The industrialisation of building: building systems and social housing in postwar Britain 1942 to 1975

This study describes the development of system building in postwar social housing. System building required major transformations in the nature of the building producer and client. The transformation in the producer consisted of a change from the conventional pattern of selling the capacity to build individual buildings to selling a specific product, the building system, a general feature of which was its use of new building technologies and requirement for considerable capital investment. The transformation in the client consisted of a departure from the historical pattern of conceiving each building as an individual project to presenting large programmes of standardised buildings. These transformations took place within a specific historical epoch - the Welfare State. While the Welfare State provided conditions favourable to system building, it is argued that the policies persued by central government, the building industry, local authorities, the architectural profession and building trades unions played a crucial role in its development. These are examined in turn. The concept of mass production was continually associated with postwar developments in building technology, and the attraction of this idea to Welfare policy makers is also discussed. Chapters Six and Seven look in detail at the types of system promoted, both by government research and development architects and by commercial sponsors. The last chapter examines the architectural character of the housing produced by system building and the. relationship between technology and design theory in social housing

‘Stop-go’ policy and the restriction of post-war British house-building

From the mid-1950s to the early 1980s the Treasury and Bank of England successfully advocated a policy of restricting both private and public sector house-building, as a key but covert instrument of their wider ‘stop-go’ macroeconomic policy framework. While the intensity of restrictions varied over the economic cycle, private house-building was restricted (through limiting mortgage availability) for almost all this period. This was achieved by keeping building society interest rates low relative to other interest rates and thus starving the building society movement of mortgage funds. Mortgage restriction was never publicly discussed and sometimes operated alongside ambitious housing targets and well-publicised policy initiatives to boost housing demand. This paper outlines the evolution of house-building restriction, together with its impacts on the housing sector and the wider economy. We review the evolution of the policy framework and its consequences, compare the level and stability of British house-building during this period - historically and relative to other countries, and undertake time-series econometric analysis of its impacts on both house-building and house prices. Finally, implications for debates regarding stop-go policy, Britain’s housing problem, and the distributional consequences of government macroeconomic policy are discussed

Selective loss of GABAB receptors in orexin-producing neurons results in disrupted sleep/wakefulness architecture

Hypothalamic neurons that contain the neuropeptide orexin (hypocretin) play important roles in the regulation of sleep/wake. Here we analyze the in vivo and in vitro phenotype of mice lacking the GABAB1 gene specifically in orexin neurons (oxGKO mice) and demonstrate that GABAB receptors on orexin neurons are essential in stabilizing and consolidating sleep/wake states. In oxGKO brain slices, we show that the absence of GABAB receptors decreases the sensitivity of orexin neurons to both excitatory and inhibitory inputs because of augmented GABAA-mediated inhibition that increases the membrane conductance and shunts postsynaptic currents in these neurons. This increase in GABAA-mediated inhibitory tone is apparently the result of an orexin receptor type 1-mediated activation of local GABAergic interneurons that project back onto orexin neurons. oxGKO mice exhibit severe fragmentation of sleep/wake states during both the light and dark periods, without showing an abnormality in total sleep time or signs of cataplexy. Thus, GABAB receptors on orexin neurons are crucial in the appropriate control of the orexinergic tone through sleep/wake states, thereby stabilizing the state switching mechanisms