September 13, 2024
Director James McGillivray was asked by Building Design to reflect on winning the BD Education Architect of the Year:
The B in NVB (Mark Brierley) was often heard to say that we are just enclosing space for activity to happen. Whilst he was seriously underplaying the skill of the architect and landscape architect, he had got to the core of the question.
The way we work has evolved over a number of years rather than through a single declaration or manifesto and often we are too busy to consider it consciously. When challenged recently, we found that we were clumsy in articulating our ethos preferring to let the drawings do the talking. Winning Education Architect of the Year was therefore a welcome prompt to stand back and consider how we work and what we believe in.
Architecture shapes space for its (usually human) inhabitants. Of course, the critical point is in the quality of that shaping, the consideration of volume, proportion, touch, colour, texture, but if you don’t understand people, you cannot design for them. This applies equally whether you are designing smartphones, trousers or in our case, buildings and landscapes.
This goes beyond just ergonomics. This is about how people experience the building, how they feel about it? Do they move through it with ease? Is the play of light comfortable, inviting?
It goes further than aesthetics. Of course, buildings have to meet regulations and they are there to guide us, and to keep people safe, but sometimes, to use the well-worn saw, the law is indeed an ass. Why should we stick rigidly to the British Standard when we know that there is always a queue snaking down the corridor from the women’s loos at any cinema, concert or sports event you could care to mention? (more…)
