AJ Small Projects 2013: Part 1 (AJ10.01.13) D by The Architects' Journal

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AJ Small Projects

Part one of this year’s shortlist: Mole Architects

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The Architects’ Journal

THANKS TO ALL THE PHOTOGRAPHERS THAT CONTRIBUTED TO THIS WEEK’S 12 COVERS: TIM SOAR, DAVID BUTLER, ALAN WILLIAMS, RAVEN COZENS-HARDY, ANGUS LEADLEY BROWN, RUNDELL ASSOCIATES, CHLOE DEWE MATHEWS, ALEX HAW, GRAS, DAVID VINTINER & DENNIS DESMET

eek’s See next w other issue for an all 12 AJ Sm Projects ..

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AJ Small Projects

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Part one of this year’s shortlist: Atmos Studio

Part one of this year’s shortlist: Coffey Architects

Part one of this year’s shortlist: Finkernagel Ross Architects

Part one of this year’s shortlist: Gort Scott Architects

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AJ Small Projects ..

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AJ Small Projects

£4.95 IBP MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR THEAJ.CO.UK

Part one of this year’s shortlist: GRAS

Part one of this year’s shortlist: Amin Taha Architects

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Part one of this year’s shortlist: Graux & Baeyens Architecten

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AJ Small Projects

Part one of this year’s shortlist: Mole Architects

£4.95 IBP MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR THEAJ.CO.UK

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AJ Small Projects

£4.95 IBP MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR THEAJ.CO.UK

Part one of this year’s shortlist: Hudson Architects

Part one of this year’s shortlist: Laura Dewe Mathews

Part one of this year’s shortlist: Rundell Associates

Part one of this year’s shortlist: Platform 5 Architects

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Week in pictures Niall McLaughlin’s King’s Cross canopy winner Front page Annual losses up 65 per cent at troubled Urban Splash UK news UK-wide remit for reborn Architecture Centre Network UK news Architects sceptical about outline planning shake-up Feature Why housing targets have dived under the Coalition People & practice Robert Bascoyne-Cecil on Hatfield House Competitions & wins Glasgow: George Square designs unveiled AJ Small projects 2013 Part 1 of this year’s shortlist of contenders for the best project with a total cost under £250,000 56 Culture Jay Merrick reviews Ugly: The Aesthetics of Everything This week online See photographs, drawings and details for all 229 Small Projects 2013 entries at AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk

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From the editor

‘Small projects are a labour of love,’ said AJ Small Projects judge Alison Brooks at our launch event last year. Presenting her early experimental work, the Stirling Prize-winning architect admitted that while small projects don’t always make a profit, ‘they become a proof of what you can achieve.’ This week we present 12 labours of love, the first half of the 24-strong shortlist of projects completed for £250,000 or less contending for this year’s AJ Small Projects awards. The calibre of the work submitted to the contest makes this a stand-out year. Rory Olcayto describes the challenge of selecting 24 schemes from the 229 entries on page 28. But the most difficult task is still ahead for the Small Projects jury: Brooks will join developer Martyn Evans, creative director of Cathedral Properties, quantity surveyor John Boxall of Jackson Coles, sales and marketing director Paul Reed of Marley Eternit, sustainability editor Hattie Hartman and me to pick the winners of this year’s awards. On 30 January, the shortlisted architects will present their work to the jury in a speed crit. The winners will be chosen on the day and the top prize and sustainability award will be presented over celebratory drinks that same evening at New London Architecture in The Building Centre, London, at the exclusive launch party for the Small Projects exhibition (which opens to the public on 31 January). At the launch event last year, Ben Adams also spoke of the importance of making small projects count. ‘If you are going to work on small projects, then they have to be as high-profile as possible,’ Adams said. Works like Carmody Groarke’s Filling Station, David Kohn’s Room for London or Studio Weave’s Palace of Pillars are examples of how small projects can get a lot of attention. Every Small Projects entry was posted in the AJ Buildings Library, and the most visited small projects have already had thousands of visits. The most popular project, Squitchey Lane (pictured), by Matthew Clay Architects, has had 3,000 views, a top prize, even ..

MATTHEW CLAY ARCHITECTS

Small projects can make a big impact and lay the foundations for new business, says Christine Murray

The calibre of the work that has been submitted makes this a stand-out year for the AJ Small Projects awards if it didn’t make the official shortlist of 24. This year’s Small Projects are proof positive that design excellence is alive and well, despite the challenging economic climate. May they be the foundations of a vibrant future for the profession, and long may it thrive. AJ Small Projects is sponsored by Marley Eternit. An exhibition of all 24 shortlisted projects opens 31 January at New London Architecture, The Building Centre, 26 Store Street, London WC1. christine.murray@emap.com From EMAP to our readers EMAP is hugely proud of its heritage as a leading B2B media company and excited to announce that the business is now a separate legal trading entity, within Top Right Group. This change will enable us to operate more independently and make investment decisions to better support the industries we serve and the communities we live in. We will continue to listen to you – our customers – and create the great products, market-leading events, breaking news, insight and analysis you expect. Over the festive break, we also moved office and are now based at Telephone House, 69-77 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NQ. 

Week in pictures

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PICTURE CREDITS: 01 NMA 02 MOXON ARCHITECTS 03 JOHN DONAT / RIBA LIBRARY PHOTOGRAPHS COLLECTION 04 SQUIRE AND PARTNERS 05 DEBBIE FLEVOTOMOU ARCHITECTS

 Niall McLaughlin has beaten a shortlist including Amanda Levete, Carmody Groarke and Duggan Morris to win Argent’s contest for a canopy at King’s Cross. With steel rods supporting a glass roof, the winning design ‘makes reference to the rich history of the place,’ says the architect 1

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 Moxon Architects and structural engineer Flint & Neill have revealed plans for a new £1 million foot and cycle bridge over the River Dee near Braemar in Aberdeenshire in Scotland. The 85m-long suspended structure will be supported by a ‘cable net valley of inclined hangers’ 2

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 Architecture Minister Ed Vaizey has handed a grade-II* listing to Foster + Partners’ Sainsbury Centre, describing it as a ‘high point’ of the British hightech movement. The minister said the 1977 building at the University of East Anglia was ‘superbly fit for purpose’ 3

 Squire and Partners has submitted plans for the UK’s tallest residential tower in London’s Docklands. The 75-storey, 239m-high skyscraper replaces an earlier 63-storey proposal by Foster + Partners for the Westferry Road site, formerly occupied by the City Pride pub 4

 Debbie Flevotomou Architects has won the £1,250 first prize in an ideas competition organised by JB Builders to design a spiritual centre in Battersea. The practice beat emerging outfit One-world Design and Jimmy Chan with its Centre of Religion and Peace proposal. 5

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Urban Splash annual losses up 65% to £15.4m as firm restructures Downward spiral of Manchester-based regeneration specialist continues with further losses reported in company results to 31 March 2012  Manchester-based regeneration specialist and champion of good architecture Urban Splash has seen its shareholder value wiped out as its annual losses rose to £15.4 million. It is understood the company’s chairman and co-founder, Tom Bloxham, is currently locked in talks with its banks, HSBC and asset management company BlackRock, to thrash out £113.6 million of new bank facilities, having breached its loan covenants. Accountant Deloitte, which audited the property company’s latest accounts for the year ending 31 March 2012, warned Urban Splash needed ‘shortterm’ cash while ‘restructuring concluded’. It added there was ‘no certainty [that] the necessary funding level will continue to be provided or that satisfactory restructuring will be achieved.’ The 65 per cent hike in the ..

company’s net losses from £9.3 with some of the country’s best million in 2011 comes as the and up-and-coming architects, award-winning outfit confirmed primarily in the North, did an increase in net debt levels see its turnover increase 16 of £8 million to £242.4million per cent from £29.1million in its latest accounts. in 2012 to £33.6million. Urban Splash’s assets collapsed In a statement which from a total of £93 million in accompanied the figures, a March 2008 to net liabilities ‘positive’ Bloxham said: ‘The of £17.4million in 2012. general economic malaise Urban Splash recently and downward pressure parted with longon valuations has had standing directors an impact on our Nick Johnson and commercial property Losses at Urban Guy Jackson (AJ portfolio, while the Splash in 2012 18.10.12) following continued lack of the arrival of new availability of mortgage director and financial finance has acted as a troubleshooter Martyn barrier to potential homebuyers.’ Everett in the summer. Last year the company told the In the past 12 months Urban AJ it was looking at more smaller Splash’s workforce shrank from scale, family housing schemes and 142 to 117 and a ‘revaluation was also mooting building oneof its commercial properties’ off houses by top-name architects showed a reduction in value to rather than focusing on its usual, £6.9million in 2012 from £10.3 harder-to-fund, mainstay of million in 2011. However, the larger-scale, residential projects. company, which has worked Richard Waite

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GREG NEWTON / ARCAID

Front page

     Reports filed this week by a raft of AJ100 practices reveal the impact of tough trading conditions on the profession. Devereux Architects made a pre-tax loss of £1.9 million in the year ending 31 December 2011, mainly due to the closure of its North East offices. Ranked 49 in last year’s AJ100, the company saw turnover fall 12 per cent from £5.8 million to £5.1 million. Grimshaw’s pre-tax profits increased 37 per cent in the year ending 31 March 2012, rising to £1.9 million from £1.4 million. But turnover fell 2.7 per cent to £17.2 million. The group employed 12 per cent fewer architects in the period. After-tax profits at Jane Drew Prize 2012-winner Zaha Hadid Architects fell by more than 50 per cent in the year ending 30 April 2011, following project cancellations in North Africa. Turnover also dipped from £44.6 million in 2010 to £43 million last year, a drop of 3.6 per cent. Terry Farrell and Partners reported a pre-tax loss of £108,078 for the year ending 31 March 2012, down from £301,682 the previous year. Turnover meanwhile fell to £4.9 million from £5.4 million. 

UK news

UK-wide remit for resurrected ACN   The newly unveiled successor to the troubled Architecture Centre Network (ACN) will extend beyond England to cover the entire UK. Renamed the Architecture Built Environment Centre Network (ABECN), the umbrella body replaces the Architecture Centre Network (ACN) which shut down last June following funding cuts. The organisation will represent 15 former ACN members but could grow to include centres in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Due to funding arrangements, the ACN was only able to work with English bodies. Set to launch next month, the membership organisation will

MORLEY VON STERNBERG

The newly-founded Architecture Built Environment Centre Network will cover the UK, but on a smaller budget than its predecessor

pool expertise and campaign on behalf of the architecture centres. It will be much smaller than its predecessor, with no paid staff. Victoria Thornton (pictured), founding director of OpenCity, who was a former ACN board member and is now an ABECN director, explained that limited funding meant the new set-up was the best way forward for the network.

She said: ‘The detailed programme will be set by the membership and, rather than a central administration, we will all share existing resources to support the core activity, which will effectively replace the former Architecture Centre Network.’ The Architecture Foundation has, however, chosen to join the international Association of Architecture Organisations instead, because of its securer financial footing. A separate platform has also been set up to represent the eight bodies on Cabe’s affiliated network of design review providers. Called the Design Network, the umbrella includes Creating Excellence and Integreat-

PLUS which were absent from the original ACN. Services provided by its members will include training, community engagement, economic development, design workshops and neighbourhood planning support. They will also advise on the new Building for Life, which has been re-launched following the abandoning of its network of accredited assessors and pointsbased assessment system last year. CABE chair Paul Finch said: ‘We are pleased that our support for these centres over many years has helped to lay the foundations for the new grouping.’ RIBA president Angela Brady said: ‘If the government is serious about NPPF and localism then they must support the architecture centres as they have the expertise, experience and knowledge to bring architecture to the public in a meaningful way and bring the much-needed quality values back into the discussion.’ Merlin Fulcher

BCSE forced to close 11 join RMJM lawsuit projections in late December but  The UK’s leading camwere unwilling to increase the paign group for better school architecture, the British Council for membership fee because of the ‘precarious’ economic climate. School Environments (BCSE), Set up six years ago, the charity has been forced to close due to championed high-quality uncertainty over funding. school design on behalf The shutdown comes of 200 members. after the organisation Richard Mazuch, struggled to cover Number of member director of design reits costs in the wake organisations in search and innovation of the closure of the the BCSE at architect NightBuilding Schools ingales, said BCSE’s for the Future proend was a ‘great shame.’ gramme two years ago. He added: ‘The BCSE has been The body said it was unable a catalyst for much innovative to overcome ‘myriad challenges’ thinking and instigated a drive brought on by the reduction in towards creating optimal learning capital funding to schools. Trusenvironments. Merlin Fulcher tees reviewed the body’s financial

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  Another 11 former RMJM staff have joined a class action lawsuit against the struggling global practice. New court papers seen by the AJ show that five new causes of action have also been added to the initial complaint, made by ex-senior HR manager Dana Byrne last November (AJ 15.11.12), which alleges ‘numerous unlawful employment practices’ by the AJ100 big hitter. RMJM chairman Fraser Morrison has now been named among the defendants, alongside the various companies, chief executive Peter Morrison, commercial directors Declan

Thompson and Richard Bailes, in an amended action lodged at the US District Court Southern District of New York last week. As well as the original claims covering the ‘unlawful failure to pay minimum wage […] unlawful wage deductions’ and the ‘fraudulent concealment’ of the cancellation of the group term life insurance policy, the new papers also cite ‘unjust enrichment’ and violations of ERIAs, the federal law which sets minimum standards for pension plans for private companies in the US. RMJM refused to comment on the court proceedings. Richard Waite ..

UK news

Architects sceptical on ‘outline’ shake-up Move to cut layout and scale from outline planning could fail to speed up developments establishing them at this stage,  The government’s it is difficult for planning decision to abolish ‘burdensome’ authorities to give any useful layout and scale requirements indication of what may, or may in outline planning applications not, be acceptable later on. has been met with scepticism ‘Delaying consideration of by the profession. scale and layout may render The amendment to The the outline planning result Town and Country Planning a complete waste of time, (Development Management money and effort for architects, Procedure), which comes developers and clients. We into force on 31 January need smarter approaches 2013, is part of a bid to eliminating by the government unnecessary elements to streamline of bureaucracy, information for Date the amendment rather than hacking outline planning officially comes at core elements applications, aimed at into force of the decisionspeeding up decisions making process.’ and reducing costs. Planning consultant Previously building Peter Stewart of PSPCA locations, widths, lengths and said the move was unlikely to upper and lower heights had to affect larger schemes, where be set out in outline submissions. layout and scales have to be However architects have been set out in Environmental generally dismissive of the move. Statements required under Shahriar Nasser, director of separate legislation. He feared Belsize Architects, said: ‘We’re a return to the ‘red line’ outline all for streamlining planning application approach for other information requirements, projects could lead to difficulties but I’m unsure whether this with local consultation. proposal benefits anyone. He said: ‘Expectations of ‘Scale and layout are engagement have ramped up fundamental issues and, without considerably over last few years and local people are likely ‘I’m unsure whether to have the same problem as this proposal benefits environmental assessors, ie “we can’t comment if you can’t tell us anyone. Scale what you’re going to build, so you and layout are shouldn’t be getting permission”. ‘The bureaucrat’s answer is that fundamental issues’ all that can happen at the next Shariar Nasser, Belsize stage – reserved matters – and schemes can be turned down at

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    ,        The order doesn’t mean that the scale of the site, namely its size and shape, or the proposed layout of development can be omitted from an outline application. What it does mean is that an outline application will now be what it says – an indication in outline of proposed development which may have details of the layout and scale such as the height and bulk of any proposed buildings reserved for later consideration. For architects and clients this means that the quality of development should be improved because the architect won’t be locked in to an illconsidered layout produced as the result of just having to show something at outline stage. And it should push development forward as it will now be possible to obtain outline approval without the need to spend large sums producing unnecessary information, so encouraging more outline submissions and earlier commitment from clients. Rather than implying less paid work, this is a chance to get back to the proper meaning of an outline application but architects should take advantage of the change to encourage clients to bring forward or revive projects.

  ,      &  Initially this move may mean the process is slightly more cost-effective for the developer. However, it risks a more hurried and abrupt response from the planners about whether a development can go ahead or not without being fed the full facts of the proposal. And how will the planners be able to make a valued judgement on whether a scheme should go ahead without such important details such as the layout and scale information? For the design quality to be maintained, the weight is now more heavily put on the full, detailed planning aspect of the building process. I just hope that the developers will understand that they will incur the same total cost at the end regardless of this amendment. The design process is not shortened, nor should it be compromised in order to rush schemes through. Successful developments are dependent on high-quality design, creating places where people want to live and where businesses want to invest; and this is a process that will inevitably happen, regardless of what application the development is put under.

that stage if unacceptable. This, however, hardly ever happens.’ Meanwhile Peter Gamble, partner at Holder Mathias, did not foresee an immediate acceleration in the development pipeline. He said: ‘The inertia of the existing systems and attitudes

within local authority planning departments will mean it will be a long time before we see any tangible impact. Even then, it seems unlikely that outline applications for larger scale developments will be significantly streamlined by this change. Richard Waite 

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News feature

Plummeting housing targets are a direct result of the coalition’s abolition of RSS, says report A Conservative think tank report blames the government for councils across the country slashing housing planning targets, which could result in 273,000 fewer homes  English housing targets have nosedived under the coalition, according to a right-wing think tank. In a damning report, Policy Exchange said more than 270,000 fewer homes were planned because of the coalition government’s decision to scrap regional spatial strategies (RSS). The Conservative think tank – founded by planning minister Nick Boles a decade ago – argued the majority of councils had failed to fill the vacuum left by the abolition of the top-down policy. As a result, English council targets outlined in the latest local development plans featured 272,720 fewer homes compared with June 2010 when RSS was abolished. The figures exclude London, which was not covered by the policy. South-west England saw the largest drop with 108,380 fewer homes planned, followed by the South East where councils had reduced their targets by 57,049. Lower local authority targets could, in turn, stifle land release and place the coalition on track to preside over the lowest level of housebuilding since the 1920s, the report warned. The analysis came as the coalition faced criticism over its mid-term review, which

‘Relying on councils to expand housing targets was a mistake’ Alex Morton  ..

Changes in local authority planned housing figures

north east

north west

+2.6%

-3.4%

yorkshire + humber -11%

east midlands -5.7%

west midlands -8.0%

east

-4.6%

south east south west

-8.8%

-18.3%

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failed to announce new policies             to resolve the housing crisis. Alex Morton, the report’s author, said: ‘Relying on councils to expand housing targets was a mistake.’ Even so, the Policy Exchange ‘Lenders must sing from the same hymn sheet and we must report admitted RSS targets had accept that owning a home, rather than renting one, is a failed to deliver, suggesting the very British, very colonnial, obsession that should change’ best way forward was to reward local people for approving new Bonus – a reward to those the Housing Market Renewal homes. It also advocated selfWhat is it about authorities for granting Initiative (HMRI) aimed at build, converting empty buildings housing that planning permissions, which ‘slum clearance’ in, principally, and brownfields into housing, and the government northern towns where, in spite of was paid by ‘matching’ pursuing new methods of land simply doesn’t council tax for six years. No the buoyant market, the housing procurement and construction. get? It’s not just surprises that Tower Hamlets market had failed – namely Holder Mathias partner the coalition, housing policies will receive a whopping Accrington, Burnley, parts of Carolyn Merrifield was also have been in tatters since the £16 million in 2013/14 Manchester and Liverpool. sceptical about what the regional turn of the millennium. while Pennine Lancashire’s I suggested to Prescott the targets had achieved. She said Remember Labour’s Hyndburn gets £5,320. strapline should have been economic uncertainty and poor suggestion that house-price rises At a time when fewer new ‘HMRI – it’s got nothing to do mortgage availability had rendered were a ‘supply-led’ issue and lack homes are being built since with housing’, because it was the policy ‘meaningless’. She called of supply was the principle factor 1923, shares are trading in the the potential of these existing on the government to combat the pushing prices up and making quoted housebuilding sector perfectly good places that high cost and risk of brownfield it unaffordable for first-time at their highest level since the development adding: ‘The buyers? The proposition then was needed be re-thought and re2008 crash. Land banking not imagined to create sustainable government needs to incentivise that building more homes would housebuilding appears to be the patterns of demand for perfectly banks to start lending have a deflationary effect ‘just’ reward of recent policies. good properties. For example, for housing again.’ on house prices due to Mark Prisk enters the Burnley could be re-cast as a Assael the basic economic housing debate at a critical thriving market town on your Architecture’s John principles of supply MORE HOMES and demand – time. As a chartered surveyor, front doorstep, with Pennine Assael also singled BETTER HOMES missing completely one hopes he has at least a parkland at your back door. out lack of funding tenuous grasp of basic housing Tony Wilson, before his death for new social the principle factor, economics even if, for now, he and following his reinvention housing and questioned which was the easy tows the Gove-ian line that the coalition’s ‘political availability of cheap money. as a then fashionable-as-pop design costs money and money ‘urban regenerator’, posited ambition’ to resolve the issue. Then there was John Prescott’s spent on design and designers that area reinvent itself as Anthony Hudson of Hudson loudly trumpeted call to the is a flagrant and wilful waste. ‘Pennine Lancashire’. Architects added: ‘The lack of industry to build the ‘£60,000 Let’s hope that, unlike his Then there followed housebuilding in the UK has house’. Architects teamed up predecessor, he is honest the abolitionist zeal of the not primarily been a planning with builders to conceive and enough to admit to a problem issue; it’s arisen because of the construct a house for £60k. That’s coalitionistas – out with public and prepared to listen with sector intervention, out with difficulty for many to finance about as relevant as asking how an open mind to his critics. the agencies promoting design home purchases with the logjam much it cost to build your Audi Quality of design is an quality, in with new-found in the mortgage market.’ or make the beer in your glass… integral component to driving freedoms and liberties, such Meanwhile, fresh data from What something costs to build value, creating desire, driving as the ability for registered industry monitor Glenigan and what it costs to buy are two demand and thereby delivering social landlords to charge near revealed a surprise 38 per cent fundamentally different things. numbers. Lenders need to be market rents and raise capital. rise in the number of residential Of course you can build a house sorted out and sing from the The impact turned out to be units approved last year in for £60,000 but with the cost of same hymn sheet, and we need England, excluding London. the land, the fees, the finance, the mainly in the capital because to accept that owning a home social rents and market rents Its research also showed social profit, that £60k house actually rather than renting one is a very were already on a par outside housing starts boomed 48 per costs over £175,000 to buy. British, very colonial, obsession of London and the South. cent in the final quarter of 2012. Prezza was also responsible that could do with changing. In with the New Homes Merlin Fulcher for the disaster that became ..

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People & practice

‘Hatfield is not a style war’

NEW PRACTICES

What’s wrong with your neighbourhood, Old Hatfield? In the early 1970s all sorts of horrors were perpetrated there. The station was rebuilt to look like a shelterless stop on the far eastern transSiberian rail line, the old town centre was bypassed and the A1000 became a racetrack. What’s happening to improve it? Five years ago we took the cattle by the horns. I asked American new urbanist Andrés Duany to deliver a lecture, which spawned the Hertfordshire charrette to consider how the county could respond to the increased pressure for housing and improve that which was not so good. What are your plans? The charrette got the public behind us; the locals responded magnificently and we achieved a consensus. The idea is to make the area more of a vibrant whole, so Hatfield House, once again, plays a role in the community. In certain areas we have left open matters of detail, for example how Salisbury Square is going to look. We are showing a number of options to the local community. Why use traditional architecture? This is not a style wars but about making communities live and thrive. The beauty of using traditional materials is that it makes buildings that are  ..

adaptable over centuries. We want to be here for another 400 years so we think about what we build. If you have an interest in exciting modern buildings with modern materials that is excellent – particularly if there are iconic buildings that are not going to have to change. Would you commission a modern building? I would be interested in building an iconic Modernist building at some point, but I would not necessarily want it to be part of the housing on my high street unless it was for some particular purpose. Why was a charrette important? There’s a national disease that we are no good at anything, but if morale is raised and people feel something is happening – something they approve of and like – it is not surprising what you can actually do. It’s a virtuous circle. Who is your favourite architect? Inigo Jones. He was revolutionary in his time, changed everything. Should post-war architecture ever be listed? There is a case for listing as an example but the question is: do these buildings stand the test of time? The same applies to all forms of aesthetic fashion. What is your favourite building? It is the Villa La Rotonda by Andrea Palladio.

STUDIO GRAY

The 7th Marquess of Salisbury Robert GascoyneCecil outlines his project to overhaul the district around Hatfield House, his ancestral home

Studio Gray   Fiammetta Gray and Peter Thomas  London N1  August 2011  studiogray.co.uk Where have you come from? We met 12 years ago at Buckley Gray Yeoman, where Fiammetta was a founding director, and have worked alongside each other ever since. Fi has previously worked at ORMS in London and with Antonio Citterio in Milan. What work do you have and what are you looking for? Our work is mainly private residential, but covers quite a broad range of sizes and locations. We are just completing a small residential extension to a 1960s house in south London and a substantial residential barn remodelling and extension in Suffolk. We’re keen to have a more diverse workload and would like to get back into the restaurant and retail sectors, of which we have extensive experience.

What are your ambitions? We are not focused on becoming a particular size of practice and are happy to work on projects at all scales. We want to produce good buildings and make people happy. How optimistic are you as a start-up practice? This year looks promising – our first new-build house is in the early design stages and a residential refurbishment is going through planning. We’re keeping busy – hopefully because we are open to all opportunities. How are you marketing yourselves? All our work has come via word of mouth and recommendation but, as it’s often the first port of call, we’ll update our website with the projects we are finishing. ..

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Competitions & wins

George Square shortlisted designs unveiled Teams behind Olympic Park legacy and Leicester Square revamp among contenders for controversial overhaul of Glasgow’s principal civic square  The AJ can reveal the designs by the six teams shortlisted in the contest to overhaul Glasgow’s George Square. High Line-mastermind and post-Games Olympic Park designers James Corner Field Operations with Gillespies and Make Architects is vying for the £15 million project against landscape specialists Gustafson Porter, France’s Agence Ter with Hengehan Peng architects and

Atmos, jmarchitects with Graeme Massie Architects, John McAslan & Partners and Burns + Nice, the public realm design team behind the recent revamp of London’s Leicester Square. Despite council plans to remove 12 statues and monuments from the square, which led to objections from experts and the public, some of the submitted designs have retained and repositioned them.

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The judging panel includes David Mackay, partner at MBM Architects Barcelona, Andy McMillan, former head of Mackintosh School of Architecture and T in the Park festivsal director Geoff Ellis. All the anonymous designs will go on display at The Lighthouse in Glasgow next week. A winner is expected to be announced on 18 January. Richard Waite

 ,     With just two whacky exceptions that incorporate what looks like a stone umbrella canopy and a glass ramp that corrals the bronzes, the submissions and images are restrained with an emphasis on the quality of surface material and hard landscaping befitting such an important space. It’s clear that some of the competitors have listened or read many of the comments from those Glaswegians who longed for better seating, trees and greenery. The majority of bronzes seem also to have been kept, although some have been relocated to make the central space bigger and better able to hold larger gatherings, remembering the importance of the square in the social and political history of the city. Although submissions are secret, you can judge those entrants who perhaps know little about the city. They have placed their canopies and covered spaces on the south side of the square, where they will get little sunlight, if any, and be in shadow. The north side is where these structures should be. The bolder proposals include water features of some size, where children and adults seem to be frolicking. One thinks of the Crown Fountain in Chicago and, although undoubtedly attractive, some may question its suitability in the west of Scotland. The presentations are slick, with perhaps too much emphasis on computer-generated imagery. They seem, nonetheless, to be well considered and respectful of the square’s significance to the city and should encourage much debate. I hope so. ..

IAN YARHAM

COMPETITIONS FILE

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THE AJ DOES NOT ORGANISE, ENDORSE OR TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR COMPETITIONS

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The University of Roehampton (pictured) is looking for chartered architects for an £18 million library and £30 million student accommodation block. The Digby Stuart College projects are due to start this autumn and complete in 2016. Shortlisted teams will enter a concept design competition. [Expressions of interest due before 21 January] Economic development company Sea Change Sussex is seeking an architect to develop a design concept for a series of business centres. The 2,200m² building should include an atrium and be adaptable to a range of sites. Work on site is due to begin in May, with completion expected in 2015. [Requests to participate to be received by 14 February] Kilmartin House Museum in Scotland is on the hunt for an architect for a £3 million project to create an ‘environmentally friendly building’ using lowcarbon energy sources from the surrounding glen. Architectural (stages A-L), as well as quantity surveying, structural engineering and CDM co-ordination services are needed. [PQQs should be completed by 1 February] Sean Kitchen TheAJ.co.uk/competitions 

Letter from London

The coalition’s mid-term review should give pause for thought about housing and planning, writes Paul Finch The predictable news that review, but is not the only area for concern. Having house-building has slumped made a very decent job of re-setting the planning system to 1920s levels has prompted via the National Planning Policy Framework, everything the usual nonsense about has been thrown up in the air with yet another ‘review’ land shortages, problems with the planning system, which appears to be aimed at building sprawl all over Building Regulations and so on. the countryside. The reality is that, unless and until mortgage finance This should certainly be resisted, since it is quite becomes available on reasonable terms, the private unnecessary and is a diversion from the fundamental housing problem will continue. issues affecting housing supply. As for social housing, unless an Olympic-style The lust for ‘reviews’ has also been apparent in airport initiative takes place we will continue to have a dearth in policy, where the lobby for a hopelessly short-term fix London and parts of the South-East, breaking up over Heathrow expansion has resulted in a manifesto communities and making life difficult for the young commitment (no new runway) being ditched, along with ‘squeezed middle’. the transport secretary – sacked for upholding The slightly sick-making propaganda about the government and party policy. benefits of private rented housing, generally proclaimed by people with at least one privately owned house, Unless and until ignores a fundamental reality of British life: a mortgage finance house or apartment that you own outright after becomes available on paying off a loan over 25 years is a very sensible MORE HOMES reasonable terms, investment. You build up a nest-egg which will BETTER HOMES help you through your dementia years. the private housing Why a Conservative-led government is so problem will continue eager to discourage home ownership is mysterious, perhaps explained by the fact that the lamentable level of No doubt ministers will blame Whitehall bureaucracy private house-building shows little sign of improving. for delays to decisions on all this, when it is they who Finance has been found for banks, wars, overseas aid are responsible. They are also responsible for the – indeed for almost everything and everyone except disgraceful postponement of a rating revaluation (until ordinary young British taxpayers trying to make their after the next election), which will result in further way in the world. high street degradation as retailers in northern towns go It is almost beyond belief that those in social out of business. Mary Portas must be wondering why accommodation are facing massive increases in rent in she bothered. response to so-called market levels that have been Closer to home, the good news is that Ed Vaizey is determined by the failure of successive governments to promoting a review of the state of British architecture; ensure housing supply. ie we have a culture minister who is actually interested Perhaps it will take another round of riots, prompted in the subject. by the ethnic and class cleansing envisaged by certain The bad news is that Michael Gove is still peddling local authorities, which think the lower orders should be his mendacious view that school architecture doesn’t expelled from their patch – unless they are servants – matter. We had better be grateful that he is not running before this is addressed. the NHS. So, housing needs serious attention in the mid-term  ..

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Astragal

One in the Eye  Private Eye’s Christmas edition announced that, despite tough competition from Renzo Piano’s Shard, Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond’s Orbit, and Nicholas Grimshaw’s fiddling with the Cutty Sark, the winner of the Sir Hugh Casson Medal for 2012 is Liam O’Connor’s Bomber Command Memorial on the edge of London’s Green Park. The satirical magazine’s annual award highlights the worst of British architecture. Piloti (AKA Gavin Stamp) writes in his Nooks and Corners column of the ‘inept’ design: ‘How puzzling and how sad that, more

than 60 years after the end of the war, Britain still finds it necessary to erect a memorial which is so pompous, self-regarding and triumphalist, so lacking in historical consciousness and sensitivity, and so vulgar and bad as a Classical design that it is more worthy of Ceausescu’s Romania than modern Britain.’

A Glasgow kiss  As an honorary Glaswegian, Stamp, who did much to revive interest in the city’s Victorian built heritage, would be horrified to learn of the demolition of B-listed Springburn Public Hall, over the Christmas break.

The 110-year-old building was pulled down because the council considered its poor state of repair to be a health risk. Designed by Mitchell Library architect William B Whitie, the hall was a red sandstone ashlar construction in an Italian Renaissance style, and featured fine work by sculptor James Milne Sherriff, including female statues representing Springburn’s engineering and

locomotive industries (pictured). The council rescued just two of Sherriff’s statues during the demolition, despite it being widely considered the Dundee-born sculptor’s greatest achievement.

Stone circle threat   Still in Glasgow, another threat looms, this time to the Sighthill Stone Circle, built in the ’70s by the astronomer and author Duncan Lunan and funded by Glasgow City Council. Problem is, the land art, which aligns with George Square as well as the heavens above, and which maps both midsummer and midwinter solstices, is in the way of developments planned as ‘part of Glasgow’s bid to host the 2018 Youth Olympic Games’, according to The Herald. Lunan’s friend, Lanark author, renowned painter and occasional blogger Alasdair Gray, has taken up arms: ‘This project is grimly familiar to old Glaswegians with good memories. After World War II many Glasgow planners believed that to renovate they must first devastate…’ There’s something the matter with Glasgow.

Render unto Zaha

WWW.LOUISHELLMAN.CO.UK

 Already cloning designer clothes and iPhones, China’s infamous duplicating trend has now broken into architecture. Global star designer-architect Zaha Hadid has hit out at an alleged copy of her Wangjing Soho complex, which is being built faster than the original. The studio’s 200m-tall retail and office development is now racing to complete in time, ahead of the rival in Chongqing, which the practice fears could have been reverse engineered from its renders. ..

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Black box

A sense of risk, danger and the unknown is far more compelling than beauty, says Rory Olcayto ‘You are in a large dry cave, which is quite comfortable. Below is the small insignificant crack. Visible exits are: south. You see: nothing. Thorin enters.’ OK. What now? I’ve just come from the south, so... ‘Wait’. ‘Time passes. Thorin says, ‘Hurry up’. Someone opens the insignificant crack. The nasty goblin enters.’ Oh no. ‘You are captured by the nasty goblin and put into the goblin’s dungeon.’ There’s a door to the north – but its locked. And there’s a window to the west – but it’s out of reach. Luckily, Thorin’s here too. But he’s not much use. ‘Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.’ Arghhh! I should have typed, ‘wear ring’ in the large dry cave. The goblin would never have seen me. I, or rather Bilbo Baggins, was stuck in that dungeon for weeks. Months. In fact, I’m not sure I ever managed to escape. Maybe your Baggins was trapped there too, if you ever played The Hobbit, Beam software’s 1982 adaptation of JRR Tolkein’s Middle Earth adventure. It ran on the then-ubiquitous 8-bit computers such as the Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64. In the game, you played the eponymous hobbit, following the quest from the book: help Gandalf and Thorin recover the horde of stolen Dwarf gold, jealously guarded by the great dragon Smaug. The Hobbit was advanced for its day and, from 2013’s perspective, looks like a landmark in virtual reality design, a shaper of things to come. Unlike previous

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popular adventure games, some locations were illustrated by an image that, somehow, despite crude, angular threecolour graphics, seemed revelatory at the time, like pages from the Book of Kells or a numinous Behzad miniature. Yet Beam’s programming really was smart, and included a primitive physics engine, a tool now commonplace in videogame design as well as advanced CAD modelling. Objects, including the characters in the game, had a calculated size, weight and solidity, and could be placed inside other objects. They could be damaged, broken or even linked together. Crucially, time passed of its own accord in this computer-generated Middle Earth. Events continued to happen without waiting for your next command. If you left the keyboard for more than a few minutes, the game purred: ‘You wait – time passes’, and your companions, the wizard Gandalf, Dwarf king Thorin, and half-elven Elrond would wander off, make demands of you or sit and start singing about gold. Sometimes they even got killed. It felt new, transgressive, dangerous. Wouldn’t the whole of Middle Earth come crashing down if Gandalf died? It’s what I was thinking about when I went to see Peter Jackson’s film of The Hobbit during the Christmas holidays with my brother (we lost days, playing the Oric-1 version – one typing, the other mapping locations). Filmed in 3D and at 48 frames per second, it looks very beautiful, especially the architectural design. The art and craft of Bilbo’s Bag End, exquisitely shaped with carved, dowelled timber. The skyward thrusting art nouveau of Rivendell – Victor Horta by way of Rodney Matthews. The cold-hewn, slab-faced grimness of the Dwarves’ Lonely Mountain, an alternative Edinburgh Castle built not on top of, but into, its volcanic rocky site. There’s even a scene, the film’s best in my opinion, where Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold! But there’s no tension, no sense of existential threat. It’s why the game, despite the crude graphics and simple command-line entry, is the more evocative of the two adaptations. Like all great art, it stays with you for longer. I mean some of us are still trapped in that nasty goblin’s dungeon, wondering how the hell to escape. ..

DAVID GRANDORGE

AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk

Project of the Week Shatwell Farm Stephen Taylor Architects Somerset, 2012 New-build cowshed which incorporates a heavy concrete colonnade in front of a prefabricated steel shed. One of 229 AJ Small Projects 2013 entries in the AJ Buildings Library. ..

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Letters

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Several months after having graduated, part of me is not surprised to be no closer to finding a Part 1 placement, especially when I receive emails informing me that only six candidates out of 400 have been shortlisted for interview. I have lost track of the number of jobs I have applied for and how many companies I have contacted speculatively. As I am doing everything I can to find work, I was extremely disheartened to read in your article about hiring students (AJ 13.12.12) that such a large number of companies are not doing everything they can to support us. I understand that some companies are taking on fewer students – it is, at present, an unavoidable situation – but I am shocked by some companies saying they never employ students. I know taking on a student requires time and money, which a company may not instantly see returned, but surely the longterm rewards are worthwhile? If you fail to support students,

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LETTER OFK THE WEE

then those individuals with a passion for architecture are left stranded after university with no chance to progress further. We all have to start somewhere, but it seems as though some architects have forgotten that they were once in my position. If this struggle for students to get into the working world continues, I have to ask: how long will it be until we see a decline in the number of students taking up architecture? Who is going to spend three years at university just to graduate and then be neglected by the very people that should be encouraging them? No profession will survive for long unless it continues to support younger generations. Sadly, some practices don’t seem to understand that architecture needs us students just as much as we need those practices. Thomas Whettingsteel

Eternal peace A funny thing happened to me on the way to Belgrade last week. While flying from Lisbon, changing planes at Zurich airport (and still enjoying Grimshaw’s beautifully crafted terminal), and

Chief executive officer Natasha Christie-Miller Interim managing director of the architecture group Robert Brighouse Commercial director James MacLeod () Business development managers Nick Roberts (), Ceri Evans () Group advertising manager Amanda Pryde () Account managers Hannah Buckley (), Simon Collingwood (), Steph Atha () Classified and recruitment sales Mark Malone ()

going through passport control, I was surprised to be addressed in Brazilian Portuguese by the border guard, who’d noticed I was born in Mozambique. In the brief chit-chat I said Mozambique is much nicer than Brazil, to which a voice behind me in pure Rio Brazilian said: ‘There is nothing better than BRAZIL!’ I started chatting to this Carioca, a music director on his way to Bucharest. I said I was an architect and mentioned my admiration for Oscar, to which he answered: ‘Ah we musicians in Brazil are quite relieved that he has now gone. His concert halls have no acoustics and you can’t play anything in them! Now that he’s gone we can make the necessary changes he never allowed us to make!’ On my way back to Lisbon, via Paris, I noticed the flag at the Brazilian consulate was at half-mast. Mário Sua Kay

Correction ‘The year of sustainable design’ (AJ 20.12.12) featured an image credited to HTA; this should have been credited to [Y/N]Studio.

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AJ Small Projects 2013

AJ Small Projects

t’s never easy for the AJ’s editors to agree on a definitive shortlist for the best Small Projects submitted by our readers. Yet this year we think we’ve picked the strongest line-up in years. Perhaps ever. There were inevitable last-minute changes. One question we ask, as we double and triple-check, is: ‘It’s beautifully detailed. It photographs well. We know the architects – they have a good track record. But, while it’s under the quarter million pound mark, it works out to be over five grand per square metre – is that still good design?’ (Yes, it is. Stanton William’s Sainsbury’s Lab, the 2012 Stirling Prize winner, wasn’t cheap per square metre, either.) Another one is: ‘This practice submits a project every year. This project is of their usual high standard.

The high quality of submissions has made it a tough call but this year’s shortlist is perhaps the strongest ever, writes Rory Olcayto

AJ SMALL PROJECTS

Paul Reed, sales and marketing director at Marley Eternit, comments: ‘Marley Eternit is proud to support the AJ Small Project Awards for the third year. These awards allow practices to demonstrate their creativity and be rewarded for their originality. We have all faced budget constraints in recent times but these awards show the wealth of creative talent out there that’s bringing design excellence to projects, regardless of their size and scope.’ 28 theaj.co.uk

Andy Matthews

matthew clay architects

10.01.13

..

broad range of building types to shortlist, if all the best works are house extensions, then we’ll shortlist the 24 best ones. Luckily it never works out that way. We try for a mix of rural and urban, too, but once again the first pass is a check for quality. It works like this: The deputy editor, together with AJ Buildings Library editor Tom Ravenscroft, filter all the entries down to the best one hundred. There are some obvious warning signs to look out for: obscurely angled photographs. Too much focus on mundane details. No clear view of the project. A really quite big project coming in at bang-on £250,000. These ones rarely make it through. Then Felix Mara, technical editor, works with the deputy to pick the 48 strongest projects, essentially halving the pile. This is then passed to the >>

Top five small projects on AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk

Images. Drawings. Data. Search for ‘small projects’ on AJBuildingsLibrary.co.uk

1. Squitchey Lane by Matthew Clay Architects 2. Chelsea Workspace by Synthesis Design + Architecture 3. Conversion of the Crystal Palace Underground Public Toilets by Lamp Architects 4. The Orchard Room by Matthew Clay Architects 5. The Greenhouse by Design ACB

4 MATTHEW CLAY ARCHITECTS

We’ve got 229 entries this year and only 24 slots on the shortlist. Shouldn’t we give someone else a chance?’ (No. If its one of the best, it goes in, no matter who has designed it.) And, despite clearly stating in the rules, that projects should not have received significant press coverage elsewhere, we often have to ask ourselves: ‘Should we bend the rules for this one?’ (We never do, although we always phone the architect to explain why they’ve been disqualified. ) We also consider a project’s location and typology. We want to cover a wide range of work from across the country, but we can’t shortlist a Scottish house extension just because the Scottish quota needs a top-up. If it’s not as good as, or better than, the equivalent in London, Belfast or Cardiff, forget it. And, while we’d rather have a



AJ Small Projects 2013 Introduction

editor, Christine Murray, with a recommendation of the best 24. It’s around this time that we end up asking those difficult questions listed above, to define the final list. News editor Richard Waite, a Small Projects stalwart with eight years’ experience, lends his perspective, too. The result, this year signed off by the editor, is a shortlist of contrasting works, including a sculpture gallery in Uganda, a diving platform in Croatia, an Olympic-related popup café in East London alongside office conversions, home extensions and art projects as far-flung as Norfolk and Venice. Coverage of the first 12 begins on page 32, with 12 more to come next week. AJ Small Projects is sponsored by Marley Eternit. The winners of the AJ Small Project awards, including the sustainability prize, will be announced on 30 January, when a prize fund of £2,500 will be shared at the jury’s discretion. An exhibition of shortlisted projects will run at New London Architecture at the Building Centre in Store Street, London WC1, from 31 January. ■  ..

JAMES BALSTON

LEFT: PETER GUENZEL

additional info AJ Small Projects Crit 30 January, NLA, Store Street, London All shortlisted entries will present their work to our judging panel at the NLA. The winner will be chosen on the day and announced over celebratory drinks, which also marks the opening of the AJ Small Projects Exhibition.

AJ Small Projects judges Alison Brooks Alison Brooks Architects John Boxall Jackson Coles Martyn Evans Cathedral Hattie Hartman AJ sustainability editor Paul Reed Marley Eternit Christine Murray AJ editor

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AJ Small Projects 2013 Hudson Architects

Hudson architects the great eye Art installation, Cley, Norfolk  ,  ..

This outdoor art installation was built for the Cley 12 Aisle and Air visual arts festival in Norfolk. Mirror-clad angled supports form the base, above which a reed-clad tower rises to 7.5m. Inside the tower, a camera obscura casts an image of the surrounding landscape onto the ceiling. Reeds were chosen to blend with

the surrounding vegetation and to suggest a primitive appearance from close-up. From a distance, the mirrors reflect the sky and the tower appears to float, creating an ambiguous relationship with the ground. Hudson was interested in the memory of lost coastal buildings and sought to ..

Section

legend

1.16m plywod roof deck 2. 50x50mm, 5 deg fall, tied together with 50x50mm horizontal timber ring 3. 75x75mm sw vertical timber 4. 50x75mm sw horizontal timber 5. Reed screening staple fixed to plywood 6. 16mm plywood nailed to timber frame 7. Interior painted matt black 8. 16mm plywood angled platform on timber frame 9. 3mm mirrored acrylic adhesive fixed to 16mm plywood 10. 16mm connecting rods, lower rod fixed to saddle bracket bolted to top of screw pile; turnbuckle connects to upper rod for tensioning 11. 25mm concrete slab 12. Scaffold board 13. Stair

demonstrate the shifting nature of the Norfolk coastal landscape. Designed to reference Norfolk’s coastal churches, the tower appears alongside the sturdy tower of Cley Church, serving as a reminder that the church and its surroundings are not immune to the forces of nature. AJBL.co.uk/projects/display/id/5677 ..

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS RAVEN COZENS-HARDY

9 10

credits

500mm

client The Cley 12 contractor Ben Coode-Adams structural engineer Conisbee gross internal area The 3m2 Great Eye

Section 1:20 @ A3

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AJ Small Projects 2013 Coffey Architects

coffey architects court house

House, London N1  ,

4 credits client Private structural engineer Elliott Wood gross internal area 40m2 procurement Traditional/JCT Minor Works

7 8

BEFOREplan pre-works Lower ground

legend 1. Utility 2. Kitchen 3. Dining room 4. Rooflight 5. Living room 6. Light well 7. Bedroom 8. WC 9. Garden

 ..

AFTER ground plan Lower

Section A-A

ALL PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIM SOAR

A house with little living space and no back garden has been transformed into a home for open-plan modern living, with an associated external amenity space. The house had only a small courtyard at basement level with limited sunlight. The proposal removed the existing garage and excavated a lower-ground living and office space, creating a new full-size garden at ground level. A central courtyard and glazed floor allows light into the room below. A fireplace is ‘stretched’ from the existing lower-ground floor to connect the new underground roomBEFORE with the kitchen in the existing house – and strengthens the cohesion between old and new. Slim-frame windows, structural glazing and power-floated concrete offer a delicate modernity to this sunken space. AJBL.co.uk/projects/display/id/6193

AFTER

SECTION BE

9 4 5

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AJ Small Projects 2013 Gort Scott

gort scott cambridge cat clinic Healthcare, Fulbourn, Cambridge  ,  ..

The site for this new, cat-specialist veterinary practice was originally a joinery workshop opposite an open field at the edge of Cambridge. The client was a veterinarian establishing a new business. Gort Scott obtained planning permission for change of use and the remodelling of the existing building to include a new cedar-wood screen

on the front elevation, with a suggestion of cats’ ears. Beyond this screen is a generous reception and waiting area, housing specially designed furniture and featuring views to the open field behind. The main working area for the medical staff is a large multi-functioning ‘prep room’, which is top-lit by two generous skylights. ..

1 5

3 4

7 4

Ground floor plan, before

10 Rev

Date

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Notes

gort sco

Do notscaleo thisdrawing.Anydiscrepancies or queriesshouldbebroughttothe a entionoftheauthors.GortSco LLP retain copyright of thesedrawings andthework depictedonthem.No unauthorised reproduction ofwork.

is drawingis forthepurposesdeclared in theStatusBoxonly.Whilstall reasonable e orts areusedto ensuredrawings areaccurate, Gort Sco LLP acceptnoresponsibilty or liability for anyrelianceonthesedrawings forpurposes otherthanthosestated.

INFORMATION

all PHOTOGRAPHS angus leadley brown

The scheme’s design includes many aspects that respond to the client’s considered approach to the welfare of both her animal patients and their owners. The building serves as a general practice and a surgery, and includes a full operating theatre, a laboratory and a diagnostic area. AJBL.co.uk/projects/display/id/5944 10.01.13

Cox's Drove

TITLE:

ExistingGroundFloor Plan

STATUS:

WING:

1:50 @ A1, 1:100 @ A3 Feb 2011

COX/ 00-01

SCALE: DATE:

Ground floor plan, after

e PrintHouse,18Ashw E:info@gortsco.com T

PROJECT:

1 N

legend

credits

1. Entrance 2. Office 3. Boiler room 4. Workshop 5. WC 6. WC lobby 7. C ar mechanic’s office 8. Garage 9. Reception 10. Dispensary 11. Consultation room 12. Ward 13. Staff room 14. Theatre 15. X-ray/dental room 16. Laboratory 17. Preparation room 18. Washer

client Cambridge Cat Clinic cdm supervisor AFP Construction Consultants gross internal area 224m2 procurement JCT minor works

AJ Small Projects 2013 Amin Taha Architects

AMIN taha architects 115 golden lane

3 6

Office refurbishment, London EC1  ,

 ..

Ground level plan

credits client London Advertising structural engineer Webb Yates Engineers gross internal area 186m2 procurement Traditional JCT

Basement level plan

legend 1. Upper entrance 2. Lower entrance 3. Bookcase 4. Cantilevered stair 5. Bridge 6. Meeting box 7. Office desks 8. WC

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS TIM SOAR

Amin Taha fitted out the ground floor and basement of 115 Golden Lane – accessed at 3 Baltic Street East – for client London Advertising as part of the practice’s overall renovation of the building. The building as a whole had previously undergone numerous layers of office renovations. Early breaking out and site investigation revealed preserved original cast iron columns, timber beams, joists, noggins and floor boards beneath the 1980s sealed airconditioned office. The fit-out replaced UPVC windows and doors, cemented pavement lights and opened the southern facade back to the adjacent courtyard. Mild steel sheet, heated and waxed, was used for new internal elements: the bookcase/stair, bridge and meeting room. European rift-cut oak was used to line the utility enclosure, with thermally applied bronze on the external doors, windows and screens. The laser-cut pattern of the bronze is an abstraction of the swirling cast iron Victorian ventilation panels found in neighbouring buildings. AJBL.co.uk/projects/display/id/6160

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AJ Small Projects 2013 Platform 5 Architects

PLATFORM 5 architects SHOFFICE Pavilion, London NW8  ,  ..

‘Shoffice’ (shed + office) is a garden pavilion containing a small office alongside garden storage space located to the rear of a 1950s terraced house in St John’s Wood in north London. The brief required the shoffice to be conceived of as a sculptural object that flowed into the garden space. A glazed office space nestles into an extruded timber elliptical shell, which

curls over itself and forms a small terrace in the lawn. The interior is oak-lined and fitted out with storage and a cantilevered desk. Two rooflights bring light into the work space. The project was a close collaboration between architect, structural engineer and contractor. The lightweight structure, formed with two steel ring ..

West elevation

Section B-B

4 2

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS ALAN WILLIAMS

Roof plan

beams, timber ribs and a stressed plywood skin, sits on minimal pad foundations. Much of the project was prefabricated offsite to reduce the amount of construction material that, because access to the site was restricted, needed to be moved through the house during the build. AJBL.co.uk/projects/display/id/5914 ..

Floor plan

legend 1. Timber-clad roof 2. Rooflight over desk 3. Shelves 4. Wall-mounted desk 5. Storage 6. Timber deck

credits client Private structural engineer Morph Structures design development & fabricator Millimetre gross internal area 7m2 procurement JCT Minor Works WCD 2011

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AJ Small Projects 2013 Rundell Associates

Section A - A

D B

RUNDELL ASSOCIATES The Cube House, Henfield, West Sussex  ,

credits client Private main contractor Edmont Joinery structural engineer IE Structural Engineers gross internal area 25m2 South procurement Intermediate building contract

- East Elevation

Ground floor plan (above) and Section A-A (below)

0.5m

Ground Floor

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS RUNDELL ASSOCIATES

The Cube is a freestanding library and study for an artist, which forms part of a studio and residential complex set in a beautiful countryside location overlooking the South Downs. From the outset, the aim was to create a cube – a volume without distraction, interrupted only by carefully controlled views of its natural setting. It was originally conceived as a ‘place of contemplation’, where the client could cut himself off from his manic pace of life and concentrate on his art. As the project developed, however, it gradually took a more defined form and has now become a fully functional library and study. The main timber structure is exposed and provides built-in shelving, the articulation serving both structural and aesthetic purposes. The Cube offers a gently surreal experience for visitors who find, hidden within its deliberately utilitarian facade, a warm, hospitable environment – a true Englishman’s study manifesting the quirky, creative nature of its owner. AJBL.co.uk/projects/display/id/6151

 ..

Section B - B

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AJ Small Projects 2013 Laura Dewe Mathews

laura dewe mathews box house House, London E9  ,  ..

The site was first built on in the 1880s to provide space for a box factory. It changed uses a number of times over the course of the next century, then, in 2008, Laura Dewe Mathews purchased it and was drawn to assemble yet another box inside the original envelope. The one bed, new-build house uses a cross-laminated timber super

structure, which has been placed inside the existing brickwork walls of the perimeter and also rises up out of them. The form of the proposal was a response to the constricted site. The only elevation in which it was possible to include any windows was that facing the north and fronted with the pavement. To counter this, the ..

3 4 5 6 7

11 15 16

8 4 5 9

12 9

Section C

Section B

0.5m

proposal also featured a large south-facing roof-light. Light is also brought into the main living spaces via a new private yard. The result is a small yet generously proportioned house, which has succeeded in retaining the openness of the original workshop at groundfloor level. AJBL.co.uk/projects/display/id/6466 ..

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS CHLOE DEWE MATHEWS

legend 1. Roof light 2. Breather membrane 3. Galvanised steel gutter 4. Cross-laminated timber structure 5. Rigid insulation 6. Horizontal and vertical battens 7. Cedar shingle cladding 8. Brick party fence wall 9. Cavity with vertical timber battens 10. Timber sole plate 11. Galvanised steel casement window 12. Stair 13. Galvanised steel downpipe 14. Ridge cap with ventilation 15. Concealed box gutter 16. Brickwork raised by 11 courses credits client Private contractor IMS Building Solutions structural engineer Tall Engineers gross internal area 80m2 procurement JCT homeowners contract

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AJ Small Projects 2013 Atmos Studio

Section

ATMOS studio RoominaRoom House, London E14  ,

credits client Amy Kam and Marcus Keohane contractor London Refurbishment structural engineer Blue Engineering gross internal area 16m2 procurement JCT Minor Works

500mm

FRED VITZTHUM

LEFT AND MAIN PICTURE BY ALEX HAW

The clients for this small residential jewel have an expanding family but fixed walls. As they couldn’t expand upwards or outwards, Atmos had to build inwards – they designed a room within a room. The project was generated from simple but severe planometric and sectional constraints, ‘growing’ from its context. It is tucked into a corner to take up minimum volume while maximising the sense of interior spaciousness. The structure’s thin CNC-cut plywood ribs swell and retract to provide integrated furniture and shelving. The room is accessed by a spiralling set of stairs that grow from the corner of the room, their lower levels continuing as a series of alcove shelves beneath. The bed cantilevers over the floor to offer sufficient legroom for its future transformation into an extension of the desk as the children grow and the room becomes a workspace. AJBL.co.uk/projects/display/id/6382

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AJ Small Projects 2013 Mole Architects

hawthbush mole architects Farmhouse extension, East Sussex  ,  ..

Mole won planning permission to extend this 17th century Grade IIlisted farmhouse in open countryside within the High Wield area of the Sussex Downs with a scheme replacing several 1970s additions of little architectural merit with a single, barrel-vaulted extension. The scheme won approval following previous refusals and was designed

following research into the historic development of farmyards in the surrounding Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, adopting the formal pattern of a ‘disbursed cluster’. This form decreases the apparent scale of the extension, allowing greater prominence to the original farmhouse and enabling the building to function better as a family home. ..

P R OP OS E D S E

Section A-A Hawthbus h

drawing: reference:

P ropos ed S ec tions

scale: 9 drawn by:

1: 100

P P -007

hwlk

8 2

8 1 8

Ground floor plan

First floor plan

Hawthbus h

drawing: reference:

P ropos ed P lans

scale: drawn by:

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P P -003

hwlk

legend

2m Mole Architects NT he B lack House K ingdon Avenue P rickwillow C ambs C B 7 4UL 01353 688 287 P H/F AX studio@ molearchitects.co.uk

The two-storey extension provides a contemporary reinterpretation of local farmsteads that is sympathetic to the existing farmhouse. It is constructed from brick with a terne-coated steel barrel-vaulted roof and a glass link. The ground floor contains a generous south-facing kitchen and a master bedroom occupies the vault above. AJBL.co.uk/projects/display/id/5764 ..

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS DAVID BUTLER

1. Lounge 2. Study N 3. Playroom 4. WC 5. Utility 6. Kitchen 7. Bathroom 8. Bedroom 9. En suite shower/WC

credits client Toby Smallpiece and Lisa O’Connor structural engineer Paul Silvey, Woodside Developments gross internal area 107m2 procurement Self project managed to individual subcontractors

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AJ Small Projects 2013 Graux & Baeyens Architecten

graux & Baeyens architecten House V-C House, Lede, Belgium  ,  ..

House V-C began with the client’s request to upgrade the existing building and to make a small extension. As the site slopes downhill from the house into the woodlands below, the extension aims to reconnect the existing building with this natural context. The added space incorporates a living room and covered terrace.

The ease of movement from the living space to both the terrace and the garden beyond, along with the simple threshold that exists between these spaces, means that the owners are able to enjoy their garden throughout the year, no matter what the season. The transparent space is supported on a plinth, while the solid volume is embedded in the slope of the ..

Ground floor plan, before

2 4

1 1

Ground floor plan, after Long section

legend 1. Entrance 2. Kitchen 3. Breakfast table 4. Living room 5. Terrace 6. Playroom 7. Dining room 8. Office

site and creates a basement that is housed underneath the living room. The construction of the plinth reflects this: it is a simple, massive block construction with some blocks offset slightly to create a solid, rugged form that provides a sharp contrast with the clean transparent space above. AJBL.co.uk/projects/display/id/6181 ..

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS DENNIS DESMET

68.2

0 0.5m

credits client Van BreusgemCordeels main contractor De Waele Algemene Bouwerken gross internal area 300m2 procurement Private

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AJ Small Projects 2013 Finkernagel Ross Architects

finkernagel ross architects stahlwerk anbau Pavilion, Apen, Germany  ,

 ..

The focus of this project was to extend and modernise the entrance to a steel business in northern Germany – and re-house a listed 1890s steam engine. The large-scale museum exhibit, a mark of the company’s industrial heritage, needed to be accessible for all to view throughout the year.

The listed steam engine – the only operational one of its kind – originally sat in a building that involved plans for demolition. Now the delicate piece of industrial machinery is on display in a floating glass box balanced on a concrete plinth: a fitting centerpiece for the steelworks. ..

1 3 5 6 2

7 8

Floor plan

N 0

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FLOOR PLAN

STAHLWERK AUGUSTFEHN

2 1

Section

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legend

This ‘mini museum’ is positioned next to a public road for those travelling between the Dutch and German borders. It forms part of an outdoor sculpture park consisting of decommissioned industrial machinery of the past 20 years. AJBL.co.uk/projects/display/id/5602 ..

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS DAVID VINTINER

1. Steam engine 2. Exhibition space 3. Engine control panel 4. Factory yard 5. Side entrance 6. Disabled WC 7. Men’s WC 8. Women’s WC 9. Office building

credits client Stahlwerk Augustfehn Schmeide GmbH & Co KG structural engineer CIG gross internal area 151m2 procurement Separate trade contracts



AJ Small Projects 2013 GRAS

gras transient gallery

Public realm, Venice cost ÂŁ2,800

credits client Scotland+Venice polystyrene manufacturer Polyscot Ltd gross internal area 18m2 procurement Traditional contract

legend 1. Roof panel 2. Self-supporting wall panel

Axonometric

all photography by gras

The Transient Gallery is a mobile, temporary exhibition space, designed to celebrate and explore the significance of everyday functional objects that create or enhance a sense of collective identity. In the context of the Venice Architecture Biennale, it focuses attention on the wellheads located throughout the city, which were, for centuries, its only source of fresh drinking water. Often richly embellished with cultural and political motifs, these were key points where Venetians would meet and exchange stories, gossip and news every day. With the decommissioning of the wellheads, this social network was lost. The project presents these threatened artefacts in a gallery-like environment at the heart of the communities they served. By highlighting them and celebrating their history, it encourages debate among residents and design professionals on the relevance of such shared functional objects in contemporary and future communities. AJBL.co.uk/projects/display/id/5587

54 theaj.co.uk

10.01.13

Culture

UGLY GOOD, TRAUMKITSCH BAD What are the rules of attraction? Stephen Bayley’s Ugly: The Aesthetics of Everything, prompts Jay Merrick to consider what makes us see beauty in the beast  ..

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book Stephen Bayley, Ugly: the Aesthetics of Everything, Goodman Fiell, £25

OPPOSITE: CHRISTIAN RICHTERS

‘I never saw an ugly thing in my life,’ said the painter John Constable, ‘for let the form of the object be what it may – light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.’ Constable, an avid reader of poetry, may have read these lines by his contemporary, William Wordsworth: ‘Oh, blank confusion! true epitome Of what the mighty city is herself, To thousands upon thousands of her sons, Living amid the same perpetual whirl Of trivial objects, melted and reduced To one identity…’ The lives of the painter and the poet straddled the Georgian and Victorian periods: Constable, more optimistically Georgian, Wordsworth reacting in Romantic horror to the march of Victorian massproduction. Their remarks illustrate intensely engaged relationships with their surroundings. Look hard enough, says Constable, and you’ll always find beauty. Look hard enough, according to Wordsworth, and you may also encounter inhuman ugliness. Are we losing our ability to feel strongly about ideas concerning beauty and ugliness? If so, how might that affect the way we think, behave, and create? When was

Left Imposing facades at David Chipperfield’s City of Justice, Barcelona Above An 1820 watercolour painting of McConnel’s Mill, Ancoats, Manchester

the last time you saw a building, paused to study it, and hated it for its conceptual and physical ugliness – really loathed it, with a primal fury that, in William Blake’s case, was only assuaged when the proto-Modernist Albion Mills, at the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge, burned down in 1791? Brutalism was architecture’s most obvious attempt at polemical ugliness; PoMo became a celebration of grotesquely fatuous historicism; and today’s ubiquitous, smooth-skinned, colour-blocked mixed-use facades are enslaved to the unspoken diktat that architectural value can only be skin-deep in the 21st century’s infantilised, I’m-entitled-to-spend townscapes. Relatively few architects seem to think this profitable commodification of mass and surface is, in every sense, ugly. It’s certainly the kind of dross that the design historian, Stephen Bayley, labels the Zen of Crap in his new and intriguing cabinet of curiosities, Ugly: The Aesthetics of Everything. He doesn’t attempt to define beauty or ugliness, but offers useful provocations, such as Jonathan Swift’s aperçu: ‘Proper words in proper places make the true definition of style’. Thus, Bayley says, an ugly sentence (or building) is one that’s full of irrelevant allusions and vulgarising adaptations. But what if >> 

Culture Ugly: The Aesthetics of Everything, by Stephen Bayley

proper windows and proper walls, for example, are in their proper places? They certainly were in the case of McConnel’s Mill in the Ancoats manufacturing quarter of Manchester in 1820. So, too, are they in David Chipperfield’s buildings at Barcelona’s City of Justice, which covers almost the same ground area as Ancoats. These two architectures, separated by nearly two centuries, share some fundamental similarities. Is one of these designs proper, and the other conceptually ugly? In Florence, the upper facade of Alberti’s Santa Maria Novella represents a kind of perfection: proportion and shape expressed in a tightly ordered graphic in which nothing is left to the imagination. There is something overwhelming about this hyper-distinct tableau that suggests both beauty and ugly bombast. The facade’s four large circular features are central to this effect. We find the same radiused visual dictatorship in the exposed, perfectly circular breast of the Madonna in Jean Fouquet’s Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels, in the Melun Diptych, painted about 30 years after Alberti completed Santa Maria Novella. The arid control of Fouquet’s vision is repellent: the nominally

Bayley, raven-like, speaks of a potential cacotopia, where everything is bad  ..

Above Alberti’s Santa Maria Novella, Florence, and Jean Fouquet’s Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels

exquisite circumscription of the breast is profoundly, and disturbingly, ugly. Whereas kitsch, according to Bayley’s chapter, Tasteless Mass Rubbish, is undisturbing – a welcome, counter-factual antidote to the formal accuracies of Fordist Modernism. He mentions Walter Benjamin’s term, Traumkitsch, which conflates dreaming and consumerism, and emphasises it with a chapter headed ‘The Freedom To Make Everything Look Like Shit’. That line ought to hover on the edge of architects’ consciences like Edgar Allan Poe’s ominous raven. Is there is a particular kind of architectural ‘ugliness’ that can jolt us out of the Traumkitsch that shadows our lives? A proper ugliness, perhaps, producing a compellingly stark physical statement that is an absolute questioning of form, materials and space: St Bride’s Church, East Kilbride, perhaps, designed by Andy MacMillan and Isi Metzstein? Bayley is right to say that definitions of ugly design ‘depend not on the surface of things, but on their philosophical substance’. But what if fatuous surfaces are regarded as profound philosophy? He quotes Brian Eno, who says that ‘the big challenge for artists today is to produce work sufficiently ugly that it cannot be appropriated for advertising’. Another of Walter Benjamin’s remarks might not have gone amiss: ‘The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than of convictions, and of such facts as have scarcely ever become the basis of convictions.’ Bayley, raven-like, speaks of a potential cacotopia, a world where everything is bad. But how would people ..

When does architectural photography flatter to deceive? asks James Pallister

RIBA LIBRARY & PHOTOGRAPHS COLLECTION

The AJ moved into new offices near London’s ‘Silicon Roundabout’ over Christmas, prompting some rooting through the archive. Two issues from 1979 were particularly striking. The cover of AJ 25.07.79 shows a selection of black and white architectural photographs overprinted with the damning title: ‘The Craven Image’. Inside, an essay by Tom Picton kicked against the ‘necrophilic excellence’ of mainstream architectural photography, stripped of signs of occupancy, which ‘march across the pages of architectural magazines like tombstones in a graveyard’. Picton spares no one, damning glossy magazines: (‘illuminated manuscripts of consumerism’), editors whose budgets are aided by architect-commissioned photography, architects (‘archbishops of an impeccable orthodoxy’) and photographers themselves. Particular ire is directed at architects for ‘submitting to a hubris that did not want people in photographs but still claimed they were for them’. He signs off: ‘Arid and soulless photographs too often, on the evidence of the buildings, accurately portray an arid and soulless […] pompous profession’. Similar concerns were raised in December by Owen Hatherley in a piece for the Photographers’ Gallery. He draws attention to the early feedback loop between Modernist architecture and architectural photography. Monochromatic reproduction led to Corb et al losing the colourful accents of early works for more austere, lensefriendly architecture, he argues. This, he goes on, makes the current success of sites like ArchDaily and Dezeen worrying. The flow of superficial, idealised imagery becomes, for Hatherley, ‘a handmaiden to an architectural culture that no longer has interest in anything but its own image’.

recognise badness if the seduction of place had already, very gradually, succumbed to the reduction of place? This situation begins with marketing strategies and proceeds to designers’ screens, where ‘uncanny valleys’ of virtual form take shape. To CGI techies that intriguing phrase denotes unearthly, super-precise aesthetic effects, the same kind that produced Fouquet’s bonewhite virgin surrounded by blood-red angels and which throngs our struggling town centres with ‘exciting’ and ‘transformative’ barcode and Liquorice Allsorts facades. If it takes so-called ugly architecture to remind us of the more humane ethical and psychological possibilities of design and place – rather than Wordsworth’s ‘trivial objects, melted and reduced to one identity’ – let’s have more of it. ■ Jay Merrick is the architecture critic of The Independent ..

Top Gustave Doré’s illustration from Edgar Allan Poe’s 1884 Gothic poem, The Raven Above St Bride’s Church, East Kilbride by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia

read AJ Number 30, Volume 170 (AJ 25.07.79) visit www.Photographersgallery.com

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When posh comes to shove of these enterprises. I do however require a long afternoon nap as I’m out very late tonight. Fast forward to the small hours, and I’m in a boutique part of north London with my old friend Amy Blackwater the environmental activist. Unlike me, Amy has skilfully managed her public profile and is now the doyenne of stylish oppositionality. Her activism is ‘premium’ these days: Waitrose, not Morrison’s. She’s feted by the thinking artisan crumpeting classes. Her success rankles almost as much as the balaclava I’ve borrowed from her, which is slightly too small. Still, she IS helping me with my stencils. We have to be stealthy, what with the CCTV. And the film crew shooting a documentary on Britain’s Most Celebrated Activist. At one point she says ‘I like to think of myself as more of a disquietist than a terrorist…’ while keeping a straight balaclava. Over the course of three hours we whack up the following stencils on London’s urban canvas: A fox in a pork pie hat laughing at a Nando’s queue. A rat in a onesie making lemonade and keeping calm. A big fat gypsy cat with the dead bird of ‘irony’ in its mouth. I sign each one ‘Grand Designsy’ using Farrow & Ball’s new Yellowist range.

MONDAY As usual, I’ve humiliated myself by scanning the New Year Honours List for my name even though I’m pretty sure I would have heard something in advance. I despise the honours system. So archaic and random and would an OBE for services to epic space really have killed them? I’m not letting this happen again. My New Year’s Resolution is to acquire an honour, stat. I resolve to look into it. TUESDAY Lunch with Rock Steady Eddie the fixer. ‘No doubt, mate. Having a bit of geography after your name and a Lord in front opens a lot of doors. Let’s say those chips on your plate are global market opportunities and I’m an Anglophile client. Watch…’ It’s an impressively thorough analogy. We agree the odds on my being ennobled are long. Even the more obscure honours – Knight of the Wardrobe, Reeve of the Palanquin, Underbaron of the Middle Empire – are beyond my means. ‘They want half a mil in party bungage before they’ll even put you on the list. Leave it with me…’ Oh God. ‘Leave it with me’. The four most ominous words in the English language, along with ‘it’s not very contextual’ ‘in my humble opinion’ and ‘sort of Grand Designsy…’

FRIDAY Pub. Rock Steady Eddie’s found a chemistry student in Hull called Abby Downton who for £500 cash will be photographed in period costume to front our new global marketing campaign. ‘Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber… Abby Downton Top Class Spacemakers can turn your dream into an aristocratic reality!’ We’ve even got an emblem: two beagles in sunglasses flanking a chevronned pier. More good news. My old friend the Prince of Wales, the highest-profile toff I know, has agreed to have nothing to do with the project, so that’s a major potential embarrassment avoided.

THURSDAY Design competitions. It’s a racket. A closed shop. The latest one is typical: ‘Architectualiser sought for new higher education campus in China. Haughty sense of spatial entitlement essential. Dame or Lord preferred, would consider CBE. Must have public school accent and cruel laugh’. Nothing at all about an education portfolio or indeed any reference to professional training. It’s ridiculous, you could just get classy actors to promote your global marketing campaign. I call Eddie. ‘Relax. I’m all over this like a 15 tog duvet, mate. Decided to make you a Companion of the Royal Lunch. See you at the King’s Arms tomorrow. Plus I’ve found us a sleeping Edwardian practice partner…’ Slightly resentful that I’m never the sleeping partner in any  ..

HANNA MELIN

WEDNESDAY Plenty to think about from yesterday, so shift the bulk of my creative thinking until tomorrow. I am however keen to develop the ‘Grand Designsy’ brand as an upmarket graffiti identity. Spend the morning knocking out some banging posh stencils, man.

SATURDAY Lovely. Pop-up hipsters are now desperate for a customised Grand Designsy stencil on their gaff. I plan to take their money, send them a ‘Beware Of The Media Wankers’ stencil and tell them to spray it on themselves. SUNDAY New Year’s Reclination. ..

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