It was very flattering to be listed last week as one of the ‘Top Ten Architects to Follow’ in Building Design magazine’s ‘BD Twitter 100’. The magazine uses an automated ranking-device called Peer-Index to list architectural Twitter users according to their connectedness and level of activity. A hefty slice of subjectivity from the magazine’s editorial staff is then added to produce a number of specialist ‘Top Ten’ lists.
Building Design has shown plenty of interest in Ruralise since it began, so I suspect its inclusion in the list is actually acknowledgement of its content rather than its Twitter-connectivity. Indeed if you are one of the new followers of @Ruralise I hope you won’t feel you’ve been brought here under false pretenses! I have largely avoided the quirky or profound ‘stream of consciousness’ and ‘ooh-look-at-this’ Twitter-transmissions which might build a list of followers more quickly. Other than advertising my posts I have used Twitter mainly as a drag-net for subject-specific reading; receiving, rather than broadcasting.
The truth is I haven’t been very active either on Twitter or on the blog recently. Most of what I felt I wanted to say through Ruralise was written (and flagged via Twitter) during 2011, while I had relatively few subscribers and followers. And with the exception of my features on Tayler & Green and Forest Village, last year was relatively quiet. My thoughts about contemporary design in a rural context were written and posted in a rather haphazard fashion, and I’ve had a couple of attempts at guiding people through it – here, for instance, or more recently here.
There will probably be some more stuff on the Community Right to Build coming up; as I have reported recently we are involved in a live CRTB project at Lucas Hickman Smith, one of only a handful in the country. A little early to say any more, but watch this space…using Twitter, obviously.