Inside a former threshing barn on a farm just outside Lewes, Loretta Bosence is stirring a saucepan on a stove, heating up a tantalising, raspberry-coloured mixture that is made using an old Scandinavian recipe. Across the room, her husband Ben is hanging up some sweetcorn stalks to dry, before he can chop them up and put them to use. Around them, shelves brim with the results of other experiments with locally grown ingredients.
The pair’s concoctions are not, however, designed for the plate. The founders of Local Works Studio use natural ingredients and waste products to make sustainable building materials and interiors items – from plaster and bricks, to exterior tiles, insulation blocks and terrazzo furniture. They take what they call a ‘landscape-led approach’ to planning, making and repairing buildings, using regional resources and processes, and often drawing on vernacular traditions. ‘Every project begins with mapping a site and its surroundings to establish what materials, skills and processing capabilities are available,’ Ben explains.
Loretta’s mixture is a wood paint made from locally sourced rye flour, linseed oil and the mineral iron oxide, which gives it its vivid colour. A similar recipe was used on the larch cladding of a new- build in Devon designed by Turner Prize-winning studio Assemble, incorporating ingredients found in the surrounding area. Local Works Studio added chromium oxide to give the paint a green tone that would camouflage the house within its leafy surroundings. ‘The recipe both stains and preserves the wood,’ says Loretta. ‘It allows you to use lower-grade and recycled timbers from a site externally, eliminating the need for hardwoods or toxic processes like pressure treating.’ They also used clay unearthed during the house’s excavation work for the internal plaster, mixed with sand and lime.
The sweetcorn stalks are a by-product from a nearby farm; once dried and chopped up, they will be compressed into insulation blocks. ‘A developer is interested in using them for a housing project in Lewes,’ Ben explains. ‘We are currently testing the potential of this abundant local material.’
Ben and Loretta met at Falmouth University in 1995. Their career paths soon diverged, however, with Ben setting up Bosence Building Conservation in 2005, which specialised in repairing vernacular buildings with materials such as lime, chalk and clay mortars. ‘I discovered how creative people once were with a limited material palette,’ he says. ‘We are not trying to replicate a vernacular aesthetic today – our work is about finding what’s available locally, and being honest with materials and how they behave. They have to work with modern times.’
Loretta went on to study for an MA in landscape architecture at the University of Greenwich, before working for The Decorators – a studio combining experience in landscape architecture, interior architecture and psychology – on what is known as ‘placemaking strategies’ for London public realm projects. ‘They do extensive local research, interviewing residents to get to the heart of what’s needed in a neighbourhood,’ says Loretta. ‘I learned a lot.’
The pair had collaborated on art exhibitions in London after leaving Falmouth, so it was only a matter of time before their working lives merged. They set up Local Works Studio in 2017 to develop sustainable solutions to various challenges of life in the built environment. ‘It’s an evolving conversation between our two practices,’ says Ben. He brings his knowledge of materials, while Loretta has experience of doing local research. However, they share the work evenly and now have two employees.
Past projects have included collaborating with landscape designer Sarah Price and providing natural paints and paving made from waste materials for her 2023 gold-medal-winning garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Ben and Loretta have also concocted chalk plasters to be used at a local Elizabethan manor house.
‘We see ourselves as makers and this informs everything that we do,’ says Ben. Around their solar-powered barn are machines for milling materials, including Mega Jaws, which crushes glass bottles sourced from Glyndebourne opera house to create terrazzo tiles. Outside, a roller pan mixer groans as it combines clay and chalk taken from the groundworks of a newbuild on the South Downs, designed by local architectural studio BakerBrown. Once dried, the house’s interior plaster made by Local Works Studio will be a subtle olive green.
Local Works Studio likes to join a building project from its inception, so that its mapping and material studies can guide architects’ design decisions. ‘We’re often brought in too late and, once demolition work commences, things become ring-fenced, causing unnecessary waste,’ says Ben.
The couple have no intention of selling their materials at scale. ‘Everything we do is a response to a place, so it wouldn’t make sense,’ Loretta explains. But they share their skills and knowledge with architects during workshops and they are hoping to extend these to members of the public. ‘We want to encourage a hands-on, DIY approach,’ Ben adds.
