Guernsey architect believes high rise could solve the housing problem

Monday, 11 November 2024 07:15

A Guernsey architect has used social media to float his ideas of how Guernsey can accommodate more homes without littering the island with properties.

Olly Brock is an architect who now describes himself as a placemaker, essentially this is a more rounded way of planning urban design.

For the past few weeks he has been posting images online of buildings that could solve Guernsey's urgent need to build new homes:

"I did my final year dissertation on a subject called offshore urbanisation which is what islands can do in the face of economic and social expansion."

He believes that the home building target set by the States could do with imaginative planning, by using a minimal footprint and building high, rather than pepper the landscape with the trend for grey and white modern 'boxes in the countryside.'

He's designed a tower block for Union Street in St Peter Port, called La Tour de Neuville:

"They could go up seven, eight, nine, ten, stories before they even broke the skyline of St Peter Port. That could be really successful. There you are, right on the outskirts of Town, you've got really good vehicle access and you could have underground parking."

He says the reaction online to this image has been generally positive, as has the one for the Bridge, St Sampsons:

"Building a row of houses and apartments on the water side of the Bridge. Cantilevering a structure over the marina that would need to be clear for boats to go underneath it, but actually building houses to enclose the Bridge."

He has emailed his designs to deputies as well as posting them online to get people reacting to them, in the hope that his answer to urban planning could be part of the mix of new housing.