Watchet /  by James Whitaker

Research for our magazine has taken me down some fascinating routes. Yesterday, at the end of our family holiday we visited the new East Quay building in Watchet, UK. We go to Watchet quite often but this was our first trip since the building had finished.

On the drive back to London I discovered Laura Broderick’s podcast where she talks to Georgie Grant from the Onion Collective about their journey to create something for their town. It’s a brilliant story! Give it a listen if you can.

Charging Point /  by James Whitaker

Whitaker Studio’s concept design for a curb-side electric vehicle charging point.

Whitaker Studio’s concept design for a curb-side electric vehicle charging point.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders estimates that the UK needs to have 1.9million road side electric vehicle charging points by 2030. That means that the UK needs to install approximately 700 charging points every day over the next 8 years. (There are currently less than 40,000 public electric vehicle charging points.) So, during this summer the UK government ran a tender to appoint someone to design an affordable cabinet that could be rolled out across the country.

We didn’t win the tender, but it did spark our imagination. I wondered about creating a design that could be fabricated using the same processes and materials already used for street lights. A design that would lend itself to being made by existing manufacturers with their existing tools. Something that’s robust, both in terms of life on a city street and also its resilience to the weather.

Now, I’m a dad as well and have spent plenty of time trying to wind through congested pavements with a buggy. Also, electric vehicles are very much in their infancy at the moment and the equipment that we need to charge a car well might be different in 8 years time. So I concentrated on designing a slender bollard for the curb-side that would really just be a terminal, and then the transformers, fuses, meters etc could all be consolidated into a separate box set back from the edge of the road, so that hypothetically if a council upgraded the system at some point they could just upgrade the equipment in one box, rather than every terminal down the street.

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Anywhere House in Montana /  by James Whitaker

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I just realised that we’ve been neglecting our blog this year!

Things are progressing well in Montana, USA where our first Anywhere House is due to be built over the next 12 months. The site is magnificent, sitting on a hillside at the edge of a large reservoir.

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The internal finish in the house is going to be exposed cross laminated timber. Cross laminated timber are structural panels that are made to order and robotically cut to size in the factory, so they arrive on site as a flat pack kit of parts. By keeping the CLT exposed we will get the dual benefits of the texture of the timber and a lovely crisp geometry.

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Outside the house is going to be clad in charred timber on the walls and black zinc on the roof.

The image above is of the entrance to the house.

The Anywhere House on Business Insider /  by James Whitaker

This home made out of tiny units can be built in any configuration and proves prefab architecture doesn't have to be boring

It's terrific to have an article in Business Insider about The Anywhere House. There have been a couple of articles about the Anywhere House in major publications in the last few weeks and we are now in conversation with people from Israel, Egypt, Sweden, Italy, USA, Panama… the list goes on and on. A giant thank you to Mary Meisenzahl for shining a light on a project that I am very proud of, it’s really appreciated.