We were employed by The Duchy of Cornwall to act as the Lead and Co-ordinating Architect for the first phase of The Prince of Wales' radical new Urban Village at Poundbury, Dorchester. Our task was to turn The Prince's vision, as expressed in Leon Krier's masterplan for the first phase of about 250 houses, into an architectural reality, basing the designs on the vernacular of local Dorset towns and villages. We led a team of three local architects and were responsible for the overall unity of the architectural result. We also designed forty of the houses and an industrial unit.

The project makes a number of important innovations including an increased urban density, narrower roads and tighter junctions to establish pedestrian priority, streets and squares with a strong sense of enclosure, a random mix of owner-occupied and social housing, and integral incorporation of employment, retail and other non-housing uses. Despite some initial scepticism from some sections of the press, the first phase is now seen by a wide spectrum of those involved in urban planning and housing as a very substantial advance in the field and a touchstone for future development.