Virtual Building Tour – Freeholders

While the AIA’s 2022 Building Tour Series kicked off with a well-attended, in person event in February, we were back to touring virtually in March due to the location of the building. On 10 March, the UK AIA Chapter ‘visited’ Freeholders, a new home on the harbour of Wells-next-the-Sea, in North Norfolk, and winner of the 2021 AIA Design Excellence Award, Small Projects, Special Commendation. 

Meredith Bowles, founding Director of Mole Architects Ltd., led an engaging tour of the Freeholders. During the tour, it was evident that Mole Architects had a significant understanding of the local context and regional history. Meredith talked about East Anglia with passion, categorising it as coastal, with extensive rivers and tributaries deeply connecting it to the rest of the world when seafaring was the primary mode of transport.  However, he recognised that as more modern transport diminished the importance of river transport, the region became a less important commercial destination, and today there is no longer tangible development or economic activity in the area  derived from the sea. As a result, it appears to be a place that stands still, having “stopped at the end of its very rich medieval history”. 

Meredith attributed the lack of economic activity and industry in the area as the reason each part of East Anglia has its own very particular qualities.  The North coast is characterised by a ring of fishermen’s towns, using local traditions and materials, and creating the numerous and varied streetscapes which have evolved over time - a tradition still honoured today. “Brick and flint, lime wash, the black-painted pantiles, the use of them is extraordinarily consistent,” reflected Meredith. The respect for those traditions is clearly embedded in the execution of the Freeholders House but in a contemporary and respectful way.

Built on the site of a pub called the Freeholders Arms, which provides the house its name, the two-bedroom home is designed for family gatherings as well as a holiday rental. Permission to build on the site was dependent on the new house responding to the conservation area.  All living areas are positioned at first floor level to mitigate the risk of flooding since the property is adjacent to the sea.

To respect the local contextual setting, Mole Architects broke up the building into three connected blocks. This reduced the mass of the building to a scale that mimics the multiple, unplanned additions that are characteristic in this part of the town. One of the volumes is a white-painted flint and brickwork block with timber infill. This is offset by a slimmer Corten-clad volume, both facing the seafront. The third volume is a grey-painted render behind the other two. The original design proposed a white, black and red trio, however, community planners insisted that the “black” volume change the colour to grey, despite the local tradition of using black.

Due to the restrictions on its space and the danger of flooding, the ground floor contains a workshop and storage for a boat which opens out onto the quay. The residential entrance, tucked around the side, opens into a stairwell to the living spaces above. The two front sections contain the open plan living space and main bedroom, both with panoramic views of the sea.  The physical positions of the living spaces, with their volumetric expression and minimalist material selections, provide tranquil spaces for both internal and external reflection.

The roof of each building mass responds to the position and materiality of each block; the white building mass is topped with clay pantiles; the grey mass with zinc panels and the Corten building mass with corrugated steel. The three roofs meet at the centre of the footprint, resulting in a small roof terrace, which is described as providing an "unusual viewpoint of the roofscape of Wells, as well as a sheltered outdoor space to enjoy the sea."

The AIA UK Chapter will continue to host a combination of live and virtual buildings tours throughout the year, offering architects the opportunity to visit notable buildings that have particular design interests in the UK and abroad.

Written by Gregory Fonseca, AIA 

RETURN OF THE MOVIE NIGHTS

The much loved movie night series finally resumed in March this year, one month later than our usual winter start date, but better late than never!

The New Bauhaus

On Tuesday 08 March, we kicked off the series with the screening of the award winning documentary: The New Bauhaus: The Life & Legacy of Moholy-Nagy.  

In the 1920s, rising artist László Moholy-Nagy taught at the revolutionary Bauhaus school in Weimar, Germany, alongside luminaries like Paul Klee, Josef Albers, Anni Albers, Gunta Stolzl,Wassily Kandinsky, and Marcel Breuer. 

An upstart within this esteemed group, Moholy established himself as a visionary, and the approach he developed while teaching became the ethos of his work: training artists to live “happier lives in modernity.”  Forced into exile by the Nazis, Moholy moved to Chicago with his two daughters and his second wife, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, where he found himself inspired by the sense of re-invention in the city.  Initially at the New Bauhaus and ultimately through the Institute of Design, Moholy challenged students to create systemic, human-centered design. 

Motivated by the challenge of creating within the limitations of the Great Depression and then by World War II, Moholy’s embrace of artistic versatility and technological possibility continues to reverberate in the artworld today.  Objects that are now ubiquitous in our culture, such as the Dove soap bar, the Honey Bear, and the cover of the first issue of Playboy magazine were designed by students and alumni of The New Bauhaus.  Graduates of the Institute of Design became renowned fine art photographers and pioneers of digital design in the internet’s early days.  Moholy’s own output as an artist remained “relentlessly experimental”, with pioneering work created in a range of mediums including painting, photography, typography, collage, sculpture, and film. 

His central lessons as a teacher were reflected in his own work: the thought behind creation was as important as the work itself.  Unfortunately, his creative production was cut short by his untimely death at age 51 from leukaemia, but his legacy lives on in his students that now teach his approach themselves, providing inspiration to anyone using art to make sense of the world. 

The film was very well attended, and the screening was followed by a lively discussion.  It was inspiring with many finding Moholy's visionary education system ahead of its time!

Homo Urbanus

We were back to the BFI on 22 March, for our second screening of the winter movie series.  This was a screening of Homo Urbanus: Venetianus, which is another documentary by the two famous architectural film makers Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine.  This film marked the tenth stage of their film cycle Homo Urbanus.

In this film, the sequences oscillate between landscape and event, between the evocation of Canaletto-style eighteenth-century views and the sometimes comical, sometimes dramatic documentary chronicle of an exceptional situation – the Venice High Tide of 2019.

The focus was on the relationship between the dominant atmospheric element, water, and the human being.  Showing humans struggling with the urban context is a recurring theme in many movies – people trying to survive, to adapt to an extreme environment.  In the case of Venice, the directors show the suffering, the fatigue of the inhabitants trying to find normality in a historical event that paralyzes the city, blocking the most essential processes, from electricity to food supply. They pour this effort on the viewer, to arouse a form of empathy.

The title of the film cycle, Homo Urbanus, follows the name of the scientific classification of species, like Linnaeus’, and above all it seems to show that, despite what most people think, it is the cities that define the inhabitants.Louise Lemoine states that today, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities.  The expression Homo Urbanus stands for the last stage of evolution of the human species after the Homo Sapiens. The history of the city is a dynamic of continuous adaptation, of urban and human structure, an uninterrupted and tormented process of mutual transformation.

This film was very different to any of the other almost dozen Beka & Lemoine documentaries we have screened in the past, in that there was no dialogue. It spurred interesting debate, and the viewers found it very thought provoking.

Many thanks to all who attended our Winter movie screenings! We look forward to welcoming all of you back in the Autumn for the second half of our Movie Series, where we shall be screening two more Beka & Lemoine documentaries: Inside Piano and Gehry's Vertigo.

Written by: Chris Musangi AIA

SUSTAINABILITY LECTURE / Material Passports for Existing Buildings

On 16 Mar 2022, we continued our ongoing series of AIA UK sustainability talks with our guest speaker, Rachel Hoolahan (Architect and Sustainability Co-Ordinator, Orms Architects), discussing ‘Material Passports for Existing Buildings’.  

As architects, one of the most effective ways to reduce our impact on the environment (short of not building anything at all), is to re-use existing materials and building components in renovations and new build projects.  However, this can be very challenging, time-consuming, and not especially cost-efficient. The details and condition of the existing materials can be hard to ascertain and verify to any agreed standard, and their removal can require considerable time and effort, to mention but two of the key challenges.  

With the imperative to reduce our carbon emissions; minimise building waste sent to landfill; and create a more circular economy, the question of how to extend the life of viable building components and materials is more pertinent than ever.  

To begin to address this challenge, Orms Architects have created a Material Passporting system. Their Sustainability Coordinator, Rachel Hoolahan, has led the development of this system, building on her research on material passports as part of a wider Grosvenor Estate Innovation Project into material reuse. The outcome of this work is a methodology for encouraging more meaningful material reuse, by creating a material database for each project. The approach is deliberately open source and flexible, allowing design teams of any size or skill set to apply the work to their projects. 

AIAUK sustainability talks examine new sustainability thinking and practices. AIA UK announcements are made for new topics, which are then available for repeated viewing via our YouTube link. The link to the Material Passport lecture can be found HERE.

CE credit is available if the AIA UK specific quiz on the event is successfully completed. CES Credits: 1.0 HSW. The link to the Material Passport quiz can be found HERE.

Virtual Building Tour – 1 Finsbury Avenue

Image by Timothy Soar

After a two-year curtailment of the AIA live building tours due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK chapter resumed its in-person events on 10 February 2022.  The first tour of the 2022 series was a walkthrough of 1 Finsbury Avenue, winner of the 2021 AIA Design Excellence Award for Sustainability.  This in-person experience complemented the virtual tour of the same building held in August 2020, when the project had won the 2020 AIA Design Excellence Award for a Professional Large Project.  

Tom Wells, Associate Architect at Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM), the RIBA Stirling Prize winning architecture practice, led an engaging tour of the refurbishment and restoration project completed in 2019. The tour began in the public atrium space at ground level with a digital display depicting the project’s historical background and the variety of strategic design decisions that contributed to its award-winning status.

The original office block was designed by Arup Associates’ (Peter Foggo,1984) and is one of 14 post-war office buildings to achieve Grade II listed status (2015) from Historic England.  As one of the first buildings in the Broadgate development, Tom Wells credited it with defining the then prototypical London speculative office building.

The original developer of 1 Finsbury Avenue was Greycoat, headed by Stuart Lipton. Lipton was introduced to Peter Foggo, a partner at Arup Associates, and their relationship helped the project to take shape. After a visit to the United States, Lipton was convinced that the future of workplace design lay in deep office floors brought to completion via fast-track construction. Finsbury Avenue floor plates are 60ft/18m deep, arranged around a central atrium. Lipton achieved his end goal using a steel frame rather than the concrete frame standard in Britain at the time.

The tour highlighted how AHMM’s signature retrofit celebrates Foggo’s original structure while adapting it to become a high-tech, high-finance icon to attract a younger, less corporate occupier. The refurbishment and restoration project highlighted a sophisticated transformation of the former UBS “corporate” office environment into shared spaces and office services for tenants ranging from start-ups to tech leaders such as mimecast.

Image by Timothy Soar

After visiting 1 Finsbury Avenue, both virtually and physically, I believe that the overall attitude and ethos of the building, with its exciting mix of flexible workspaces, cinema, retail and restaurants, makes it a leading example of the future of the workplace.  A key success factor of the project is that British Land’s Broadgate development re-established the public route through the project.  This gesture activates the ground floor and connects the building with Finsbury Avenue Square and the broader Broadgate campus.  It demonstrates how buildings can, and should, contribute to the vibrancy of the urban grain of a city.

Designed in collaboration with artist Morag Myerscough, ‘Atoll’ – the new 7.5m tall, mosaic-tiled installation located in the centre of the lower atrium – also contributes to the project’s overall character and  exemplifies how this architecturally important and flexible office building has been reimagined.  The project will raise the aesthetic and urban standards for a new class of speculative office buildings in the city, being repurposed, open to the public, artfully lit, with exceptional elements that bring life to its internal street. Speculative offices of the future should take note.

Atoll Structure by Morag Myerscough

The AIA UK Chapter will continue to host a combination of live and virtual buildings tours throughout the year, offering architects the opportunity to visit notable buildings that have particular design interests in the UK and abroad. 

Written by Gregory Fonseca, AIA 

Movie Night - Shelter Without Shelter

Our Movie Night Series were adversely affected by the Cinema closures in 2021, but luckily we were able to return to the BFI for a screening of “Shelter Without Shelter” in the Autumn. This is a Movie directed by one of our board members, Dr. Mark Breeze, AIA.

SHELTER WITHOUT SHELTER explores the hopes and challenges involved in providing temporary housing for refugees. Filmed over three years since 2015, this six-part documentary investigates how forced migrants from Syria were sheltered across Europe and the Middle East, ending up in mega-camps, city squats, occupied airports, illegal settlements, requisitioned buildings, flat-pack structures, and enormous architect-designed reception centres. Containing perspectives from the humanitarians who created these shelters as well as the critics who campaigned against them, the documentary reveals the complex dilemmas involved in attempts to house refugees in emergency conditions. Based on innovative new research at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre, SHELTER WITHOUT SHELTER offers new insights into a universal human experience. We all need shelter, but what is it?

The love for these AIA movie screenings, and longing to be back in the cinema, was evident by this highly subscribed movie. Director and AIA Board Member was able to lead our liveliest and longest post-movie Q&A session to date.

Thank you to all those who attended this screening and made it a huge success! Please join us on Tuesday 08 February 2022 for our first screening of this year, The New Bauhaus - The life and Legacy of Moholy Nagy.

Written by: Chris Musangi AIA

Congratulations to Lester Korzilius, FAIA!

AIA UK member Lester Korzilius, FAIA has been selected by the AIA International board of directors to represent AIA International on the AIA Strategic Council.  The appointment is for 3 three years beginning in 2022.

Formed in 2015, the Strategic Council advances the architecture profession by informing the AIA National Board and other Institute bodies about important professional issues, opportunities, and threats.  The Council focuses on long-term goals and outcomes of AIA’s work rather than the administrative or programmatic efforts that achieve those goals.

Lester was recently the 2020-2021 President of AIA International (formerly the AIA International Region), Vice-President from 2018-2019, and Secretary from 2015-2016.   He was a Secretary of AIA Continental Europe from 2012-2013.  He is a long-serving member of the AIA UK board and was the AIA UK President in 2001 and 2003.