Last week I went to see a building I’d been longing to visit since it opened in 2009. The School of Architecture in Nantes (ENSA) by Architects Anne Lacaton & Jean-Philippe Vassal takes a provocative and inspiring attitude to educational space that is sadly lacking in most British universities. It looks like a carpark, which is pretty much what it is in its construction. From their first...

The UK is one of the least forested nations in Europe with only 12% of land area covered and 80% of the sawn softwood used in construction is imported (Forestry Commission figures, 2014). Hidden away in a 350 acre working forest in Dorset, students from the Architectural Association are experimenting with new ways of designing and making buildings using locally grown timber. Isolation and the woodland setting are...

On Sunday we headed over to Barrington Court, the first large house taken on by the National Trust (in 1907), and one that caused them such serious financial difficulties that it was held up for years after as an example of why they should be vary wary of taking on other stately homes. For over ...

Over the last couple of months I’ve been challenging the most ill-conceived piece of planning legislation that I’ve come across since working as an architect. Permitted Development is a very sensible policy that enables certain development to be carried out without applying for planning permission. It has always been restricted to minor works that would not have a detrimental affect on the appearance of a building or the landscape. It allows people to ...

The first time I saw the work of the Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf was ten years ago on a visit to Bentley in Hampshire where he had collaborated on the gardens of Bury Court, a hop farm that was converted to a plant nursery in the 1990s. Since then I’ve seen a ...

There’s a backlog of half-written posts building up here due to the distractions of a 4 month old baby who doesn’t recognise blog writing as a valid activity. This one shouldn’t be too hard to wrap up though, so I’ll give it a go. In early November...

Driving back from dropping my son at nursery this morning I saw this rather splendid haystack next to the road. (It’s actually a strawstack but I’ve never heard one called that…) Remembering this storyfrom a few years ago about a farmer who built a house behind a haystack hoping to conceal it from the planners, I had to go and see what ...

Very excited this week about the opening of Hauser & Wirth Somerset in Bruton. Its not often a leading international art gallery decides to set up shop on my patch so I was keen to go along and have a look. My review will be in the August issue of the journal Architecture Today . Fundamentally it is a ...

From the M5 motorway bridge near Bristol you get a magnificent view over the docks at Avonmouth. In the low landscape of carparks and sheds I had spotted several concrete grain silos poking up but had never been able to stop and investigate. This weekend ...

I have long been intrigued by the work of Giovanni Michelucci, an architect from Pistoia who’s early work such as Santa Maria Novella railway station in Florence was rational and functional but who later developed a much more expressive approach rooted in ...

I’ve been meaning to write for some time about Patrick Keiller’s film Robinson in Ruins which is set in the rural landscape around Oxford and who’s themes of our relationship to history, place and the contemporary landscape fit in rather well with this blog. But ...

This week Emily & I went for a rare night away at the Talbot Inn in Mells, a 15th Century coaching inn with great food and atmosphere. We had been keen to go there for some time but my enthusiasm was only partly motivated by the ...

Gorgeous colours in the spring sunshine in Teignmouth this weekend. The sand on the beaches is redish-brown from the underlying sandstone and the sea was a slick of greens, blues and greys with reflections of moody clouds. I kept finding this palette recurring around the town in painted walls, doors and shopfronts.

I came upon this hay barn near Somerton this morning. I love the proportions and elegance of the structure. All the members are so slender and refined compared to some of the over-engineered structures put up today. It has 7 bays, all open on the long sides except for a ...

I’ve been getting rather agitated recently about a planning application submitted for a new house in our village. As new-comers we’ve kept our heads down, particularly as our neighbours have been so generous and welcoming to us and our unconventional house, but this proposal exemplifies a superficially benign type of development, the cumulative effect of which is a creeping erosion of the character of the countryside.

I found some great late-20th Century landscaping this week tucked away in the Hampshire village of Kings Worthy. Normally on a suburban street you are confronted with a pavement and numerous driveways between front gardens. The look of the street is ...

I’ve just been in Budapest with the Bath University 3rd year architecture students. Usually before going somewhere new I get quite excited and devour a few books so I know a bit about where I’m going but for Budapest I hadn’t had time so I had no idea what to expect. There isn’t an ...

When we started work designing a new house for ourselves the issue of energy efficiency was high on the agenda. It was 2010 and UK energy prices were rising, and continue to rise much faster than inflation. From 2005 to 2010 UK retail electricity prices doubled and ...

A trip this weekend on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway  rather unexpectedly turned up some splendid mid-20th Century interiors. Not being up on my trains I had to do some research and found out these are Mark 1 coaches built between 1951 and 1963. They were intended as ...

I visited an intriguing building this week at Shatwell Farm near Castle Cary in Somerset. Its a cow shed but one with rather higher ambition than your typical farm building. Designed by Stephen Taylor Architects the barn is part of a cluster of agricultural buildings in a small valley at the edge of the Hadspen Estate. The owner has carried out a ...

At the bottom of the field in front of my house is this shabby Dutch barn. Most people’s reaction is ‘I bet you wish that barn wasn’t there’, but I actually rather like it.  It is prominent but doesn’t block the view. There aren’t many buildings I’d be happy to see there but this utilitarian shed represents something about why I moved to the country and how man and nature co-exist in the English landscape.

Most of the cities are built from brick with stone reserved for the grander public buildings. The use of a dark and light marble in horizontal bands gives the churches such a bold presence, the clean-cut white stone making crisp shadows in the strong sunlight. The pattern is forgiving of crude repairs and the patched surfaces record the passing of the centuries.

One of the biggest challenges for the wider adaptation of Passivhaus is for it to be adapted by the mass housing market rather than just private individuals for one-off houses. Two major obstacles are the perceived additional cost and the lack of skills in the construction industry.