Sounds Sensible…

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Matt Wood

The Community Land Trust website reports on the announcement that the threshold of support for Community Right to Build projects will be lowered from 90% to 75%. They also note… Continue reading →

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Real Rural Vernacular – Norfolk’s DNA

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Matt Wood

In the previous post I described a house-builders’ vernacular which despite some superficial stylistic references to rural architecture has led to housing estates that are nothing like real villages. I was recently asked to lead a two-day tour of Norwich and Norfolk for a London-based developer promoting a large development-site on the outskirts of the city.  I was born in Norwich, grew up in Wymondham, and moved back here eight years ago after a decade each in London and Brighton, so I reckon I know Norfolk fairly well…but it was really interesting to look at its landscape and settlement pattern critically, as if from the outside. Continue reading →

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Villages on Steroids

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Matt Wood

All Community Right to Build projects will take place in the context of an existing village, and its promoters will no doubt want to add to their village in a sympathetic and sensitive manner. So what might a contemporary ‘village architecture’ be like? Continue reading →

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Watch this space…

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Matt Wood

After an initial burst of activity things will now go quiet here for a bit. When I resume I will be re-focusing a bit on design – which is mostly supposed to be what Ruralise is about. What to look out for in the coming weeks: Continue reading →

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CRTB: How Many Homes?

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Matt Wood

As I said in a previous post, the ‘sustainablility’ logic behind the planners’ preference for large-scale development, centred on a limited number of highly serviced, highly accessible centres, is lost on most ‘normal’ people. It seems only common sense to ‘spread out’ new development across all of a region’s towns and villages. The Community Right to Build might seem like the way to achieve this…so it is natural to ask: ‘How many new homes could the Community Right to Build deliver?’ Continue reading →

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Architectural Press Showing Interest…

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Matt Wood

Weekly construction-industry newspaper Building Design covers last week’s announcement of the new lower threshold of support for a Community Right to Build (CRTB) project. The RIBA mentioned the Planning Officers’ Society consultation response in its Members’ Newsletter last week. Prior to that, not a peep from the architectural press (unless I missed something). I had been thinking that perhaps the profession really does have no interest at all in rural issues; now that it seems CRTB will at least appear in the Bill, I hope I will be proved wrong.

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How to CRTB #2 – Creating Value

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Matt Wood

I said in a previous post it was ironic that the Coalition spending-cuts have hit a programme aimed at supporting community run pubs. It isn’t ironic, of course – in fact it’s ideologically consistent with the whole thrust of the ‘Big Society’ which favours local initiatives over national intervention. The basic idea behind the Community Right to Build (CRTB) is to capture the value-uplift of development within the community that sanctions it, and to use that value to fund community projects of one sort or another – rather than have them funded by government. It works something like this: Continue reading →

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It’s in the countryside…but is it rural?

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Matt Wood

Rowan Moore in the Guardian is the latest to cover Living Architecture, a new holiday-home business that has commissioned five internationally acclaimed architects to design modern country houses. Their intention (a highly laudable one) is to enthuse people about modern architecture by letting them get closer to it. All five houses occupy beautiful rural sites…but what do they tell us about how we might build in the countryside? Continue reading →

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Is it a shub? Is it a pop? No, it’s…

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Matt Wood

…well, it’s a pub with a village shop in it, so it’s probably a ‘pop’…like this one in Somerset, or this one in Tacolneston, not far from where I live in Norfolk. OK; the second one’s actually a beer shop…but you get the point. Continue reading →

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The Heart of a Village

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Matt Wood

The British Beer and Pub Association reports (here) that 900 pubs closed in the last year. The village pub, school and shop/Post office between them form, if you will, a Holy Trinity of ‘village life’*. Both the Telegraph and Daily Mail link pubs and shops in their coverage. Empty former shops are a common sight in my bit of Norfolk, and it’s sad to think the pub might go the same way. Of course the lack of a village shop doesn’t instantly make a village un-inhabitable, and it’s important not to over-romanticise this issue. The reason shops have closed is because most of us prefer the range of goods, the price and convenience of the super-market. (Come on; it really is). Continue reading →

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