Wayne Hemingway: Fashionista with designs on your home

The IoS interview: Wayne Hemingway, designer

Wayne Hemingway is not a man to mince words. He's a Gerald Ratner kind of guy. If it's rubbish, he'll readily tell you it's crap. And if there's one thing he hates, it's bland, uniform, dull design.

The former fashion designer, who made millions three years ago when he and his wife and business partner Gerardine sold their influential high street chain Red or Dead, is more than ready to speak out about the poor shape of English housing. The countryside, he said in The Independent last year, is being ruined by Identikit boxes. Housebuilders, he complained, have defaced rural areas with a hotchpotch of architectural pastiche. And with 3.8 million new homes needed in the next 25 years, that's a disaster for us all if it continues.

Today, Hemingway is trying to stop that disaster in its tracks. His tactic is a simple one: he has joined forces with the enemy. He is the proud designer of an estate of 700 Wimpey homes in Gateshead, an innovative scheme that he promises will cause the shake-up British housebuilding so badly needs. Last week the first phase of 158 houses won planning permission from the local council.

Hemingway's Independent article was one of several criticisms of Wimpey he made in the press, and he was surprised when he and his wife were asked to attend a meeting with the firm's managing director, Keith Cushen.

"To be honest, I thought we'd get a ticking off at best, and they were probably ready to sue me. [But] he said he wanted us to work with them. It was a challenge I couldn't turn down."

The Hemingways were insistent they worked on homes that average-income families could afford to buy, rather than the pricey, loft-style apartments Wimpey first mooted. "There are plenty of designers such as John Rocca and Terence Conran who have worked with housebuilders," says Hemingway, "but all that has done has given the builders an excuse to raise the price. I wanted something that would be lived in by ordinary people."

Wimpey suggested a run-down site in Gateshead on the banks of the Tyne. Attempts had been made to regenerate the area – it was used for a garden festival during the Thatcher years – but it had become derelict once more. The land, which covers 40 acres, is a 15-minute walk from both Newcastle and Gateshead, and is cheap – essential if the houses are going to be affordable (and they will be, with prices starting at £65,000).

The Hemingways took to the drawing board after studying house design both in Britain and overseas. They visited Sweden, Holland and Australia for ideas about what not to do, as well as what might work in this country.

"We wanted spaces for children to play, we didn't want the car to dominate, and we wanted people to be able to choose the kind of space they lived in," Hemingway explains. "The way we live is changing fast, and it suits many families to have a big living space incorporating the kitchen and living room in one."

Should you be expecting zany angles, riotous colours and an eccentric choice of building materials, forget it. There are 28 designs of houses on the Staiths South Bank estate, and customised interiors, but the basic shape is the standard English terrace, with garden.

"Too many architects in this country sound off about the places people ought to live in, but there's no getting away from it, the British like gardening. So we should just accept it," says Hemingway, whose own house, which he and his wife designed, is near the Sussex coast.

Long before he became a fashion designer, he studied geography. He grew up in Blackburn in Lancashire, and Gerardine comes from Burnley. Both recall days spent as youngsters playing on the "rec". The Gateshead complex includes a series of such open spaces for children, football pitches and lots of landscaping. Other innovations might not please parents so much; some parking places are well away from houses, while rubbish has to be taken to recycling bins a walk away from front doors.

Hemingway calls the project "friendly modernism". "Housebuilders are incredibly conservative and so are their suppliers. Just trying to get something other than standard white windows was hard. But Gerardine was persuasive. We wanted it, so we got it."

The Hemingways are now talking to several housing authorities about ventures elsewhere, and Wimpey is keen to do more projects.

"We had the most fun and mental stimulation that we've ever had," says Hemingway of the Gateshead experiment. "It made fashion seem so frivolous."

Biography

1961 Born in Lancashire

1979 BSc in Geography from London University

1982 Sets up Red or Dead with Gerardine Astin. They marry and have four children

1999 Multi-million-pound sale of Red or Dead

2001 Article attacking housebuilders in The Independent leads to work on project with Wimpey

July 2002 Wins planning permission for first phase of Staiths South Bank estate, Gateshead