Maker Eco Commons
Maker Eco Commons begins at the scale of the United Kingdom, positioning rural growth within wider questions of infrastructure, climate adaptation and settlement resilience. In Cumbria, the River Eden catchment becomes the testing ground for a regional strategy that challenges the current monocentric pattern of development and asks how smaller settlements can support a more balanced future.
The existing model concentrates population, services and future growth around Carlisle, placing increasing pressure on infrastructure, flood risk and ecological systems while leaving towns, villages and hamlets underused. In response, the project proposes a polycentric network: a redistributed model where growth, civic functions, productive roles and services are shared across interconnected settlements. Rather than treating the city as the only centre, the network strengthens multiple places according to their capacity, landscape condition and access. This reduces dependency on a single urban core and aligns development with hydrological capacity, ecological resilience and fairer regional access.
Lazonby is selected as the pilot settlement to test this strategy at a more detailed scale. Environmental mapping, ownership analysis, movement routes and existing settlement fabric guide a landscape-led masterplan, where new growth is organised through green-blue systems, public facilities, woodland structure and ecological corridors rather than isolated housing expansion.
At the civic centre scale, the strategy becomes a public eco-infrastructure shaped by water retention, woodland repair, civic gathering, market activity and material reuse. The masterplan forms a threshold between expanded settlement fabric and ecological commons, concentrating public life around landscape systems.
The building completes the shift from territory to architecture. Maker Eco Commons translates the regional network into spaces for ecological learning, making, repair, exhibition and shared exchange. Its timber structure, filtered facade, environmental systems and communal interiors create a repeatable civic prototype, where architecture supports rural resilience as both spatial experience and strategic infrastructure across multiple scales.
