Our post last week prompted some interesting comments and responses, including a couple which suggested that the market ought to sort it out.

On group minds, the school of the future, and Marianne Faithfull.

On the handmade in public architecture, in a new edited collection by painter Bella Bacon.

David Mountain, 27 March 2026.[1] In the storerooms of a little-known fenland museum is a treasure trove of rare books on town planning and housing policy, comprising an entire specialist library. …

Tim Burrows talks about how a conversation on a park bench led to an experimental film about the philosophy of Mark Fisher

New collaborative writing on the contemporary relevance of the Arts & Crafts

Introducing London’s largest floating destination and community. Royal Docks Waterways has launched a new Vision for Royal Victoria Dock West, setting out plans to transform 12 hectares of water withi...

Exclusive: Campaigners claim changes will let companies ‘off the hook’, as government prepares to unveil new white paper for water industry Water companies could be let off fines for polluting the environment under changes announced in the government’s new white paper. The environment secretary, Emma Reynolds, hailed the changes as “once-in-a-generation reforms” featuring “tough oversight, real accountability and no more excuses”. Continue reading...

A linear village ‘grown’ entirely within the boundary hedge of a Great Estate.

Advocating for the unpredictable and emergent in planning and design. An archive piece from 2011.

Inspired by ministers and councils willing to spend a penny, architects are building beautiful, functional loos – a first step towards restoring civic pride, says architect Eddie Blake

A December afternoon, and I’m watching the afternoon sky turn from light to dark grey to black. An overgrown holly bush waves vigorously at me through the window. It is a stark backdrop, but one softe...

On public planning and popular agency

A public network of privately-owned covered places; created by legislation and delivered by thousands of individual acts of construction.

In the Norwegian master’s latest example of ‘mystical realism’, one man makes a dreamlike, hypnotic voyage through life

hosted by The Architecture Foundation and The Art Workers' Guild

Tickets for big tours have vastly outstripped inflation, while smaller artists and venues struggle. The magic is in danger of being snuffed out entirely, says Guardian columnist John Harris

A conversation with leading oral historians at the Art Workers Guild

A conversation with leading oral historians at the Art Workers Guild

Telling my daughter about the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry

Telling my daughter about the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry

The leftwing alternative to Scouts turns 100 this year. If Keir Starmer wants to empower Britain’s young people, it has much to teach him, says writer and curator Phineas Harper

What Arquitectura Popular em Portugal - a mid-century survey of vernacular architecture – can teach us about the potential of architectural research to shift culture.

The sprung wooden floor of The Trades Club in Hebden Bridge is no stranger to dancing. It’s hard to imagine today, but its modest upstairs hall was built in 1924 for graceful ballroom affairs – all wa...

A ‘squatted’ hamlet encircling a public house.

Celebrating the anarchist thinker and 'propagandist' in a text originally delivered at the Garden Museum, London, in 2014.

A beautiful, extremely limited edition, zine-style publication of academic research, poetry & artwork inspired by the 1920s poet, publisher...

Podcast Episode · Fire Draw Near · 20/06/2025 · 52m

A piece of town defined by agriculture

Cultural hegemony at the birth of British statutory planning

Crumpets and sherry dear subscriber? Would you like to pull your chair closer to the roaring log fire? Are you comfortable with your slippered feet up on that pouffe? Well, in that case John and Luke ...

The text that follows purports to be an edited extract from the journal of Sussex local historian Edward Moderlove (1888-1956), dated May 1921.

An essay exploring alternative and opportunistic land practices, resurrecting historical models such as Whiteway Colony, Ruigoord and Beaulieu Rails as precedents for action in the present.