WITH a mother from Tredegar and an elder brother working as a surveyor in the mining industry, Graham Milsom grew up with South Wales stamped through him like the letters in Blackpool rock.

Around Newport he's known as the architect who designed the velodrome but the reputation of his Crickhowell-based practice has travelled much further than that.

Milsom Architects is currently supervising the building of a £10m administrative building and buoy repair yard in Harwich which it designed for the Trinity House lighthouse service.

Trinity House was founded by Henry VIII in 1514 and is responsible for the upkeep of all Britain's lighthouses, lightships, buoys and navigational radar.

Late last November Mr Milsom met the president of Trinity House, the Duke of Edinburgh, in Harwich to unveil the foundation stone of the new building.

Mr Milsom said: "He was very interested in what we were doing and very supportive.

"We were very nervous when the foundations were dug because it's such an ancient port the archeological potential is enormous.

"Over a thousand years ago King Alfred's queen set sail from there, I had visions of us hitting another version of Newport's ship.

"Harwich has a historic quayside, over 200 listed buildings and a medieval street plan.

"And into this we wanted to build a state-of-the-art building to meet the client's complex technical requirements. You can imagine how daunting the planning approval process looked to us when we started."

Fortunately, everyone seems to be pleased with the final outcome which is modern but sympathetic to its surroundings. "Much of the exterior is clad in granite as a tribute to the stone used in so many lighthouses. "

And we've specified a circular, all-glass observation deck with inscribed bearing lines in the directions of all the UK's lighthouses."

Britain's first lighthouse, the Eddystone had a light powered by 24 candles giving it a range of five miles. Today the service uses million-candle power lights, radio and satellite communications.

The Harwich building will certainly be a landmark (you can track its progress on webcam at www.wideangle-this.net) like Newport's tremendous velodrome.

The latter is a lot of building for £7.5m. "The Manchester velodrome has a fancy roof and frame but because of the tight budget I decided to put all the money into all the things that mattered - like doors for example - so that they wouldn't wear out.

"I'm proud of the fact that it was built on time and on budget in just 10 months. You don't get many lottery-funded projects which meet those criteria."

Mr Milsom's association with cycling goes back some years. He's a friend of the builder and president of the Welsh Cycling Union Bill Owen.

"We went down to Southampton together to see a wooden track which had been erected inside an aircraft hanger once used for the seaplanes on the flying boat service to New York.

"The track was so tight on the bends riders were suffering from G-forces. The operator had received a grant for a new track and we could have brought the old one to South Wales if there was a building large enough. But despite visiting sheds all around the region we never did find one."

Eventually, the need for a special track for South Wales was identified in the National Development Plan and local authorities were invited to put in bids to accommodate it.

"In my mind it could only go to Newport because it's a national resource as well as a local one and Newport has the best communications."

Mr Milsom has become a bit of a specialist on Newport's Spytty-based sports village.

He also designed the new tennis centre and is currently supervising the building of a new cycle speedway track after the old one was swallowed up by the new swimming pool development.

"It's adjacent to the velodrome and makes sense because the riders can share the medical, changing and training facilities."

All these jobs make up an interesting portfolio of work for a company which, six years ago, moved from Cardiff city centre to a kind of new Eden fantasy in Crickhowell.

"We wanted to develop a high quality practice which could serve the rural economies of Gwent, Glamorgan and Powys."

But like a river, life doesn't always conform to the chosen course and virtually the first job which came through the stable door was a new factory in Luxembourg for the Cwmbran-based Nimbus/Technicolour CD manufacturing operation.

"We spent our first two years working on the planning and early building phases of that factory, partly because bureaucracy was invented in Luxembourg."

The rural dream may have been postponed but it hasn't been forgotten. Milsom Architects has been kept busy with barn conversions as farmers diversify from agriculture to make a living.

"By and large they're holding on to their assets but making them work for them in new ways such as holiday lettings.

"We've done some nice work and word has got around on the jungle telegraph."

The company is a team of seven, with three architects and four technicians. One of them is Graham's son Jan.

The next big project is being done on behalf of the practice itself. Milsom is just about to submit a planning application for a new office based on a barn and adjacent land.

"We've outgrown our current offices and can't find larger ones nearby. But we don't want to leave the town so we've designed a scheme for a rural office with zero-energy requirements.

The land is on a slope and Mr Milsom intends to make use of this to have part of the office underground.

He will also use heat pumps to recover heat from the ground and photovoltaic cells in the roof to generate all the heat and electric light the building requires.

"We also want to offer a low-energy education centre where anyone interested building to minimise environmental impact could come for advice."

If anything can sway a Welsh planner's heart surely that can!