Rural Simplicity #2 – Hunsett Mill

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Matt Wood

Finally, I’ve found time for a few words about Hunsett Mill which won the Manser Medal for ‘Best New House’ at the RIBA Awards a few weeks back. But it’s not really my own words I’m focussing on; it’s something the jury said… Continue reading →

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Roofs Across Fields #3

Posted on November 25, 2010 by Matt Wood

I talked in the last post about how growing trees can change the appearance of an urban edge over time, which reminded me… Continue reading →

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Roofs Across Fields #2

Posted on November 24, 2010 by Matt Wood

The observations I’ve made so far about the Norfolk landscape and its built forms (my four archetypes) might be interesting to some of you in their own right, but what I’m really interested in is how they might inform how we design new buildings, settlements or landscapes in a rural context – specifically Norfolk, in the first instance – not in a superficial way, to do with stylistic details, but trying to get at the underlying ‘rhythm’ or ‘flavour’ of the built environment. I’ve got some examples of what I mean lined up, but first I want to look at some more ‘roofs across fields’. Continue reading →

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Urban or Rural? The Sustainability Question

Posted on November 21, 2010 by Matt Wood

My mind has been on other things this week, away from the immediacies of the Community Right to Build (Localism Bill out soon?) and my rambling treatise on architecture in a rural context. I’ve actually been thinking about sustainability, aided by some exchanges in my rural Twitter-scape. Continue reading →

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Roofs Across Fields

Posted on November 17, 2010 by Matt Wood

Hitherto I’ve described four rural archetypes that I identified when I showed some clients around Norfolk this summer: the nucleated and non-nucleated village, the wide-fronted house and the farmstead. I haven’t listed ‘roofs across fields’ as an archetype, but it certainly seems to me like a strong characteristic of the Norfolk landscape. Continue reading →

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How to CRTB # 5 – Two Farmers and a Wedding.

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Matt Wood

I was at a wedding in Suffolk this weekend, and had interesting conversations with two farmers. After dissecting the impact that the Russian harvest was having on domestic grain prices, and the merits and demerits of forward-selling commodities, I raised with each the subject of the Community Right to Build. Neither had heard of it, but both were naturally intrigued. And both were highly sceptical. One had a very instructive anecdote to share… Continue reading →

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What Would You Do With Half a Million Quid?

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Matt Wood

In my worked example I imagined a Community Right to Build project of ten houses for sale, generating a pot of money for the CRTB ‘good cause’ of around half million quid. What does that buy? Continue reading →

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How to CRTB #4 – A Worked Example

Posted on November 7, 2010 by Matt Wood

Following the discussion about Community Right to Build (CRTB) over the past weeks and months, it strikes me that it is still focused firmly on affordable housing. As I have suggested previously, the CRTB may make a modest contribution to the affordable housing problem, but providing affordable homes for local people isn’t the only purpose to which the CRTB could be put.  In the information published by the government so far it is explicit that a wide variety of other uses, including open-market housing, will be allowed. In my post ‘How to CRTB #2 – Creating Value’ I outlined how re-classifying a piece of farmland as development land massively increases its value, and it is this value-uplift that could actually be the most interesting and productive aspect of the Community Right to Build. I thought it might be interesting to try to quantify this, so with the help of Alan Cole at Savills Norwich I’ve imagined a hypothetical CRTB project and put some numbers to it. Continue reading →

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How to CRTB #3 – Watch This Space

Posted on November 3, 2010 by Matt Wood

If you’re interested in the ‘mechanics’ of a Community Right to Build project, rather than the more design-related themes I’ve been focussing on lately, do keep an eye on Ruralise for the next week or so*. I’m doing a ‘worked example’ which will give a feel for some of the financial issues around a CRTB project. Savills Norwich have helped out with some figures, so it should be fairly robust. It will be quite long, but hopefully not too technical. I hope to post it at the end of the week, but it might be after the weekend.

*If you’re interested, why not subscribe? See right hand side of page.

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Norfolk DNA #4 – The Farmstead

Posted on November 2, 2010 by Matt Wood

The last of the four ‘rural archetypes’ I identified for my recent guided-tour of Norfolk was the farmstead – or perhaps, more generally, a relatively dense rectilinear grouping of buildings; the wider definition allows this archetype to be represented also by work-houses, groups of alms-houses and even less frequently (in Norfolk at least) industrial facilities such as maltings. Continue reading →

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