in Islington. Its most recent schemes include the award-winning Portobello Square in Kensington and the redevelopment of the High-Path estate in South Wimbledon.