Search the Community

Ha, French for pocket: Not a term much used in building or design. A few blogs ago, I described a way of considering garden design as an alternative to creating borders and cutting shapes out of a lawn, or indeed starting in one corner and making shapes, of just planting specimen plants towards another corner. This is a more holistic approach based on listing all conditions of the garden (see site analysis blog), then listing wants, needs, desires, uses of spaces etc for the proposed garden, including the route and entrance threshold, and then considering the space covered in stuff. This may be lawn, grasses (trendy) herbs, shrubs (totally covered), etc then take out spaces for the needs and routes between them. It's really the same as house layout design, but more akin to decollage, the result of removing bits, rather like a political poster that people have attempted to remove. No matter, I hope you get the idea...It ties up the results of your site analysis with your list of must-haves. (The brief) The pocket idea is best seen in heavy walled churches, cathedrals, castles where there are often pockets in the wall created for chapels, spiral stairs, secret rooms and so on, and best exploited in more modern housing where built-in shelves, en-suite facilities, larders, even secret rooms and snugs are worked into spaces between rooms. Interesting spaces may be created where square edged rooms could appear clumsy, or passages would allow better flow. I would agree that it's not for the faint-hearted, but could be great fun especially when building the corrugated card model (one to amuse the kids on a wet holiday afternoon). Don't blame me if they want to be architects after that. It could add a sense of humour to a design and add bags of character...And you do want your extension or new home to exude character don't you! A word of warning, it will be more expensive as builders do not relish curves. Happy designing

A diversion, but with reference to earlier blogs. I usually buy the Times on Fridays for the excellent property section 'Bricks and Mortar' which has been running for quite a few years now. Unfortunately they operate a paywall, so it's not so simple, and annoying, to quote from the paper, I find. However in the recent edition (3 November '17) in the section called Prime Properties, they briefly review a 17th century cottage, a true doll's house, with the 'Downside comment' "the back garden lacks interest" I leave you to make up your own minds. Photographs and house plans can be seen on the Strutt & Parker site. The house is on sale at £575k and the location is Langthorpe near Boroughbridge...huh no station sadly.