design | planning permission | building regulations
Long hours at the computer using CAD software, researching products or dis/proving a planning case can be hard on the eyes. A TV a few feet further away can help, but only if tuned to something that doesn’t distract too much from the work – looking up once every few minutes is ideal. It could be a news channel or even the Parliament channel but now we have… The Ashes!
Five day matches, quiet late nights, one or two runs an hour, perfect.
When we bought our small terraced home in 2007, little did we know that 10 years later we would have successfully extended and converted it into 4 flats.
It has been a long, transformative, arduous, educational, profitable and ultimately uplifting process…
The site always had potential but it took some creative design to enable 4 viable flats on a very tight site. There was also quite a battle with the local planning authority who were fantastically unhelpful – and wrong! as proved when they were forced to accept the obvious merits of our case by the Planning Inspectorate at appeal.
Then there was the credit crunch mess of cowboy banks gambling too much (of taxpayers’ money) and then too little (to protect their bonuses?!). I will never forget one large lender withdrawing from the market telling me they were unwilling to lend for our flats in Surrey as flats were risky because “there are lots of unsold flats in central Manchester”! Words fail.
Then a widely recommended builder promptly went bust days before starting, leaving us with no option but to self-build to beat a fast-looming planning deadline. Later, the water company managed to dig up the footpath 7 times before getting it right and we had to synthesise and redraw 6 contradictory electrical supply technical plans from the statutory supplier into one definitive drawing which they immediately approved. So, not always easy.
On the positive side, it has brought a huge breadth and depth of hands-on knowledge, a tremendous feeling of satisfaction, a healthy profit and a fantastic contribution to the community and its housing stock within 10 yards of a busy London commuter railway station. Within days of launch an airline pilot and young couple wanted to move in, with many more viewings being booked. Neighbours and a local housebuilder have stopped by to congratulate and thank us on a job well done to improve the area. The first building directly opposite anyone leaving the railway station is now not a dilapidated eyesore but a bright, transformed development to welcome and lift the spirits of travellers.
I am glad now to have more time to spend on Zollikon Architecture again – and with much enhanced knowledge. Despite, or perhaps because of, the countless obstacles met and overcome through sheer bloody-minded hard work over years, the flats project will remain a source of pride (and hopefully income) for many years to come.
An artist selling inspirational artwork in Covent Garden recently reminded me of some powerful words by President Theodore Roosevelt:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
It still strikes a chord as I read it now. Thankfully, we met every defeat, and every armchair critic, with a victory.
Simply, it is a village near (now a suburb of) Zurich in Switzerland where my father, Peter Stehrenberger, came from. He was an amazing figure – from national 1500m running champion, to emigrating to the UK (on a moped, no cash for return petrol!) and Australia, to becoming Finance Director of one of the world’s leading media companies (and director of dozens more) despite having left school at 15.
Zollikon was once famous as the site of the world’s first ‘free’ or protestant church in the heady days of the reformation – a place capable of revolutionary, honest and brave thinking, belief and action. These days it perhaps more prosaically notable as one of the most exclusive districts in one of the richest countries in the world, with absurdly expensive property to match, it being on the favoured sunnier northern edge of Lake Zurich.
Although my Dad left to pursue his dreams (and to escape the flipside of Switzerland’s curated perfection – its endless rules), his old home was always a magical holiday destination for me as a child, with a warm family welcome after many hours of driving, night and day, from England.
So, roots, history, sense of self, honouring my Dad – deep memories never to forget. But also somehow an idealised aspiration – a destination worth always working towards.
That’s why. Tschüss!
So, the old web site has run its course. Only ever intended as a temporary placeholder for those wanting to know a little more about Zollikon Architecture, it ended up serving us well enough for several years.
We hope you like the look and content of this new site, re-imagined as a part of our January 2018 re-launch. We opted for a simpler web presence with the ability to keep it up to date ourselves and hope it strikes the right balance.
If there is anything you would like to see on this new site, any suggestions for improvements, please do get in touch.
