South of the Border, Down Penwortham Way

I've always had a fascination with architecture and landscape and buildings made from mud are right up there amongst my favourite things. This little art card of an adobe house is a study I did whilst thinking about a much larger piece and speculating on how much more interesting our vernacular architecture could be if we hadn't given in to the twin gods of planning and executive homes.

Personally I'd love to live in an organic, hand-built house which owed nothing to the kind of fake modernist-retro 'new builds' which I see everywhere now, but would I get planning permission for a wattle and daub, straw bale house - even assuming I could afford to buy the land to build it on? I think not. Perhaps I should move to Mexico.

Oh, and it used to be all fields round here, y'know...