A nice exchange just now with Howard, planning a Part 2 dissertation on Rural Architecture – see Comment/Contact. This follows Rory Olcayto’s report in the AJ (previous post) about Rem Koolhaas taking an interest in matters rural, and I am getting a bit of a buzz around the rural theme again, after the summer’s hiatus. A few other odds and ends…
1) I’m very excited to hear that Mary Arnold Forster is making the long trip from Skye to Norwich to talk about the work of Dualchas at our brand new school of architecture at NUCA. Head of School Adrian Friend has shown a lot of interest in Ruralise over the past year or so, particularly on themes of regionalism, and it will be interesting to see how that is expressed in the students’ work over the next couple of years.
2) I found myself yesterday back at the website of the Rural Office for Architecture based in Llandysul in south Wales. When I first visited – a good while back – there wasn’t much to see, but there’s some really interesting projects there now including a nicely crafted barn-conversion about to go on site in Edgefield, north Norfolk (a village I know quite well) and a remarkable PPS7 ‘Gummer Law’ house in Kent. The PDF-based website isn’t the easiest to use, but well worth the effort. Lovely drawings throughout.
3) I got confirmation today from the Forestry Commission that they’re happy for me to run my next special feature – a 12-part ‘think-piece’ called Forest Village. Watch this space…