An Approach to Design & Making

I have approached this piece of text as an essay on how I work, rather than a flat description of who I am or where I have studied and worked. The language is plain English, and I am using footnotes as a referencing method rather than any particular academic referencing system. I have developed  a number of principles in practice through designing and making places for people. While these places are for people, and to allow people, to function well in their immediate environment. I always try to hold the environment that we are intervening in as integral - we are part of the environment and not separate from it. Below is a brief description of these principles as they stand now, and how they work in practice. The only caveat I offer here, is that the principles unfold and adapt as we progress and work, and as the paradigm we work in shifts and evolves. In this sense it is a reflexive practice. 

Narrative & Thresholds 

Environment & Place 

Low-waste-design & Buildability

Well-Being

Narrative & Thresholds

We have developed the idea of multiple Thresholds, both physical and metaphorical, across our sites and places, and through our buildings. This design method is appropriated from the Generative Design Principles of Chinese Garden[1]. In essence this process promotes the design of the landscape, and the introduction of the building as an element within this landscape. This ensures that the building(s) we propose are integrated with, and augment, the landscape we are intervening in.  This principle or design method, is coupled with the idea of Prospect and Refuge, which has become a central tenet to our design process, which is briefly described below under Well-Being.

At an everyday level Narrative is a design tool that I use with my clients. I ask my clients to describe their daily routine, or narrative, and how they think they would like to interact with life through the lens of a new house. This could be something as simple as saying, “I like to have a coffee in the morning facing the morning sun, in a quiet place”, or “I like to be able to see my children from the kitchen when preparing dinner”, or “I need a place where I can close the door and read my book by the fire”. All very simple ideas and acts, but potentially very powerful when designing a building. This is very like the process that Christopher Alexander (et al.) describe so well in their book “A Pattern Language”[2], and sometimes we offer this book as a starting point for clients.

I have also used Narrative within my work by interacting with pieces of literature as a generative procedure, using texts like Seamus Heaney’s translation of Sweeney Astray and James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to produce designs for buildings. Both of these texts are heavily laden with the idea of translation and interpretation, which was rife in the literature of Ireland in the 20th century. In other works I find it useful to create a character for a building and imagine their perspective, almost like a narrative version of a visual walkthrough.

Environment & Place, (and the Product of Place and Time)

It is only through the realisation and acceptance that we are integral to the environment that we can hope to have a lesser or even a positive impact upon it, and us. This is a primary principle for the practice and we endeavour to grow our design from this premise. 

Another way to phrase this is to Touch The Earth Lightly[3]. We try to engage in this principle in all our projects, and use it as a guiding principle in terms of landscape, connection between inside and outside, and more globally in terms of sustainability and selection of materials and processes. 

Over the past few years much of our work has been located in rural Wexford. Wexford is a very particular, and sometimes a peculiar place. The historical housing stock in the area was developed upon a necessity rather than designed with a capital ‘D’, with the vernacular being manifest by this need. These buildings were a direct response to place and environment, fused with a good deal of practicality. Much of the fabric which was used in the fabrication of these buildings was what was available and practical and practically nothing was left to waste. All we need do to understand this is to look at the cob-walled and thatched roofed houses dotted around the County. We have been involved not just in the production of buildings in the rural landscape but in the survey and assessment of existing building stock for academic and governmental research. These surveys have directly, and by osmosis, influenced how we propose buildings in the landscape.

Low-waste-design & Buildability

Reduce waste and integrate low-waste-design as a keystone principle. This is often one of the original conversations we have with our clients, and it remains important throughout the design and building process. This initial dialogue is in response to the cost of building and the obscene amount of waste produced both by design and while on-site. We endeavour to reduce this as best we can at design stage, and to do this we first employed a 2440mm x 1220mm design grid so that off the shelf sheet materials, such as plasterboard, plywood and engineered timbers, could be used (without cutting and waste), all of which can be sourced at any builders suppliers and fitted easily. We also design our roofs to be buildable with standard length of timbers available, and again designed to require little or no cutting on-site (or in the workshop). 

We have also designed buildings so that they can be erected as a portal frame, firstly in an effort to reduce the amount of material required by this type of efficient structure, but also to allow for the frame to go up a type of umbrella to allow work proceed underneath in most Irish weathers. The waste reduction principles also allow us to use off the shelf materials which are not only easily available but easily put in place due to their familiarity with builders and craftspeople. This will hopefully reduce costs and will have the knock-on effect of reducing debt. 

Well-Being

The reduction in waste and the buildability principles feed into an overall fostering of well-being, for the clients and the site. The materials we choose are, as far as is practicable, natural, and breathable. This will reduce the need for synthetic finishes, fittings and ventilations internally especially, and obviously then improving the overall health of the occupants. 

Our buildings are designed with the age-old-principles of Solar Gain, and Prospect and Refuge. The idea of Solar Gain is in common parlance now, and we employ the vast majority of our glazing to take advantage of the sun. We also like to design overhangs to the south and west to protect the building from overheating in summertime, while allowing the winter-sun penetrate, and also providing a valuable interstitial space to claim as an outdoor room. 

The overhang presents us with a Prospect / Refuge opportunity, allowing the occupants to enjoy the zone under the overhang, the Veranda, in many weathers, then retreating to the more private spaces in the corners of the house for Refuge and privacy. This variety of spaces is important, especially in small spaces, so that all the inhabitants can pursue their narrative together and apart when necessary. The Veranda is considered as an almost free room, an interstitial space, between inside and outside, that is created purely by an overhang. This will allow the occupants to live in a more direct connection to the outside, promoting better well-being and health. 

[1] Ariachne’s Threads, Design Methods in Architecture, Greg Missingham, The University of Melbourne

[2] A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander

[3] Glenn Murcutt design principle