Robert Tomlinson

Intending to study architecture in the 1970’s Bob was persuaded by his father to get some work at an architects’ practice before embarking on several years of study. The designs for modernist housing that the firm were producing were so appalling that Bob ran away to sea, became a professional explorer and film maker instead.

Years later, the making of a documentary on sustainable development prompted Bob into a design and proposal for a Living Village, a collection of attractive homes surrounded by food growing and recreational gardens. The idea caught on and after dogged determination and perseverance against a construction industry set in its ways, the 40 houses surrounded by shared gardens, orchards and woodland known as The Wintles was built.

The success of this project lead to others and the setting up of a development company that was working on sites throughout the UK. In over 25 years Bob has learned by experience how to make sustainable design work in a construction industry resistant to change.

Over the same period of time, those modernist houses designed by the architects in the 1970’s have been built, rejected by the occupants, vandalised and demolished.