A review of the Waugh Thistleton Architects lecture in the Forum, 23 October 2008
This Thursday’s talk was about ideas. Not glamorous Big Ideas, but the ones that should be at the heart of any architectural practice concerned with its responsibility towards society and the environment. Unfortunately there are few practices that approach the implementation of these concepts as thoughtfully and thoroughly as Waugh Thistleton Architects.
In the first part of the talk Anthony Thistleton introduced the underlying philosophy of the practice, the fascination with the everyday experience of living in a city and the little corners of intimacy people carve out for themselves. Three main concepts guide their design process as a practice, aiming to enhance this experience: accessibility, sustainability and value for money. As these are rather vague phrases (who does not mention “sustainability”, mostly without offering further explanation of this overused and general term), Anthony went on to demonstrate the implementation of their design approach with three projects.
The Leaside housing scheme in Hackney provides accessibility beyond its conventional interpretation, which is often limited to wheelchair turning circles and ramps. The orientation of the housing blocks and the mix of private gardens and public pathways will allow everyone to visit and enjoy the bank of the Lea and the lush views over Hackney Marshes. Furthermore their office operates as a shop front, allowing anyone to access their work space and enquire about their proposals, while they use public consultations to gage the needs and wishes of future users.
The development of their understanding of sustainability was demonstrated in two schemes: the Ramsgate Street development in Dalston and the Murray Grove tower block. The Ramsgate scheme took a more technology-driven approach to sustainability, incorporating a beautiful but expensive breed of special wind turbines making use of the wind speeds generated by the shape of the building. The inability of the British electrical grid to accommodate the fluctuation of use and production of energy led the developer to fit the wind turbines with breaks to prevent the production of excessive energy. While the forced futility of the turbines and their high maintenance cost has turned Ramsgate Street into a Green Elephant, the nine storey Murray Grove housing block explored a different approach. The structure of the block, which is the tallest modern timber residential building in the world (Anthony Thistleton) consists entirely out of prefabricated cross laminated timber panels. The skin and the rotated floor plans act together as honeycomb structure, providing the necessary stability. Sourced from managed forests in Austria, the panels are “carbon negative” (binding more carbon than their production process emits) even though they have to be transported to the UK. The comparative ease and speed of the timber construction compared to concrete further brought down the embodied energy of the building as well as any risks to safety and health of the site workers. Internally all wooden surfaces were covered to create a “standard” interior for the developer, who, happy enough to experiment with the structure, did not want to take a risk in how it looks inside.
This talk had no detached discussion or justification of aesthetics, even though the Murray Grove scheme involved co-operatoins with artists Gerhard Richter and Marcus Harvey for the design of the facade. Instead, Anthony spoke passionately about the role of the architect in the design process under the heading of “value for money”. The developer and the estate agents, which at times take on the role of design consultants as their expertise lies in the commercial viability of the flats or houses, often create dwellings with a thirty year life span (or even shorter). In particular if working in this context the architects can find themselves to be the only advocates of the design quality of the scheme and hence the quality of the environment of the future users.
One aspect of sustainability that Anthony only touched on lightly was “social sustainability”. From Anthony’s answer to a question probing in this direction, it seems the practice considers these issues as carefully as the environmental sustainability agenda, while not overly challenging the developers or housing associations. Admittedly the 45 minute talk did not leave enough time, but it would have been good to hear more on this aspect of their work as in my opinion social and environmental sustainability go hand in hand.
“Someone needed to do this” was the answer as to why Waugh Thistleton embarked on the timber challenge of the Murray Grove scheme, proving that a housing scheme of this scale can substantially reduce the energy consumed during its entire life cycle. I hope they continue to design sustainable and accessible schemes on their terms, informed by their thorough and critical testing of seemingly simple ideas. We all should.
Waugh Thistleton, Murray Grove Timber Tower, Hackney, London