What’s in a Name?

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Matt Wood

I was talking today with a potential client of Lucas Hickman Smith, who leads a community group which (if all goes according to plan) will commission us to help them replace their worn-out village hall with a new community facility, similar to The Pennoyer Centre (which I discussed in a previous post). Our future client has been interested to read about community pubs and shops on Ruralise, as the pub in their village has finally closed after a long period of decline. Whilst the loss of the pub is clearly regretted in the village, its demise is not all bad news for the village hall project. Continue reading →

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Tweet-tastic!

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Matt Wood

I was very surprsied and flattered to see Ruralise listed in Building Design Magazine’s Twitter Architecture 100. I’ve been writing Ruralise for ten months and only started Tweeting at the start of this year, I think. I have relatively few Twitter followers compared to others in the list, but I think what’s put Ruralise in there is the fact that my Tweets often point to ‘content’ on the blog. Continue reading →

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The Norfolk Way

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Matt Wood

I finally managed to get together with Mid-Norfolk MP George Freeman at his constituency office in Dereham last week. I’ve been keen to talk to him since seeing his ideas on sustainable rural development – his ‘Norfolk Way‘ campaign – towards the end of last year. I couldn’t find the exact quote which stuck in my mind but it was something like: Continue reading →

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Grant Shapps and the ‘New Normal’

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Matt Wood

I’ve followed with interest, on Twitter and elsewhere, Grant Shapps’ thoughts on the Natural House, the Prince’s Foundation show-home which he unveiled recently at the Building Research Establishment in Watford. It culminated in a proclamation this week from the GLG that ‘eco-homes’ do not have to be ‘Scandinavian-style, ‘eco-bling’ properties that wear their green credentials for all to see…I am clear (says Shapps) that the beginning of zero carbon does not need to mean the end of Great British design’. Continue reading →

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Contemporary Vernacular?

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Matt Wood

Coming back to the issue of special and normal buildings (as I did in the last post), put me in mind of a house which I drive past occasionally on my way up to Holkham Hall, where Lucas Hickman Smith have a couple of projects at the moment. In some senses it’s a very ‘normal’ house – two storeys, perhaps three bedrooms, a pitched roof – but there’s something about it I find quite arresting in the context of Ruralise. Continue reading →

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Thanks again, BD!

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Matt Wood

If you’ve just come to Ruralise from the letters page at BD, welcome! If you’re a regular reader but can’t get behind BD’s pay-wall, the text was as follows (somewhat more discursive than BDs tightly edited version): Continue reading →

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Summer is definitely here!

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Matt Wood

A great new header-image courtesy of Jim Stephenson – a.k.a. clickclickjim – to replace a rather chilly looking view of Gonville Hall. It won’t be long before my original header can be used again – a view of the Old Mill in frettenham across a golden wheat-field – and by then I will have been writing at Ruralise for a year; time flies! Continue reading →

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CLG Publishes CRTB ‘Guide’

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Matt Wood

A brief flurry of Google-Alerts traffic in the past couple of days about the Community Right to Build (CRTB). As reported in 24 Housing Magazine and elsewhere, Grant Schapps is urging smaller communities to start thinking about how they might exploit the opportunity offered by the CRTB when it becomes law next year. Continue reading →

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Two Weeks, Two Talks.

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Matt Wood

Aqua Design asked me today via Twitter whether I’d posted anything recently that they could run in their e-newsletter The Great Architects Daily (they’ve pointed to a couple of my recent posts). I had to confess that I have slowed up a bit recently. It’s very busy at Lucas Hickman Smith, my real work, and any spare hours have been mopped up prepping for two talks. Continue reading →

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Contemporary Rural Architecture: Setting an Example

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Matt Wood

I’m giving a talk to the AGM of CPRE Norfolk in July, and the next issue of their newsletter will carry a ‘trailer’ for the talk in the form of a short article about Ruralise. Last week, the editor set me a rather awkward challenge: could I send a picture to accompany the article which would explain to a local councillor, for instance, what good contemporary rural housing might be like? That rather caught me by surprise. Distilling Ruralise into a pithy manifesto on contemporary rural design is certainly the ultimate aim, but it feels I’m still quite a way off that – as you will know if you’ve been following the blog. After a bit of thought I realised I couldn’t give a simple direct example, but I could certainly point to an architectural practice who have grappled with the sort of issues I have outlined through Ruralise – and created something special in their own corner of the UK. Continue reading →

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