South Wales is usually pictured through its rows of stone terraces. Less conspicuous are the aluminium bungalows, steel-framed houses and concrete systems built across the twentieth century - many now concealed behind later brickwork or insulated render, and no longer recognisable from the street.
Concrete Communities is a regional introduction to non-traditional housing: how these houses were made, why public authorities adopted them, and what their construction means for repair, retrofit and ownership today.
Inside:
• The post-war temporary bungalow programme, including the AIROH and Tarran systems, a preserved example at St Fagans and a resident's account from Cefn-coed-y-cymmer
• Permanent timber and steel-framed housing, including BISF houses and Cardiff's retrofit programme
• Precast reinforced concrete systems - Airey, Boot, Cornish Unit, Dorran, Orlit, Reema, Smith, Unity, Wates, Woolaway and No-Fines - as twelve illustrated construction profiles
• The Housing Defects Act 1984, licensed repairs, and the necessary distinction between PRC and RAAC
• Modern methods of construction and recent low-energy schemes near Swansea and Bridgend
• A practical chapter on buying, surveying, insuring and retrofitting a non-traditional house: mortgage lending, RICS survey levels, asbestos, EPCs and retrofit funding
Seventeen construction plates, fourteen dated photographs, a field identification guide, chronology, glossary and full source references support the text. Welsh examples are distinguished from British comparisons throughout, and photographs are reproduced without cropping, retouching or invented detail.
For owners, tenants, surveyors, conservation officers and local historians - and for anyone who has wondered what is actually behind their walls.
