Common of Houses: Electoral Reform Competition now open

The Common of Houses: Electoral Reform design competition is now open. Got an idea for how the voting system could be redesigned? Then visit the site and get drawing.

Second Glasgow Exhibition

The owner of "Clark Thomas - Express Alterations" in Glasgow has kindly donated part of the vacant shopfront next to their shop to show some of the Common of Houses entries. Its quite a good location right beside the main bus stops to and from the City centre. Its just a small selection of the work but we will be alternating the ones on display and are arranging to have the For sale/ to let signage moved to use the entrie frontage. In the meantime the sign is adding a fun extra dimension to the work with people actually thinking that its the Common of Houses entries are for sale.

Half of MPs to be asked to repay.

"MPs can expect a fresh attack on their reputations when the man assigned by Gordon Brown to audit their expenses publishes his final report.
Sir Thomas Legg will criticise MPs for establishing a "culture of deference", making it difficult for officials to query or challenge their claims.
About 350 MPs are expected to have been asked to repay claims totalling £1m.
But sources suggest Sir Thomas' methods will be called into question by the senior judge considering MPs' appeals. "

Read the rest on the BBC site.

CoH Exhibition @ Glasgow

Here are some of the images from the Glasgow installation that entrants Jude, Phil and Neil put together with the huge assistance of Jane Briggs last Friday. They were lucky with the weather as it's been snowing or slushing ever since.

Apparently the show went down pretty well with the random visitors and was very popular with a couple of little drunk chaps who had some very strong views which Jane advises "would disturb" so we'd best not ask. Suggestions/ comments / votes we can print include things like -

' Maybe we should put the ducks in the House of Commons'

'All nice, love pie in the sky because I'm hungry'

Good work to team Glasgow for putting on the show. There should hopefully be another show happening in Glasgow in January before it heads off on tour.

Tour begins

Well the first stop on the Common of Houses tour is to be in Glasgow where two entrant teams (Neil, Jude and Phil) have joined forces to put on an impromptu exhibition in George Square in the centre of Glasgow.

They are doing it as part of Central Station's launch - have a click and hear what that have to say about it - http://www.thisiscentralstation.com/events/common-of-houses-exhibition.aspx

Fingers crossed they don't get arrested for setting up a show on the front steps of the City Chambers.

UPDATE - Delayed start - I got a message from the guys setting up the exhibition on Sunday over the weekend to say that unfortunetly due to illness they have had to postpone. They are currently arranging for a new time.

MPs' mortgage claims 'should end'

Looks like progress in the MPs' expenses policy though they still have to vote it through. The report does seem to be getting to some of the root issues with the current operation. Will MPs accept it?

Interesting read - take a look here.

We've had a few emails from people about the touring show - well plans are developing. The exhibition kit will be getting put together next weekend. To wet your appetite - here's a very rough sketch of the kind of thing we will be doing.

Legg got his work cut out

Dr Legg off of Eastenders is trying to sort out the MPs' expenses and they are not happy about it at all.

Expenses still rolling

So MPs' are back from their hols and straight into the expenses fiasco again. It does seem that no one is actually getting to the root of the problem. We are being dragged into the minutiae of the individual cases and not dealing with the whole thing as a concept. Less about whats been done and more about what we do next would be good - it seems far more important. The individual cases can be dealt with later.

Well maybe we can help get people's brains onto new ways of thinking about the whole thing.

We are going to organise a touring exhibition. Funded, curated, hosted and setup by the entrants to the competition, this tour will be visiting public spaces around the country at the end of this year and the beginning of the next. Each will be unique and will provide a forum for the public to give us their thoughts on all aspects of expenses and reform that are needed in our current systems.

More details to follow but if you'd like more info or would like to volunteer to get involved and help curate a show of the work in your constituency then we'd love to hear from you.

info@commonofhouses.co.uk

AJ 27.08.09

The Peoples Champion

Ok just out of interest we have tallied up the public's vote as of midnight 31/08/09 and the "most popular" seem to have been. (And yes we know it was not a fool proof method - we were just curious to see what came out top.)

Runners up - An EC Machine by Blane Hammerlund and The commons Bridge by Charles Lloyd Mashburn Jr.

The most popular and therefore the people's Champion was Soapbox Towers by Jemma Horwood/ Mark Rintoul.

Sadly the only prize for the public vote is a warm sense of public's love washing over the winners but well done to all three anyways.

But did you agree? Please have a look through all the images and have a read of the explanations and then post your thoughts and comments. Lets get some debates going.

Tell the Tele

Someone just alerted us to this small article on the Telegraphs site - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6061315/Architects-design-state-owned-homes-for-MPs-after-expenses-scandal.html

Good to see the ideas spreading - now we just need some MP's thoughts.

Public v Experts

We've had quite a few emails and comments that two of the final three shortlisted entries are not actual buildings so thought we should give a general responce.

While the main set out of the competition was to design two types of housing - the brief did allow for people to submit their own unique solutions to the problem if they so wished and the judges were given the discretion to choose one of these if they preferred.

Obviously that wasn't the original intent of the project and these types of entry were intended to allow the debate to become more wide ranging but we were very happy to see other kinds of soloution.

Indeed there was a lot of discussion amongst the judges about this and they all agreed initially that they wanted an actual building to be the winner - the results however are what they finally agreed upon.

It is interesting to note that the public vote (to the right) completely disagrees with the "experts" decision and I am intrigued to see who the eventual winner is in public's eyes so we will count the vote at midnight on Monday and see who is the people's champion.

Lighthouse Closed

Some sad news this week as The Lighthouse in Glasgow goes into administration. This unfortunately has an effect on this project as The Lighthouse were to host the main exhibition of the entries next month and were also the projects only funders. Obviously both of these are now dead dodos. We will start looking into other ways of taking it forward. It has been suggested that we maybe set up some kind of small touring exhibition throughout the entire country to allow more people to see and comment on the ideas raised.

If you have a gallery space that would be interested in showing a version of the Common of Houses exhibition then please email info@commonofhouses.co.uk with your ideas. We'd also like to get as many MP's to read and think about the proposals suggest here so why not write to your local MP and tell them to have a look and what your favourite project is.

The winner

The competition has been won by Glasgow based architects Jude Barber and Phil Zoechbauer of Collective Architecture for their winning design “Common Houses” which looks to increase participation in democracy through a network of local assemblies served by re-nationalised railways and ferries'.
[Click here for more info on this entry.]

Runner up two

The second runner up is Sarah Siena Edwards for her design “Ministers Mole Hole” which utilises the underground tunnels of London to create dormitory accommodation for MP’s.

[Click here for more info on this entry.]

Runner up one

The first runner up was Neil McGuire for his design “Redacted Residencies”, which turns Westminster into a museum of Lying and imagines that MP’s expense claims are processed through a computer which creates house designs based on the “honesty” of their claims.

[Click here for more info on this entry]

Drum roll please . . .

Well it appears the AJ have decided to let the cat out of the bag so I guess I'd better reveal who the winning entries were, but first here are some photos of the judges and I having a right good debate.

It was a lot of fun but with such a high quality of entries I didn't envy the judges having to narrow it down to a shortlist let alone choose a winner. Eventually they somehow managed it - though at one point I thought there might end up being 12 winners.

Keiran Long tries to hide behind one of the shortlisted entries
Ken and I play a game of "name that building" Cathy and Crispin looking serious

I'd like to give a big thanks to the judges for taking the time to go through everything in such detail. They really made the whole process seamless and I really enjoyed the discussions. My only regret is that we were really only just getting going when our time ran out.

[All images above are copyright Merlin Fulcher 2009, merlin.fulcher@gmail.com]

Judged

Just returned from London Town and had a really fun day of judging at AJ towers. Mega thanks to all the judges for taking the time to come and give their thoughts in the lively discussion.

I think the judges chose a very interesting shortlist and we will start looking at ways to take the winner forward in some manner. [I guess that means we'd better send it to Prince Charles now for approval!]

The winner will be revealed in a few days and we will also be adding all the entrants names onto the entries so you can see what was by who.

As we said to a few of you by email, you are welcome to still send in your proposals for MP homes - or alternate solutions to the problem. They will be gladly recieved and uploaded to the site and possibly used in the exhibition.

THE COMPETITION WINNER

28/08/09
WINNER
The competition has been won by Glasgow based architects Jude Barber and Phil Zoechbauer of Collective Architecture for their winning design “Common Houses”.

RUNNERS UP
The runners up were Sarah Siena Edwards and Neil McGuire. [Click here for info on the winning entries.]