A Tale of Two Competitions #2 – Lawrenny, Pembrokshire

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Matt Wood

The second of the two competitions I wanted to mention was also run with help from the RIBA Competitions Service, and followed a year or so after the Elmswell competition (see previous post). Like Elmswell, the competition to extend the village of Lawrenny in Pembrokeshire involved the design of new housing in a rural/village context, but the brief was more concerned with the overall sustainability and viability of the whole village. Again, a fascinating brief, which promised to produce something interesting and important – and it attracted a similarly high-powered shortlist of architects. Continue reading →

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A Tale of Two Competitions #1: Clay Fields

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Matt Wood

When I started writing Ruralise I had a list of things I wanted to cover. I thought it would be good for a few months, but as it’s turned out it’s taken me over a year to get the last few items on the list – one of which is a tale of two competitions. Both competitions were run with help from the RIBA Competitions Service and both, quite unusually (then, and still), concerned rural housing. Continue reading →

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More Norwegian Wood

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Matt Wood

Well, while we’re on the subject of Norway (see last post) it’s probably a good opportunity to cross an item off my original Ruralise to-do list – and in fact the ‘curvy’ theme tees this up nicely. Continue reading →

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Ruralise Goes Off Piste

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Matt Wood

You won’t often catch me enthusing about some rare, innovative, one-off architectural tour de force here on Ruralise; there’s plenty of magazines and blogs out there to take care of that. But this project by Norwegian supremos Snohetta really took my fancy. Continue reading →

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Challenging Times for Affordable Housing

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Matt Wood

I attended a very good event on the future of affordable housing in Norfolk last week, hosted by Saffron Housing. Chief Executive Adam Ronaldson gave a sobering account of the impact that the credit crunch and recent government policy are having on the affordable-homes sector in Norfolk. There were some rather troubling statistics. Continue reading →

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How to CRTB #7 – New Draft Regulations

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Matt Wood

In the month of radio-silence here at Ruralise following the end of FANN-XI there was a little flurry of publications in connection with the Community Right to Build. Most interesting of these is a set of proposed Neighbourhood Planning Regulations, published for consultation by the Department for Communities and Local Government. The Regulations give more-detailed guidance on: Continue reading →

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Festival Chit-Chat…

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Matt Wood

Regular Ruralise readers will have noticed it’s been a bit quiet here since the end of FANN-XI, while I’ve been catching up on a number of loose ends and dealing with a flurry of new-business enquiries at Lucas Hickman Smith, one of which, already fruitful, I will tell you about soon here, as it is very ‘on message’ for Ruralise. In the meantime one last bit of FANN-XI business… Continue reading →

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Blink and You’ve Missed It!

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Matt Wood

Talking again, as I was in the previous post, about special and normal buildings, this might be the time to mention a Lucas Hickman Smith project that I’ve been meaning to write about since I joined the practice almost a year ago – a little house in Hardingham, Norfolk, called Appleacre. Continue reading →

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Normal…or Just Mediocre?

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Matt Wood

An interesting piece in BD this week by Owen Hatherley in their ‘Opinion’ slot, touching on the special/normal issue that I’ve come back to repeatedly on Ruralise (start here if you’re interested). ‘Every generation’ Hatherley notes ‘ manages to get very angry about its own standard of not-very-goodness’, citing the scorn heaped upon house-builders’ ‘bypass-Tudor’ by critics in the 30s and mass-produced system-built flats in the 60s. Continue reading →

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FANN-XI: Some Answers

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Matt Wood

If you’re here because you saw the Ruralise board in the FANN-XI architecture festival exhibition at the Forum (FANN-Board-Ruralise-110909), it occurs to me you might actually be expecting some answers to the rhetorical questions I used to give a flavour of what Ruralise is about. So here goes: Continue reading →

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