Eco upgrades to your home (as part of building work)
Eco upgrades to your home. How to improve your home both in terms of well-being and energy efficiency (without paying through the nose!) We can ensure that any eco upgrades to your home will be in proportion to other works you would like. Essentially, making you eco by default! Below we have listed various […]
How to be an architect and still have a life
A short blog from Clare Nash about why we work differently from other architectural practices. When I mention the title of this piece, ‘how to be an architect and still have a life’, it often brings a chuckle. Yet it is exactly on this basis that I set up my own firm and it is […]
The benefits and drawbacks of pre-fabricating your dream home
Have you considered using pre-fabrication as a method for building your own home? Germany has been at the forefront of pre-fabricating home design for over 50 years (https://www.weberhaus.co.uk/) and the benefits are very German; time efficient, quality guarantee, energy efficiency guarantees. These advantages are also useful to British self-builders. Anyone who has spent time on a […]
Hemp, Lime and Timber Frame Prefabricated Panels
Hemp, lime and timber frame prefabricated panels are an exciting way of creating eco-homes. I recently visited a ecohouse (that doesn’t look ‘eco’) completed in August 2016 and built by Greencore construction and was given a guided tour by Julia Bennett and Ian Pritchett. Prefab or craft, can you have both? I wrote a book on […]
Barns Permitted Development clarifications
Barns Permitted Development [2023 updated] Barns permitted development – How big can I build a barn without planning permission in 2023? You can now create 3 large (more than 100m2) or 5 smaller dwellings (less than 100m2 each) or a mixture of both under Permitted Development. What is Class Q permitted development for a barn? […]
Aspirational Vernacular
I recently completed a 6 month trip around the world looking at case studies that have used vernacular methods or technologies, incorporating them into sustainable housing design. This was partly instigated because of a fascination in the vernacular developed while at Oxford Brookes University and partly due to a huge frustration at the lack of […]