Can the cottage typology become a way of adding on to villages in a way that isn’t the developer method of taking a field, putting roads on it and cramming houses on?
What defines a cottage? Is it size, location, architectural style, or a mix of all three? And what form should cottages take in the 21st century amid growing densification and challenges to affordability? These were some of the issues concerning Jamie Fobert Architects and Parisian architect Edouard François in their reimagining of the cottage typology as part of the new exhibition At Home in Britain: Designing the House of Tomorrow. This opens later this month at the RIBA‘s Architecture Gallery in London.
The exhibition explores the nature of cottages, terraces and flats in the 21st century. It is organised in partnership with the BBC Four series Dan Cruickshank: At Home with the British, which takes a historical look at the development of the British home. ‘The idea is to spark a debate by using three typologies to consider the future of housing,’ says co-curator Anna Holsgrove.
Six invited practices were given access to the RIBA Collection as a live research tool, with archive material included alongside exhibits from the contemporary architects.
Study by Jamie Fobert Architects of the ancient croft wall pattern at the village of West Burton, Yorkshire.
Lane, Cottage, Wall & Garden by Jamie Fobert Architects as part of the practice’s exploration of the cottage typology in West Burton, Yorkshire. For his contribution, Jamie Fobert explores how villages can be grown sensitively using a contemporary cottage typology as an alternative to typical village expansions, which often involve fields being sold off for suburban-style, pseudo period housing developments.
Can the cottage typology become a way of adding on to villages in a way that isn’t the developer method of taking a field, putting roads on it and cramming houses on?
He is exploring the notion of contemporary houses within walled gardens while working in a very gentle way with the grain of property in the village, which derives from medieval land patterns. Fobert chose a site behind a row of houses on the main village thoroughfare, utilising land that was originally used by crofters. Lanes are carefully created through to the new rear properties, and carry on into the fields beyond. ‘I’m keen that people who live in the new houses feel that they’re living in the village,’ he says.
His cottage concept has four stages. The first is an open field state followed by a handful of cottages in a field, which he describes as ‘the first primitive way to urbanism‘. Gradually this ‘mutates’ as further development is built and agricultural paths become roads. As the village extends and densifies it begins to resemble a city, but one that retains the original cottages and introduces agriculture within the urbanised settings – on the roof.
Source: At Home in Britain: Designing the House of Tomorrow