Here is a link to the full episode.

In this episode, Paul chats with Cany Ash, co-founder of Ash Sakula, a London-based, award-winning architectural studio known for its bold and innovative approach to design. Cany shares her journey, from her mother’s transformative experiments with spaces to shaping her vision for radically rethinking housing and neighbourhoods. Together, they explore how collaborative trust between architects, planners, and developers can spark real change, why isolated estates are a false economy and the transformative potential of "house-on-a-house” each with their own front door to the street.

Discover how Ash Sakula creates developments that enhance places physically and socially, and what’s needed to make this approach mainstream.

Follow Ash Sakula’s campaign, for Profitable Neighbourhoods:  https://profitableneighbourhoods.co.uk/

#ArchitecturePodcast #FutureNeighbourhoods #AshSakula #UrbanDesign #CommunityBuilding

KEY TAKEAWAYS 

• When a council is truly invested in a project seemingly impossible issues are overcome. Resident-led transformation also moves fast. 
• Unless architects, planners and developers start trusting each other and truly work together things will not change.
• The best developments enrich a place physically and socially. 
• Cany believes that building isolated housing estates when there is so much land elsewhere that can be revitalised is a false economy. 
• Developments need to make sense for all parties, the developers, residents and the local authority. 
• Right now, design codes and planning are far too restrictive. 
• Creating a Profitable Neighbourhood ‘Twin’: one house on top of another house, with each having a proper front door, makes development viable in far more places. 
  
  
   BEST MOMENTS 
  
   “The business of making stuff feels to me like a human right.” 
  “It was a real toggle of different house shapes, but it got more homes on the site.” 
  “Nothing ever comes from nowhere. There is a need to create the right compost for development and the right ambition.”
   “The one thing we've got to stop doing is building house builder estates 3 roundabouts from the nearest pint of milk.”
  “Create micro neighbourhoods inside larger neighbourhoods inside towns.” 
  
  
   EPISODE RESOURCES 
  www.profitableneighbourhoods.co.uk
  https://www.ashsak.com
  https://www.phoenixlewes.com/
  https://lewishamsmallsites.co.uk/
  https://archello.com/project/the-malings
  https://www.lilac.coop

ABOUT THE HOST 

Paul Higgs is a Chartered Planning and Development Surveyor with 40+ years' experience in land, planning and development and a 100% success track record in winning planning consents.

Paul undertook his first refurb project when he was just 17 and then worked his way up from labouring on building sites to becoming Head of Land for renowned plc housebuilder, Barratt Developments. He managed to escape the corporate world in 2002 to set up what is now a multimillion-pound award-winning property development company, Millbank Group. 

In 2013 Paul founded the Millbank Land Academy, the UK’s first training company dedicated to property development; to teach established and aspiring developers the insider secrets the big housebuilders don’t want you to know! 

Paul is also a founding investor and former board director of the industry-leading PropTech Co, LandTech, and has lectured on Advanced Development Valuations on the MSc Property Development at London South Bank University.

CONTACT METHOD

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-higgs

Millbank Land Academy: https://www.millbanklandacademy.co.uk

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/paulhiggsofficial

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@InsidePropertyDevelopment