From Martyn Haywood
In Douglas Palmer’s review of Landscape: Pattern, Perception and
Process he quotes the author, Simon Bell, as advising people to “stick to
the local traditional housing in the countryside”
(5 February, p 52).
What Bell and other prognosticators in this field tend to mean by this and
similar statements is to follow the housing traditions of our great or
great-great grandparents. They do not mean the housing of the 15th, 10th or 5th
centuries AD.
Britain and other countries will never move forward to energy-efficient,
health-promoting, well-constructed buildings while planners, building
regulations and pundits such as Bell support the continuation of “local
traditional housing”. It is time for us all to take a wider view, move on and
develop our own traditional rural housing—using modern materials,
techniques and energy-saving features to make an individual contribution to the
global energy balance.
You do not have to build an energy-inefficient sandstone or granite cottage
before you can grow roses around it.
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hmhaywoo@csm.ex.ac.uk
