Loddon lessons

At the weekend I made a long-intended detour to Loddon in Norfolk where Tayler and Green built hundreds of sympathetically designed council houses in the 1940s-70s, some now listed. John Seymour in his 1970 Companion Guide to East Anglia writes 'these architects have managed to design homes that blend in beautifully with their surroundings, which continue in the tradition of East Anglia without slavishing aping the past, which do not strive ridiculously into a space-age future, which have unity and yet diversity, which in every case are pleasing to the eye, and which are said by the inmates to be pleasant to live in. ... Every architect in the country should be made to go and look at them.' Being half aware of them, I was expecting a couple of clusters but a large proportion of the small town is from the same hands. There is none of the pretentiousness of the likes of Poundbury or the laboured variety of Harlow's New Hall: the strengths are in the pure pleasure of making decorative design with the process of building - patterned brickwork to otherwise blank gables, little roofs to the chimneys, simple elaboration of barge boards. A thoughtful eye too for devices to enable home-making, such as sheltered set backs by entrances with surface to sit on or put plants. This is top-end 'people's detailing' : 'every house has a porch' but these are delicately designed porches and not all the same. There is a debt to Asplund as well as the local Norfolk vernacular, sweet and pleasant rather than hard and raw. The layouts are hardly radical in terms of relation to fronts, backs, roads and gardens but the use of wide-fronted terraces was unconventional then and still relevant now for making a very liveable environment.

Definitely worth a detour.

Arts and Crafts modern

Traditional natural building materials such as timber, cob, thatch had to be used in a way that recognised their limited durability. Steep roof pitches, generous overhangs result. If these rules were not followed they would have fallen apart quickly. Well detailed, they age gracefully and delight with their marks of age.

Fed up with constant repairs - in particular reputtying and painting timber windows at the beach shack - has made me think about how to detail contemporary building in a traditional way.

The existing porch was detailed to invite water into it, in particular a window sill sloping backwards. After twenty years it was oozing decay.

We rebuilt it in a week this summer using decay resistant but economical details. Sawn fence posts are directly glazed with 4mm sheets of toughened glass. I love that ambiguity of the frameless window - the magic of the invisible cloak. The sheets drain over a simple aluminium flashing over open jointed Douglas Fir cladding, all detailed to keep everything beyond the air barrier nice and well ventilated. The roof overhangs and protects the wall - no gutter needed here so we could make an exceptionally thin edge for a built up felt roof. This is a detail 'under test', taking advantage of a self-adhesive felt system where a simple aluminium angle is primed, making the felt stick tenaciously to it. The test is to see how long this really does stick. In the meantime it is as razor sharp as any modernist could desire.

volunteering at Global Generation

On Wednesday, I enjoyed a morning stint for Global Generation to help prepare their 2nd portable allotment site (for growing herbs & veg in polytunnels) at Kings Cross Central. Argent, the developer, gives them temporary use of the land whilst awaiting its sale.

GG's previous 'Living Food' projects here were the Skip Garden at St Pancras Station and the Hoop Garden, the other allotment site which they will decant from.

The Guardian's IT department (from its Kings Place HQ across the road) was also there helping to spruce up a couple of used portakabins, furniture, etc. into classroom (for teaching related BTech courses to local kids) and meeting spaces (for local community or business use).

From this new garden, one can see the new University of the Arts London complex, which is ready next month - it is huge! How will the art students adapt to this new environment, i.e. considering the change from the 'edgy-ness' of Central St Martin's current location in Soho?