Agnes Denes, Wheatfield – A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill, Lower Manhattan; 1982

We are a teaching practice – our unit seeks to engage students directly with the current concerns of our practice (31/44 Architects) creating a research studio founded on the realities of current-day considerations whilst projecting solutions for the near future.

How do we keep on doing what we’re doing whilst fundamentally changing how we get there? That’s the current concern of our practice.

We believe in an architecture of continuity; moving forwards whilst working with the diverse, established characters and qualities of the places we find. To some degree this has relied upon the adoption of familiar materials and conventional ways of making buildings (of course, we do then hope to subvert the ordinary to transform it to something extra-ordinary but we’ll save that story for another day).

In light of the responsibility our profession and industry has to participate in a necessary and urgent response to the climate emergency, is such practice still possible? So many of those materials we understand to have serious consequences in terms of the carbon generated during their production (especially when combined with the petro-chemically derived layers of contemporary construction). This isn’t to say they are off limits, more that their use must be within limits.

We seek to ‘hold’ the architectural language, which is an expression of the values we have in relation to the cities that people enjoy. How do we achieve buildings with a mass and presence, a dignity and responsibility, within this alternative framework of evaluation?

How do we keep on making buildings that feel familiar and have a sense of permanence and weight (visual weight if not physical weight); buildings that we feel are ‘correct’ for the places they are situated within. Buildings that communities are comfortable with.

We don’t think the generic application of wood as seen in rendered images of future proposals across multiple countries is the sole approach in the UK, we don’t yet have a well-managed, sustainable and established timber supply chain. So, out of necessity, without reliable alternative supply chains in place, this change will be incremental and the interim solutions hybrid.

It is no doubt a challenging time to be an architect, but there is the tangible sense that the potentials of this re-evaluation, being crucial to the conversation, is inspiring us all.

We’re seeking mass that’s as light as air.