Notes on building, buying and living well.

Painters have always wanted north light. A note on why steady daylight makes a room calmer to live in, and how architects design for it.

Buying a home that isn’t finished yet asks for a different kind of diligence. The questions we think every buyer should ask, including of us.

A floor plan tells you far more than room sizes. How to read the drawing for daylight, circulation, storage and the way a home will actually be lived in.

What a service charge pays for, how it’s set, and the questions to ask before you buy into a building with shared spaces.

Market coffee, a walk along the wharf and an afternoon in the open studios: how we’d spend a weekend in the quarter, from people who sell homes there.

Courtyards are one of architecture’s oldest ideas: a private piece of sky in the middle of a home. Why they’re coming back on tight city plots.

Some materials look their best on the day they’re installed. Others get better for a century. A short guide to choosing the second kind.

Old houses reward care and punish haste. What to ask your surveyor when the home you love was built before your great-grandparents.

Restoration has started on the old rope works in Ropewalk Quarter, which will become 34 lofts and apartments around a garden court open to the river.

The final homes at Linden Court have been handed over, completing twelve brick and timber townhouses arranged around a shared orchard on Linden Rise.