  We study universal groups for right-angled buildings. Inspired by Simon
Smith's work on universal groups for trees, we explicitly allow local groups
that are not necessarily finite nor transitive. We discuss various topological
and algebraic properties in this extended setting. In particular, we
characterise when these groups are locally compact, when they are abstractly
simple, when they act primitively on residues of the building, and we discuss
some necessary and sufficient conditions for the groups to be compactly
generated.
  We point out that there are unexpected aspects related to the geometry and
the diagram of these buildings that influence the topological and algebraic
properties of the corresponding universal groups.
