Monthly Archives: March 2011

Local Materials Faux Pas

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Matt Wood

While writing the recent posts on local building materials, I was thinking about an estate in Wymondham called Whispering Oaks. The development is set at the very northern tip of the town, over a mile from the town centre and … Continue reading →

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Building Norfolk

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Matt Wood

Matthew Rice’s book ‘Building Norfolk’ attracted quite a lot of attention when it was published last year; not surprisingly. It is a beautiful book full of exuberant, colourful drawings. I could write a whole other post, lamenting the death of … Continue reading →

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Norfolk’s ‘High-Road’ Buildings

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Matt Wood

As I explained in a previous post Stewart Brand in his excellent book ‘How Buildings Learn’ makes a distinction between ‘high road’ or special buildings and ‘low road’ or normal, everyday buildings. I also noted that the vast majority of … Continue reading →

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More Norfolk ‘Stuff’

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Matt Wood

So the vast majority of Norfolk is covered in brick-built houses with pan-tiled roofs, with plenty of surviving older timber-framed buildings, typically rendered over and painted – but that’s not the end of the story, of course.

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Greetings from Legoland

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Matt Wood

This week, Housing Minister Grant Shapp’s wrote to the Design Council, which has taken over the charred remains of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), torched in the Coalition’s ‘bonfire of the quangos’. He urged them to … Continue reading →

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Norfolk ‘Stuff’

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Matt Wood

Well, that’s enough policy-wonking for now. I said my ‘thatch-fest’ a couple of weeks ago could be a segue into some stuff on ‘stuff’– or ‘what we make buildings out of’. I took this picture (below) while I was researching … Continue reading →

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Er…Sorry; So it is a Nimby Charter!

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Matt Wood

I went to a very well attended breakfast seminar on the Localism Bill hosted by solicitors Howes Percival last week. The pre-seminar buzz amongst the impressively grey-suited property crowd was the previous day’s news that the Greater Norwich Development Partnership … Continue reading →

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Spring Has Sprung!

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Matt Wood

There was a real tingle of spring in the air today in south-Norfolk. If you’re a regular visitor, you’ll appreciate the change of header-image. Goodbye snow-laced Wicklewood; hello sunny Wymondham…

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The Future for Architects?

Posted on March 6, 2011 by Matt Wood

A provocative report from the RIBA’s think-tank ‘Building Futures’ continued to generate comment in the architectural press last week. The report predicts that the building-design industry will become increasingly globalised, with a smaller number of very large multi-national studios using … Continue reading →

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