PORTFOLIOS
Fragments of my work.
Your ancestors have been building for at least 15,000 years.
Starting with elaborate stone complexes involving the labour of thousands and taking hundreds of years to realise. And they did this whilst still hunter gatherers living in undisturbed nature long before the beginnings of any civilizations.
Building is a primal instinct. It’s in your DNA just as birds simply know how to build a safe and secure nest. Despite the incredibly sophisticated synthetic materials with which we can now build a kilometre and more into the sky, building is still a profoundly primitive process.
We still begin just as our ancestors did digging deeply into the ground and rooting our structure immovable in place within its landscape. Where once human sacrifice was required beneath foundations we no longer do this, but the basic process of construction remains unchanged. While we can use glass and steel, concrete and extraordinary plastics the most elemental materials of our ancestors, wood, rock, clay are still in daily use.
Where once construction was about technique and the craft of building using natural materials to create spaces that worked in their environment and landscape, this has been largely abandoned. The notion of constructing for permanence has slipped away.
Today buildings are no longer built with skilled technique, they are assembled from factory made components. They are fabricated with synthetic materials and powerful machinery that no longer work within the constraints of the natural world.
As with the nest of a bird your appetite for enclosure, for “inside”, is buried deep within you. It lies way beyond the access of your rational mind, and this is what makes the process of design so exhilarating.
Rational thought can only bring you to the threshold, to the beginning, to the point of departure and from there you step into the unknown. You are leaping into the world of that which is not yet.
Architecture is silent. It communicates its meaning without words. Its utility is not the fabric of which it is made. Its essence is the space that it contains. What you see is simply the vessel.
You build in a place within a landscape. By the sea, in a forest, in a bleak inner city back lane, at the top of a high rise tower with the view of an eagle.
Each place within a landscape is completely unique and from this distils the form of the building. This unique new form can only be in this exact position.
In this way the character of a building arises from the landscape within which it is embedded.
From this unique spatial character unfolds and radiates every dimension of the design. From the largest to the smallest detail all are informed by the spatial character arising from the landscape.
Even in the densest of urban places all building is still immersed within the natural world. The wind, the rain, the sun are still there, even if all that is visible is a patch of sky and the stars at night.
The connection with and awareness of the natural world from within the enclosed space is always of profound importance for its inhabitants.
My curiosity has taken me to many countries, to many cultures. I have walked the ruins of long forgotten ancient cities and towns. Places where people once loved and cherished their lives, their worlds.
Some things are simply enduring and are fundamental in nourishing life. Others are fleeting and are ultimately consuming of life.
Our tragedy in our world of media driven mass consumption is ensnarement in the prejudice of fashion and taste. Captured in ideologies through which unknowingly we exclude ourselves from the richness of possibilities that our ancestors so carefully embraced.
In our world of technical velocity and global crisis it is our daily task to learn to see again with clarity.
Your ancestors have been building for at least 15,000 years.
Starting with elaborate stone complexes involving the labour of thousands and taking hundreds of years to realise. And they did this whilst still hunter gatherers living in undisturbed nature long before the beginnings of any civilizations.
Building is a primal instinct. It’s in your DNA just as birds simply know how to build a safe and secure nest. Despite the incredibly sophisticated synthetic materials with which we can now build a kilometre and more into the sky, building is still a profoundly primitive process.
We still begin just as our ancestors did digging deeply into the ground and rooting our structure immovable in place within its landscape. Where once human sacrifice was required beneath foundations we no longer do this, but the basic process of construction remains unchanged. While we can use glass and steel, concrete and extraordinary plastics the most elemental materials of our ancestors, wood, rock, clay are still in daily use.
Where once construction was about technique and the craft of building using natural materials to create spaces that worked in their environment and landscape, this has been largely abandoned. The notion of constructing for permanence has slipped away.
Today buildings are no longer built with skilled technique, they are assembled from factory made components. They are fabricated with synthetic materials and powerful machinery that no longer work within the constraints of the natural world.
As with the nest of a bird your appetite for enclosure, for “inside”, is buried deep within you. It lies way beyond the access of your rational mind, and this is what makes the process of design so exhilarating.
Rational thought can only bring you to the threshold, to the beginning, to the point of departure and from there you step into the unknown. You are leaping into the world of that which is not yet.
Architecture is silent. It communicates its meaning without words. Its utility is not the fabric of which it is made. Its essence is the space that it contains. What you see is simply the vessel.
You build in a place within a landscape. By the sea, in a forest, in a bleak inner city back lane, at the top of a high rise tower with the view of an eagle.
Each place within a landscape is completely unique and from this distils the form of the building. This unique new form can only be in this exact position.
In this way the character of a building arises from the landscape within which it is embedded.
From this unique spatial character unfolds and radiates every dimension of the design. From the largest to the smallest detail all are informed by the spatial character arising from the landscape.
Even in the densest of urban places all building is still immersed within the natural world. The wind, the rain, the sun are still there, even if all that is visible is a patch of sky and the stars at night.
The connection with and awareness of the natural world from within the enclosed space is always of profound importance for its inhabitants.
My curiosity has taken me to many countries, to many cultures. I have walked the ruins of long forgotten ancient cities and towns. Places where people once loved and cherished their lives, their worlds.
Some things are simply enduring and are fundamental in nourishing life. Others are fleeting and are ultimately consuming of life.
Our tragedy in our world of media driven mass consumption is ensnarement in the prejudice of fashion and taste. Captured in ideologies through which unknowingly we exclude ourselves from the richness of possibilities that our ancestors so carefully embraced.
In our world of technical velocity and global crisis it is our daily task to learn to see again with clarity.
