Practise, Perform, Practice: An imaginary practice, set up performatively during Architecture Fringe festival 2021 in collaboration with /other, which unlearns the rules of architectural work culture through investigations and explorations into an (un)typical office week.
Parallel Practice Podcast
Podcast episodes featuring interviews with a number of academics and practitioners on alternative methods of practising the profession.
Raymond Young
“The architecture was not apart from the community.
This was a community that had an architect in the same way it had a bank.”
Raymond Young was a key figure in pushing towards housing reform which saw a rise of housing associations in Scotland. He also helped make sure that many of the ubiquitous tenement buildings, along with their associated communities, were preserved rather than demolished or displaced.
The best lecture I ever had on plumbing was from the plumber in Govan. I had followed the rules, followed all the design, put it right in; but then Tommy says to me:
‘Laddie, come and spend a day with me to see what we need to do’
Future Architects Front - Charlie Edmonds and Priti Mohandas
“The personal is political”
Charlie Edmonds and Priti Mohandas are the founders of the suitably abbreviated FAF, describing themselves as the “loud abrasive voice of those at the bottom of the professional hierarchy”. Through their campaign, they highlight unpaid overtime and other exploitative practices rampant in the profession today.
I went into architecture thinking I was going to contribute to society, affect people and be affected by people. Now the profession has changed and has become driven by profit. The clients are totally different. We are very detached from who we design for and this affects the intimacy we have with the career.
New Practice - Becca Thomas
“Just as a building isn’t always the answer, what an architect can do isn’t always the answer. One must recognise the deep social structures require different solutions.”
Becca Thomas is the co-founder of New Practice. They stand for an architecture of interaction between people and within communities; an architecture that is sustainable not solely in its long-lasting materials, but in the long-term relationships it fosters.
Communicating in a simpler/different language not only makes things easier to understand but challenges the vague/problematic meanings that remain unchallenged in the profession.
Missing in Architecture - Kathy Li and Miranda Webster
“As educators we’re not really part of conventional practice so we’re sort of parallel in things that are of our interest in architecture but it doesn’t end up being a building in the final outcome.”
Kathy Li and Miranda Webster are members of Missing in Architecture (MiA) together with Kirsty Lees, Isabel Deakin and Nick Walker. From International Women’s Day events to forward-thinking lecture series at the school that brought them together, MiA promotes creativity and action within architectural pedagogy and practice.
The artistic community tend to question and provoke, but we don’t as a profession because we’re too busy getting on with the building and I think all those things have an impact on people. How we design the environment has an impact on people. We need to change the emphasis a bit.
Artist Residencies
Parallel Practice funded six artists to do a day-long residency in the Graphical House studio (or from home). With full creative freedom, groups of two artists created responses to a typical task of the architectural design process - Site Analysis, Model Making and Visualisation. You can find out more about their work in the images below:
