FROM WORKSHOP TO SITE
SEPTEMBER 2020
At Millimetre’s workshop in Brighton, a tremendous steel skeleton has been rapidly emerging. It will form the delicate superstructure of a garden pavilion-cum-guesthouse destined for the Isle of Wight. In the main hangar, a healthy collection of gently oxidizing off-the-shelf steel sections and staggeringly sharp, bespoke milled elements is set back from a row of socially-distanced workspaces. Millimetre’s metal workers have been working around the clock (and in the excessive summer heat) to cut, weld and grind the heap in front of them into the many precise modular components that will form the pavilion’s columns, floor and roof. An assembly line has been formed to increase the efficiency of fabrication, with a station each for repetitive rotary welding tasks, rotary grinding, welding using custom jigs and more complicated non-linear welds. As the steel passes through the workshop, glistening segments come to form elaborate sculptures. Adjacent to the metalworking bays is a six-axis robot arm programmed to cut high density foam into jigs for the most intricate welding alignments. This will be essential to the success of the central roof truss node, where nine tubular sections converge. More on this will follow at a later date.
The pavilion will be lifted off the ground by cantilevering trusses held from the main columns, which are formed of four tubular sections tied together by intermittent thin plates along their height. The lower portions of these columns, which sit beneath the floor build-up, are amicably referred to as the daleks. These stub columns are the first pieces to be finalized, quickly assembled in tandem to confirm tolerances, and sent away to be painted for corrosion protection before arriving to site.
On the northeast coast of the Isle of Wight, the site falls to overlook a protected marshland with tidal flows fed by the Solent. A shallow depression with raking banks at the bottom of the hill will conceal the feet of the pavilion superstructure; the baseplates of the stub columns now erected atop the long strip foundations and adjoined to form the triangulated support for the floor and deck above. Located to capture rainwater dropping from the overhanging roof eaves, the perimeter gravel drain will also mark the boundary between building and landscape, with tall, wild grasses merging with the wetland beyond..
As the pavilion envelope will be formed largely of full-width glass spans closely abutting the columns, erecting the steel frame precisely is critical. Despite a remarkable installation tolerance of +/- 3mm diagonally across each 5 x 5m bay, the stub columns must be shimmed to ensure exact alignment and verticality. Between them, the galvanised (and thus silvery) internal floor beams are distinguishable from the external floor beams, which are coated to resist corrosion and painted to achieve a warm metallic finish. With the cantilevering terrace beams installed additionally, a datum is formed approximately 180mm below the intended finished floor level from which the remainder of the pavilion will rise..
Back in Brighton, the columns which will stand on the shoulders of the stubs now installed on site are laid out one by one. Their height and slenderness astound – a true feat for the structural engineers, Smith & Wallwork. It is through, not around these columns that the thermal envelope will run, with tall and narrow glazing centred on each column between the four vertical tubes. The next test-build will involve hoisting up these columns, narrowly missing the suspended lights of the workshop, to bolt on the roof trusses via the halving joints rigidly reaching out to receive them. That dramatic and exciting update will have to follow.
A STYLE FOR OUR TIMES?
NOVEMBER 2015
“The way to make good architecture – that is, to respond with dignity to the relentless jostling of theoretical positions and of the buildings themselves – can be to say very little indeed and just to enquire into what a particular place might, by way of buildings, most need”
Niall Hobhouse in Translations: Florian Beigel and Philip Christou, Christoph Merian Verlag 2014
Each year the Stirling Prize shortlist sparks debate about contemporary architectural style and it was no different this year, particularly with such a distinctive set of buildings. The prize is “presented to the architects of the building that has made the greatest contribution to the evolution of architecture in the past year” and so any building shortlisted could be considered to exemplify a style for our times.
In practicing architecture I have been conscious of past and present styles or trends and how these influence design. The offices I have worked in each have different design styles and a different set of architectural references. This variety has enriched my experience of design; as a result, I do not consider myself to have a fixed stylistic agenda or claim a particular preference for one style over another.
I have now been at NMLA for almost a year, working on one project but well aware of the rich variety in the practice’s past and present portfolio. Whilst there may be a discernible common language in the architecture, I would say this transcends any one particular style. To pick three of the most celebrated projects, the Chapel at Ripon College is very different to the Fishing Hut which is very different to Darbishire Place. Of course these buildings have different briefs but perhaps their ‘style’ is most significantly determined by the ‘place’ they inhabit (where ‘place’ refers to location and context – physical, social, historical and political).
The Chapel sits on a sensitive site. It must respond to its bucolic setting in a clearing amongst trees, the historically-significant college building stock behind and the views to and from the valley below. The Clipsham stone is in keeping with the Limestone of the other college buildings. The smooth base helps ground the building in its natural setting whilst the rough-cut dog-toothed stone alludes to the craft evident in the historic buildings nearby and has an organic quality whose textured surface perfectly captures the shadows of the trees. The clerestorey windows glow as a halo and act as a beacon on the hill when seen from the valley below. Rowan Moore described the chapel as sitting “comfortably amid Cotswold scenery and gothic revival architecture”.
The Fishing Hut is set in the landscape, between water and sky. Its simple form and construction are familiar to rural or agricultural settings but the level of craft and its quality materials make it delightful for the user, elevating it beyond purely functional. With its operable screens and shutters, it is both solid and transparent, as much about shelter, security and shade as it is about light, air and opening up to the landscape it inhabits.
At Darbishire Place the new brick block reflects the massing and characteristics of the existing Peabody estate blocks. The brick selection and white precast concrete window surrounds complement the brick and white-painted window reveals of the Edwardian buildings around the courtyard. Inset balconies enable the new façades to have a flatness akin to those of the surrounding buildings. A simple kink in building’s footprint allows the block to work with its context on both sides – a longer elevation addresses the street while a more compact elevation works with the proportions of the other courtyard façades. This kink also provides a route in from the street and so the new block can complete the courtyard without closing it off.
In terms of these three buildings, it is perhaps more difficult to identify a common architectural language than to comment on how they respond to place. I think they are all concerned with light and shadow and each display a level of craft in their execution. For me though the architecture of each project has a fineness. The fragile crown of stone fins and frameless clerestorey windows at the top of the chapel; the intricate timberwork, lightweight permeable envelope and the slight cantilevered deck hovering over the water to the front of the fishing hut; and the open corners and slender corner posts containing the inset balconies to Darbishire Place. It is these moments of finesse that unite the three buildings and other projects in the office.
Style has played an important and often polemical role in the development of architecture over the last 150 years. However, whilst we can entertain debate about a cycle of trends in design, what style is ‘now’ and what is coming next, it seems more pertinent to be aware of the wide variety of styles and take influence from sources that are most appropriate to any one project’s place.
In the same vein as the opening quotation, we should not be concerned with a particular style for a particular time, but rather a particular style for a particular place.