Rural Works - Village

Rural Works is an educational teaching event that has been held annually in the village of Staveley in the Lake District. The workshop was founded five years ago, and each year the work builds on the ideas and research developed by a previous cohort of young architects. The workshop sees a group of architecture students embarking on a field trip to the local area. The group respond to the setting with sketches, hand drawings and develop design ideas for temporary installations that bring new approaches to the local setting.

This year, we focussed on developing multiple small-scale design ideas for the local village, that were developed following discussions with one of the local parish councillors and local people.

Key to the workshop this year was that students displayed their work in a temporary exhibition that was held in the village recreation hall. This offered students a chance to talk through the work they had produced, and gave residents a chance to see the design ideas that were being suggested. Strategies ranged from practicable ideas to more experimental ideas. These formed a basis for discussion with local visitors, who offered comment and insight on the work that was produced by the 2019 cohort of design students.

Rural Works was founded by Zoë Berman in 2016 who this year was joined by co-tutoring architects Tom Sykes and Hannah Durham, and engineer Dan Cash.