Devon day out

February 1, 2023

Last week we celebrated the start of the new year with a team visit to Totnes.

First stop was our ’new’ office on Totnes High Street, set up last year by Rob and Jules.  The new office space is a public-facing shop front right in the heart of Totnes which, like our Bristol office, we’re sharing with other like-minded businesses.  These include PH15 - who offer a Passivhaus timber frame construction solution - and timber frame designer Liam Kelly.

After visiting the office we headed to a site just outside Totnes where Field Studio Architects have designed and are in the process of building a range of high-quality, modular studios for use as camping pods.  It was interesting to hear about their simple, speedy construction process which minimises waste and uses sustainable and healthy materials - a really great precedent for some of our own tiny home and modular construction projects which are currently underway.

Field Studio Architects have designed a range of modular studios

Rob and Jules showed us around the Dartington Estate and we had lunch in the White Hart pub - giving us time together as a whole team and a chance to reflect on our collective goals and aspirations for the next year.

In the afternoon we visited an inspiring house by Terra Perma Geo, who design and build with a rigorous approach to low impact construction and use of natural and locally sourced materials. The sourcing of local, natural and sustainable materials is something we always seek to think carefully about in our work - and it’s great to see how this done on similar projects. The house we visited is using timber from a nearby woodland, kiln-dried on site, for the structure as well as joinery, alongside stone sourced from a nearby quarry. It was particularly interesting to hear one of the ways in which their use of sustainable materials is quantified - use of petrochemicals in the building's construction has been kept to a strict maximum of 10%.

It was a fun day out, great to spend the day as a team, see the new office and get to know Totnes, as well as be inspired by the work of other like-minded construction professionals who are also working to design and build in a low-impact, sustainable way.  A lot of food for thought! Thanks to Terra Perma Geo and Mokki for taking the time to show us around!