Mountain Fold Architecture

Mountain Fold Architecture Mountain Fold is a UK-based contemporary architecture practice committed to designing environmentally sustainable buildings.

An internal wall to the garage is coming down as part of the conversion to a home office at Beeches, and the existing ga...
01/09/2026

An internal wall to the garage is coming down as part of the conversion to a home office at Beeches, and the existing garage door is being closed up to form a new window in the revised front elevation. As the wall came down, the bricks have been kept aside for the infill instead of ordering in new stock. It’s a small decision, and it adds up: less waste, less cost, no new brick manufactured and delivered just to match, and a bit of the building’s own material staying exactly where it belongs.

I enjoy when buildings tell the story of their life, when openings are still discernible after being closed up. It doesn’t need to be the architectural equivalent of sashiko, the Japanese technique for mending and repairing fabrics, but can be subtle.

The Summer newsletter is out today.It’s been one of the (if not *the*) driest, hottest summers, crunchy grass and heat t...
28/08/2026

The Summer newsletter is out today.

It’s been one of the (if not *the*) driest, hottest summers, crunchy grass and heat the whole way through. It’s been a full-on few months in the studio too. This issue: a new project starting in the High Weald National Landscape, Beeches and a TCI villa both moving onto site, and a companion piece to my winter comfort post, this time on keeping homes cool as summers like this one stop being unusual.

Link to read (and sign up for the next one) in bio.

Last week, on the hottest day of the year, I visited a lovely home in the beautiful High Weald National Landscape for an...
17/08/2026

Last week, on the hottest day of the year, I visited a lovely home in the beautiful High Weald National Landscape for an initial site consultation. It was a great meeting, talking about what to do with an existing conservatory that’s unusable in both summer and winter (this photo is the view from the conservatory along the valley across fields), about materials, context, and sustainability, and how it is to actually live there.

The summer solstice has always made people stop and look up. Today the sun reaches its highest point in the sky, rises a...
21/06/2026

The summer solstice has always made people stop and look up. Today the sun reaches its highest point in the sky, rises at its most northerly point on the horizon, and sets later than any other day of the year. It’s been this way for as long as the Earth has been tilting, and humans have been marking it in built form for at least five thousand years.

Knowing where the sun is at any given moment isn’t just poetic. It’s one of the most fundamental things a building can do. This week I’ll be looking at architecture that responds to the sun.

This image is a pinhole photograph exposed over several months, tracing the arc of the sun across the sky day by day.

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“Vineyard Solargraphy” by Accidental Nomad, CC BY 2.0

I’ve been meaning to properly introduce myself for a while. I’m Matt, founder of Mountain Fold Architecture, an RIBA Cha...
09/06/2026

I’ve been meaning to properly introduce myself for a while. I’m Matt, founder of Mountain Fold Architecture, an RIBA Chartered practice based in East Sussex. I design contemporary, sustainable homes across the UK, and residential work in the Turks and Caicos Islands with Coast Architects.

Before setting up Mountain Fold in 2017, I had the privilege of working at Ushida Findlay Architects, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, and Coast Architects. Three very different practices, specialising in experimental spatial craft and design, serious sustainable architecture, and international luxury residential design respectively. What connected them was a way of working: every decision grounded in something real, whether that’s climate, place, material, or the way people actually live.

That experience is what Mountain Fold is built on. Fabric-first design that takes its cues from the site and the people who’ll inhabit it, buildings that feel like they belong.

If you’re thinking about a project - an extension, renovation, or new build - and you want an architect who’ll think carefully about where it sits and what it should be, I’d be glad to talk.

Some places demand more of a building than others. What does yours demand?

Integrating a handrail into the wall capping, keeping the rear wall clean.
04/06/2026

Integrating a handrail into the wall capping, keeping the rear wall clean.

St Benedictusberg Abbey, Vaals, Netherlands, designed by Dom Hans van der Laan.Van der Laan was a Benedictine monk and a...
13/05/2026

St Benedictusberg Abbey, Vaals, Netherlands, designed by Dom Hans van der Laan.

Van der Laan was a Benedictine monk and architect, who developed a three-dimensional system of proportion called the plastic number. The plastic number is rooted in two perceptual limits: 3:4, the smallest size difference that reads as deliberate; and 1:7, the largest ratio where two sizes still feel part of the same system. In the abbey, wall thickness is the unit from which everything else derives.

Photo credit: Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (RCE), CC BY-SA 3.0 NL

“Lunch Run.”After twenty-odd years of entering the London Marathon ballot, this year it finally came through, and what a...
06/05/2026

“Lunch Run.”

After twenty-odd years of entering the London Marathon ballot, this year it finally came through, and what an amazing day it was. The crowds and atmosphere were fantastic.

Training started off the back of the Beachy Head Marathon last autumn, which meant a winter of long runs along the Eastbourne seafront. Not always the most sheltered spot in January, but certainly worth it. I finished in 4:46, my pace pretty consistent throughout, which was the aim.

It was also the first proper test of FuelCast, the fuelling app I had be building through my training and was released just before the event (). I ate exactly when it told me to, and finished smiling.

Back at my desk the next morning, sore, and straight onto a new project.

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