The Identity of a Practitioner by Neil Middleton
After being made redundant, and with several freelance projects lined up, I recently decided to take the opportunity to start my own practice. After working in large offices since graduating, and with some experience behind me, this seemed the right time to focus on pursuing my own interests.
Within a larger practice it is possible to carry out your role and contribute to the larger culture of that organisation; but it is likely that culture is shaped largely by others who have come before and will be, by its nature, ‘collective’. Now though, as I become an independent practitioner, the identity of my ‘practice’ becomes a reflection of my own identity and attitudes as an architect.
Superficial ideas of identity, such as a name to practice under, are encountered immediately. In my case my own name seemed the most honest option, given I am a freelance architect working on my own. Indeed, in the future should circumstances change, a different practice name might be more appropriate to reflect a more collaborative form of practice. A graphic identity and a website were other things to consider early on and a choice of font and simple website design was sufficient for starting up.
Although these aspects of identity are a prerequisite for starting a practice, I am left with the feeling that the identity of a practice must come from a more meaningful level. It will have to evolve out of the work that I do and the process that I follow.
I have some ideas and thoughts about architecture that were developed in my previous employment and in education, but it seems to me that they will only develop into a coherent identity through the projects that I develop in independent practice. But how do you begin to push work in a certain direction, whilst starting out as sole practitioner on small projects for domestic clients? In an interview with Floris de Bruyne¹ of Gent based practice GAFPA for the Register podcast, Andrew Clancy phrased it neatly by noting that as an emerging practice “ultimately you have to take a position and start pulling on a thread”.
In the same conversation, De Bruyne described how when they began in practice they were overwhelmed with historical references, the number of decisions they had to make on each project and the weight of their previous training and education. He suggested an approach that allowed them to navigate their first projects. “We started from really basic decisions; simply how to build? what materials? context?” These fundamental questions prompted them to consider what they thought were the important qualities about each project and how their prior experience could contribute to their realisation. This meant the construction of a simple and clear logic that allowed them to focus on the important aspects of each project, whilst delivering them without having to make many more choices, as he put it, succinctly: “we don’t like to make any choices.” Gradually as they developed more projects and gained experience in practice, they began to make their project more wilfully richer and “allowed complexity and more references to fall into place in projects.”
This approach of focusing on the key ideas of each project should ultimately result in a set of projects that collectively reflect an overall attitude and identity and I have tried to pursue this approach in some of my early commissions.
Firstly, for a new kitchen extension to a small house in the highlands simple ideas about construction, materials and context were identified early on and have contributed to all of the decision making. The project will be self-built by the client and from the outset the materials and construction methods were chosen to facilitate this; timber frame walls and roof, timber cladding and a simple corrugated metal roof are easy for the client to construct. The house was previously lacking any direct connection to the mature gardens and the open surrounding landscape so straightforward and generous openings provide meaningful connections where previously there was none.
In a project for an extension to a semi-detached property in a rural setting on the outskirts of Dumfries the brief was to expand the rear kitchen into a family living space with a connection to the garden. In this instance the context was a major driving factor – the rear garden was north facing but there was also a spacious area to the side of the house. By extending out to the side as well as the rear we were able to exploit the south facing view and afternoon sunlight. This move created one large bright internal space with three distinct characters and the subsequent choices about structure, fenestration and construction have all been made to contribute to this spatial richness and the contextual relationships.
References
1. Register – Architecture and Landscape (podcast) Floris de Bruyne GAFPA, April 4th 2018
Neil is an Edinburgh based architect and has been working on freelance projects throughout Scotland since November 2020.
He recently worked with 3DReid in Edinburgh, where he was project architect for several projects including Cowie Community Hub and the fit-out of the new main stand at Tynecastle Park. Before that he was with Scott Brownrigg in Edinburgh and after graduating from the University of Dundee in 2012 spent some time with Monadnock in Rotterdam.
Since 2012 he has published a tumblr blog exploring the theme of rationalist architecture.