COMMON TREASURES | Vol. 2

What is the future of rural communities?

Common Treasures is a new series of books about the challenges faced by rural communities, written by people who are working on the ground and in the fields. Each volume gathers the very best essays about climate adaptation, food production and land use, and presents them as alternatives to the prevailing political discourse.

This anthology, the second in the Common Treasures project, developed from a series of conversations between the architecture collective Assemble and the arts organisation Common Ground. It takes as its premise the idea that approaches to housing that are grounded in greater levels of community ownership, management and maintenance have the potential to empower communities, overcome the opposition to local development and create conditions in which skilled rural workers are part of stronger local networks of industry and agriculture. Housing built by, for and with the people who live in it makes characterful neighbourhoods that last well, are able to be maintained by their residents and facilitate investment in local labour, materials and skilled workmanship. The contributors to this anthology share their work to overcome the many obstacles to this way of working, and offer a vision which is grounded, imaginative and hopeful.

Contributors: Rebecca Smith, Rob Hopkins and Frances Northrop, Ruth Munns, Andrew Kirby, James Shorten, Loretta Bosence, Hana Loftus, Barbara Jones, Kim Squirrell, Ken Worpole, Tim Crabtree & Summer Islam.

Published by Little Toller, Common Treasures has emerged from ongoing conversations between members of the architecture collective Assemble and the arts organisation Common Ground, exploring alternative approaches to rural housing — rethinking how it is developed, designed and built.