Quite the restoration job 👇🏻2018 2025👇🏻

Slight detour while in Croydon for a client meeting yesterday to swing by @anfurman.bsky.social’s exquisite tiled facade at Croydon Colonnade. You just want to rub your hands all over them. Delicious.

Great post from @russellcurtis.com I've been banging on about this 1 - Para 84 comes from gummers modern mansions - retained in NPPF. Result: only self builds going are > 200m2 monsters with super big budgets. 1/n russellcurtis.com/2025/10/18/g...

Someone paid a lot of money for this

"Despite numerous difficulties including securing Planning Consent, consents from the Environment Agency and United Utilities, as well as other statutory bodies, a scheme was agreed in 2019 and the footbridge laid in place in 2020." Here's the infrastructure project that required these permissions:

"There are other questions the CPRE does not ask. Chief among them: if there is so much brownfield land available in the middle of a housing crisis, then why on Earth aren’t we already building on it?" Everything continues to be awful so I've returned to my comfort zone.

Difficult to believe my suggestion didn’t make the cut, but here it is anyway: a recommendation for a series of new settlements on the train line between London and Cambridge, including Ashwell & Morden…the most isolated—but well-connected—station in England. russellcurtis.com/2024/11/10/g...

Our Highgate Newtown Community Centre for Camden Council—including 41 beautiful homes for refugee families and a 2,000 sqm community facility—is shortlisted for the New London Awards. nla.london/projects/hig...

We’ve been here before, right? The halfwits’ moral panic seems to work on a 25 year cycle.

I’m not sure we’re in for a good night’s sleep.

We really enjoyed being part of this fantastic collaboration between design team, contractor and manufacturer. Full integration, from strategic planning policy to turnkey installation. www.bdonline.co.uk/home/rcka-in...

The alabaster windows at Orvieto cathedral really are something.

Allotments have been in the news this week, so I've done a bit of mapping work to understand whether building homes on them might help solve the housing crisis. (Spoiler alert: it won't). russellcurtis.com/2025/08/09/g...

Very useful analysis from Seattle of the prices charged when one home is replaced with one or more new homes. A 1-for-1 replacement results in a home nearly three times as expensive, but replacing one home with 9+ new ones involves average prices that are around half the original.

RCKa has submitted an application for a new ‘kit of parts’ 2,200m² adult education college on Sutton High Street, south London

Aah, this is lovely—well done wonderful RCKa team.

Went to Nansledan today. It was...odd. Poorly built (paint already peeling; grubby render), rather too twee, and felt like it was trying to be a quaint coastal town without any of the intimate car-free streets that make proper Cornish villages so delightful.

I don't know why I bother, but this is piss poor from the Grauniad (and IPPR, who should know better). www.theguardian.com/politics/202... The landbanking contention was disproved by CMA and the data used to derive the 1.4m figure is specifically caveated as not being appropriate for that use

We need a revival of the 1970s 'loose-fit, long-life' architectural movement where buildings can be easily and cheaply repurposed as residential or commercial space depending on demand.

The Greens consistently aligning themselves with the tweed-clad misopedists at the CPRE is a terrible, terrible look.

RCKa's exploration into the potential for England's rural stations to deliver new homes and our longlisting for this year's #DavidsonPrize both feature in this week's @bigissue.com.

Really not enamoured by this printed throw seen in a shop window in Hitchin.

Lovely to be asked to judge the #AJ100Awards again this year, and a special privilege to be helping decide which firm gets the coveted Practice of the Year prize. Should be fun!

Highest earners from A+U Framework revealed

Housing Associations and council clients have to take some responsibility here. Poor value engineering practices and accepts of cheapest tender price for design and construction led to the use of substandard materials. They only have themselves to blame.

We talked to director at RCKa, Russell Curtis, about his practice’s #modular concept that looks to use meanwhile sites as a place to build for those looking for #temporaryhousing.

RCKa's collaboration with contractor Wates Group and modular specialist Rollalong is covered in Architecture Today, where director @russellcurtis.com sets out ways in which meanwhile use housing could help address the temporary accommodation crisis.

And so it begins—perhaps this will finally sound the death knell for insidious design and build contracting? www.constructionnews.co.uk/buildings/ta...

Councils spend £1.6bn a year on 'temporary accommodation' for homeless families - which includes some of the worst housing conditions in the country. But who is getting the money? A joint investigation between me, Vicky Spratt and @sdelahunty.bsky.social tried to provide an answer...

Just over a week ago we installed a prototype modular home outside the Building Centre in central London. Delivered on three lorries and installed in three hours, it provides a 63sqm 2bed apartment for just £100k that can deployed for temporary accommodation as a meanwhile use.

I was at the Houses of Parliament tonight in support of the latest #HomesForBritain pamphlet launch, where I advocated for emergency permitted development rights to deliver temporary accommodation on brownfield land.

Homelessness is a human tragedy and a national scandal. I'm going to be speaking at the Houses of Parliament on Monday evening about some ideas we've had for granting emergency powers to local authorities to house those in need, as part of a @thefabians.bsky.social housing debate.

With the announcement of the OxCam Arc revival today, it's time to dust off my (not that dusty) submission to the New Towns Taskforce from November. Could it be one of the 18 mentioned by Rachel Reeves today? russellcurtis.co.uk/2024/11/10/g...

Some excellent news this morning from Rachel Reeves who has indicated that the Labour Government will make it much easier to intensify the areas around our suburban stations. www.theguardian.com/global/2025/...

Excellent news! A comprehensive strategic review of London's green belt is long overdue. Great to see the Mayor taking a lead.

Great to see the £132m that TfL spaffed away on Old Street Station has resulted in such a transformation for passengers.

Aside from the £4m that London boroughs are spending each day on temporary accommodation, the housing crisis is, at its heart, a human tragedy. I'm going to be speaking the @buildingcentre.bsky.social #NewHomesInNewWays conference next month about some ways we might start to right this wrong.

Our little infill housing scheme near our office in Old Street was published in @news.architectsjournal.co.uk yesterday. Six new homes for social rent on behalf of Shian, a local BAME housing association. Really pleased with how these have come out. www.architectsjournal.co.uk/buildings/rc...

Planning by vibes! There are many capable, knowledgeable and dedicated planning committees who make decisions with gravity and grace. But others? Not so much. My thoughts on the proposed changes to planning committees in @news.architectsjournal.co.uk. www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/opinion...

Hillingdon council is closing Uxbridge golf course for a while because it keeps losing money and they're looking for a new company to run it for them. I can think of some house builders that could do something with a large lakeside venue ;) www.hillingdon.gov.uk/article/1404...

I hope the inevitable failure of this spurious legal action costs the anti-development brigade a lot of money. You lost. Reason won. Get over it.

It is, I think, appropriate that the Grenfell Disaster is the featured image on the wikipedia page for 'value engineering' en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_e...

When the time comes, you know what to do.

Narrow Numana

Whether moving next door to a historic pub and then complaining about the noise of merriment, or relocating to the countryside and whining about farmers making money from their land—there's a certain type of smug gentrifier that we should learn to ignore. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

My 78 year-old Mum now has her first smartphone—mainly so that she can now pay for parking in municipal car parks. But, for god's sake, can we please just agree on ONE parking app to use?

OPINION We need to talk about Saudi Arabia, says Jeremy Till www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/opinion...

As an ex-Chair of a planning committee I hugely welcome the Gov's plans to speed up the planning system. Let me explain why... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Some exciting news coming shortly on changes to national planning policy...I'm going to be getting up early to talk about it on LBC tomorrow at 8am.

NEWS ‘Wasteful’ council urged to rethink after inviting 28 bids for housing job www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/wastefu...