LACEY GREEN VISITING SCHOOL: Design, Making & PlaceInterview

The Visiting School offers a chance to broaden this collaborative approach to a group of international participants from many different backgrounds. The structural design of the pavilion will be resolved and signed-off by the time the Visiting School starts, which will allow us to jump straight into fabrication and construction of the timber frame during the first week. The second week will involve the design and production of a number of prototype clay roof tiles, allowing us to experiment with digital mould-making techniques and firing processes.   The Visiting School includes trips to local manufactures and fabricators; where will you be visiting and why? A key aim of the project is to engage with manufacturing processes, and create links between academia and industry. It’s an exchange which works for both parties; students gain valuable knowledge about materials, tools and the ways things are made, whilst manufacturers are able to engage with fresh ideas, and an experimental approach which can lead to innovation.   Lacey Green is located  in the Chiltern Hills around High Wycombe, a town which was at the centre of the British furniture-making industry in the 19th Century. One of the largest and most famous companies, Ercol, is still operating locally and in fact relocated a few years ago to Princes Risborough – just a few miles from Grymsdyke Farm. Although the company now sources its timber from Europe and America, and has additional factories abroad, many of their products are made in Buckinghamshire. Visiting the factory is a chance to understand how new digital manufacturing process such as CNC milling co-exists with hand-tools that haven’t changed in centuries.   One of the other interesting manufacturers we’ll be visiting – a little further away in Chesham – is H G Matthews brickworks. Now being run by the third generation of the same family, H G Matthews is an example of how a traditional business has adapted to accommodate current demands and future needs. Running the only remaining wood-fired kiln in the UK enables the company to produce traditional brick glaze found in the local vernacular architecture, and hand-pressing the clay in wooden moulds leads to a distinctive finish not found in mass-produced bricks. Alongside these processes, the company is developing less energy-intensive building modules such as unfired cob blocks. They’re also interested in reviving lost skills such as clay-tile production, which is what we’ll be prototyping at the farm and discussing with the current director Jim Matthews at the end of the Visiting School – with the view to one of the designs being put into production at the brickworks.   Finally, we’ll be visiting two metal fabricators located in Lacey Green itself: Gommes forge and M H Hall sheet steel company, which will be manufacturing some elements of the pavilion.   [caption id="attachment_4049" align="alignnone" width="360"] Felled timber logs at Hooke Park[/caption] You have a number of guests joining you over the course of the workshop to give lectures and seminars; who have you invited and why? One of the greatest strengths of the RCA is its interdisciplinary culture, and the cross-fertilisation between different schools and departments; a defining feature of the AA is its public programme and the culture of lively debate; whilst an important part of life Grymsdyke Farm and Hooke Park is the food and the habit of sharing meals together! Touching on each of these characteristics, the format of the seminar series during the Visiting School will be presentation from a non-architectural practitioner, followed by a group discussion over lunch or dinner.

The first guests are Alexander Groves and Azusa Murakami from Studio Swine (Super Wide Interdisciplinary New Explorers). Graduates of the RCA’s Design Products program, Alex and Asusa will present their beautiful, process-driven work which addresses pertinent social and environmental issues. We’ll then be joined by Martin Self, a engineer who formerly worked for Arup and Zaha Hadid who is the current Director of Hooke Park; he’ll be talking about the history of Hooke Park and presenting recent work from the Design+Make program. Steve Webb, a founding partner of Webb Yates who has been working on the music pavilion for St. John’s since December will talk us through the design of the timber structure, as well as present some of his other work. Finally the British sculptor and educator Richard Wentworth will discuss his work – much of which has focused on the poetics of informal, everyday assemblage.     What do you think are the most valuable things about participating in the Visiting School ? The primary motivation behind my own decision to work in this hands-on way was to have a more direct engagement with materials, tools, landscapes and people – in other words, all the contingencies which shape buildings. Rather than beginning with a design and trying to achieve it in spite of these constraints, I wanted to develop a set of experiences which would allow them to inform the design process from the start. One of the values of this methodology is developing the right balance between being in control of the process, and allowing the process to shape the output; between asserting your will on a material, and understanding a material well enough to be able to manipulate it.   This negotiation is equally important in terms of relationships with people. Collaboration is crucial to the production of buildings, and yet is something many of us rarely experience in architecture school. Learning how to listen, adapt and accommodate – and equally how to define your own position and assert it – is crucial to making something as a group.   Finally, the process teaches you the ability to be flexible in the face of unanticipated developments – of which you can be sure there will be many! – and able to embrace them as a part of the project.   The deadline for applications to the Lacey Green Visiting School is 14th March, click here to apply.   Project partners: Grymsdyke Farm Hooke Park Webb Yates Engineers Arbtech Blanchford Building Supplies Helpful Hirings AET Transport Keith Bullock H G Matthews Andrew Goddard Associates St. John's School Community   [caption id="attachment_4052" align="alignnone" width="360"] Sample tiles and moulds from HG Matthews brickworks[/caption] For more information: Clementine will be presenting the project at the next Sustain RCA talk on 25 March WORKSHOP on AA Conversations - Building Rural Communities WORKSHOP on AA Conversations - Not What, But How   Main image: Experimental casting moulds at Grymsdyke Farm