Village project attracts the top names in architecture

May 12 2008 by Steffan Rhys, Western Mail

SOME of Britain's most high-profile modern architects have submitted plans to turn a centuries-old village with a population of fewer than 100 people into an example of ultimate 21st-century living in the remote Welsh countryside.

Lawrenny, in the heart of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, commissioned a world-wide competition in March to find architects to design a revolutionary new development of up to 30 sustainable homes and workplaces which would rely on solar power, biomass from surrounding woodland and collected rain water.

Its organisers say the event is an effort to redefine the way we live and hope the site will become a showcase for sustainable rural community building across Wales.

The idea has drawn an “incredible response” from architects from as far afield as Finland, Portugal, Spain and Ireland, including the “grandfather of British design” Sir Terence Conran, right.

In their design submission, Terence Conran and Partners say: “We want to bring food production into the village, engage with the community and explore modern variation in the traditional tenant/ estate relationship.”

Other applicants include London architect Sarah Featherstone, whose eco-friendly Orchid House in the Cotswolds sold for £7.2m this month and Cardiff-based Powell Dobson, the architects behind Bluestone holiday village’s Blue Lagoon water park in Pembrokeshire.

And today Lawrenny Enterprises and the Royal Institute of British Architects will draw up a shortlist of eight candidates they consider best suited to a project which would see Lawrenny, currently holding the title of Wales’ Best Village, transformed from a settlement with a population of fewer than 100 people to a flagship development site in less than 50 years.

The winner will be selected by August.

The architects’ brief is to design 30 new homes with offices and workshops in a £3.5m project which could double the village’s population.

It is largely in response to a growing number of people moving to West Wales in the hope of setting up both homes and businesses.

Among those who now run businesses in the village are surveyor and boatbuilder Alan Haynes, Fiona Campbell, who designs for Villeroy & Boch, and David and Margaret Redpath, who create dyes from plants and whose colours were used on the restoration of the Bayeux tapestry.

When the competition drew to a close last week, 92 firms, including 20 from Wales and six from Pembrokeshire, had thrown their hats into the ring.

“We’re absolutely stunned by the level of interest and, importantly, the sheer calibre of the firms who’ve come forward,” said Lawrenny Enterprises director Adrian Lort-Phillips, who established his company specifically to avoid having to rely on developers and the potential for tension between the principles of sustainability and cost-effectiveness.

“What is clear is that whoever goes on to win this competition is really going to be the best there is.”

The architects will have to put design, affordability and sustainability at the very heart of the project, as well as blending the ultra-modern development with a 15th century village characterised by its narrow, winding roads and timber, slate and limestone houses.

“Many of the firms have picked up from our brief the importance of including the existing community in the design process,” said Mr Lort-Phillips.

“Some companies have come up with some great ideas about how to get people in Lawrenny involved.”

RIBA spokesman James Porter said he never imagined the project near the Cleddau estuary would have generated such a widespread response.

“This is one of the largest responses in recent times,” he said.

“Just looking at the range of practices you can tell this has really captured the imagination of some great architects.”

From communal orchards to a club laundry

Suggestions for a sustainable village in the heart of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park include bringing food production into the village, creating a central vegetable garden, building new workshops and starting a communal car pool.

Designers have raised the prospect of building in a central electricity generation network connected to a farm next door where a methane digester running on cow faeces will fuel a turbine.

Others have suggested a “cooling pond” for swimming at the new development’s centre, and claim the village could work itself on to the international map as an example of a community living as one with nature and as a benchmark for future rural development.

Among the numerous aspects architects would like to found in the village are a communal orchard and small market garden that everyone takes turns to cultivate, with the resultant cider, vegetables and fruit being sold in the local supermarkets, while a “Spring Chickens’ Over-70s Club” would run the development’s communal laundry.

In even more utopian views, others suggest that community opinion is gauged not through door to door surveys or meetings but with “chats around a campfire”, while there is even a comparison to the Amish community portrayed in the 1985 film Witness.