About

Notes on the architectural decisions that get made early, written at domestic scale.

Architect's working desk — Written between projects, mostly about things learned the slow way.

The subject here is small-scale work — houses, extensions, modest public buildings — where decisions are taken quickly, budgets are tight and the consequences are lived with daily by a small number of people.

Nothing here is about style. The questions that recur are older than any current manner of building: which way does it face, where does the water go, what will this look like in fifteen years.

There is no practice behind these pages and nothing is for sale. Where a technique is described it is because it has been useful, not because anyone benefits from its use.

Where these notes make a recommendation, it assumes a temperate climate and ordinary construction. Hot, arid or very cold conditions invert several of the arguments here, particularly on orientation, and the reasoning matters more than the conclusion.