Article Link George Eglese runs Fontis Studio, a design studio working across culture, identity and living environments. He has been involved in developing contemporary approaches to Harrogate’s spa heritage, is the non-councillor lead for natural environment on the Harrogate Town Plan Committee, and has been involved in the 100-acre community land acquisition between Harrogate and Knaresborough. I agree with much of Iain Patton’s ambition. Harrogate should be healthier, gree

Convened by Harrogate-based designer George Eglese, this week’s meeting at Pannal Village Hall saw 50 residents, councillors, landowners and environmental specialists gather to explore the creation of Crimple Common and a continuous greenway through the Crimple Valley. George Eglese, who is also the founder of the Harrogate Cure initiative, a long-term programme exploring Harrogate’s renewal as ‘Britain’s Living Spa’, said: “I have long felt a need for Harrogate to do some pr

Exploring how design once held a nation together - and how it might again. Lately I’ve been sketching, tinkering - having a play with the idea of what a British Rail 2.0 might look like. It comes, perhaps inevitably, at a time when the government is proposing to resurrect British Rail - this time under the valiant title Great British Railways. I’ll reserve judgement on the name, though if the early visuals are anything to go by… well, let’s hope they’re still in draft form. H

We live in a world of fragments. Digital feeds, sprawling cities, political divides, even our own attention - all seem to pull apart rather than hold together. Yet beneath the noise, there is a human longing for coherence: for the sense that things fit, that life is not random but woven. Coherence is often mistaken for conformity. But true coherence is not sameness; it is harmony. It is the way a river bends through a valley, the way the stones of a cathedral fit together, th

If springs remind us of beginnings, flow reminds us of movement. Life itself is carried by flow - rivers through valleys, blood through veins, breath through lungs, ideas through communities. What endures is rarely static; it is patterned movement, shaped by the channels that allow it to travel and renew. Architect Christopher Alexander, in his Pattern Language, argued that healthy environments emerge from the rhythms of life itself: paths worn by walking, courtyards formed b

A radical new vision that puts nature and water at the heart of Harrogate’s development was laid out on Tuesday evening at the latest meeting of the Harrogate Town Plan Forum. The forum is a group of volunteers who have come together to create a comprehensive plan for Harrogate’s development that could potentially be adopted by the new Harrogate Town Council when its first councillors are elected in May. Over the last few months, around 30 people have met regularly at the Uni

Article Link Over 30 attendees, including senior officers from North Yorkshire Council’s Regeneration and Parks teams, the Environment Agency, Yorkshire Water, and Leeds University, as well as representatives from heritage, environmental, and community groups, including Long Lands Common and the Nidd Action Group, gathered for a landmark workshop titled “Growing the 21st Century Spa Town.” The event was led by George Eglese, an associate of the Institute of Place Management a