Semester 1- ‘Alice Littles House in the Woods’ Alice Little, a small town tailor from Barton, Oxfordshire, embarks on a creative pilgrimage to Beckley, Oxfordshire, hoping to pitch her clothing line. On her journey, she stops in a woodland. called Sydlings Copse, for a quick rest and creates a shelter by wrapping a cluster of oak trees with the fabrics she had packed; while doing so, she meets local architect, Billy Green, and they get to talking. They agree to design a permanent shelter using Alice's fabrics, the trees from the woodland and Billy's architectural eye, forming ‘Alice Little’s House in the Woods’, where Alice begins to wrap and mend damaged and diseased trees using her tailoring skills. The dwelling is separated into 2 main spaces, work-wash and sleep-eat, with a smaller entrance space, forms taken from organic shapes created by cyanotypes of ribbons on the site. These forms are held up by tension ropes tied to adjacent trees, which in fire emergencies, Alice can release the ropes to collapse the structure. The cladding of the dwelling is a warm tinted wax to repel water, but also to wear as much as desired; in the colder months, the building will crack and wrinkle like the trees, while in the hotter months it will warm the wax, creating a new, fresh finish once again.

Semester 2- ‘Loved to Bits- The Windmill’ Local charity organisation ‘SHARE Oxford’, provides a space for surrounding communities to take part in ‘Repair Cafes’, and in borrowing items from their ‘Library of Things’. This space however, is limited, catalysing the development of ‘The Windmill’, to accommodate more repairing, sharing and growth, set in the wetlands landscape of Otmoor Nature Reserve in South Oxfordshire. This project was inspired by the value of wear in our lives, specifically in our cuddly toys, which often become ‘Loved to Bits’, but are one example of the few objects that grow in personal value with wear. Oxford City Council collects about 54,000 tonnes of municipal waste every year, which can be dramatically reduced by repair and reuse of parts, in everyday life and in design. The building’s materiality uses vernacular techniques, such as thatching, to create a roofscape of texture, using dead reeds from the Otmoor Nature Reserve site. A protective gabion wall uses debris from site and wasted metal caging from a nearby farm, and lifts the building off the flooded landscape. The windmills, inspired by the historical Windmill Road in Headington, Oxford, not only generate energy to be used in the building, but attract city dwellers to a beautiful but functional landmark in the Oxfordshire countryside.