Fragments of Icarus: Testbed1, Battersea

Following our exhibition on Store Street in August (see below), my collaborators Amelia Leeson, Ifigeneia Liangi and I were invited to install our inflatable at the Testbed1 gallery in Battersea. The Store Street exhibition had consisted of around 20 installations, each interpreting an excerpt from the myth of Icarus. In the large warehouse space of Testbed, we had the opportunity to disassemble, rearrange and recombine our works, reacting this time to Pieter Bruegel's painting, The Fall of Icarus (below).

Installations were grouped and amalgamated to represent key compositional elements from the painting. The construction process was highly collaborative, with all contributors proving willing and eager to adapt, reconsider and in some cases destroy their original works.

Yesterday evening was the private view, a chance to wander around the works and view snippets of footage from the Store Street installation projected onto frameworks, screens, and in one case, a slowly melting block of ice. It was a great evening, with lots of friends and newcomers (helped in no small way by the adjacent bar), but the exhibition will be open until the 12th of December if you want to take a look yourself. For more information, see www.iv-i.co.uk.

Friern Road site visit - Concrete Finishes

This morning I made a site visit to Friern Road to see progress on our new build house. We are currently building the concrete elements of the construction. This includes the external ground floor walls, which are all in-situ insulated concrete with a board-marked finish (left image below), and the stair-cores which have a smooth, ply finish (right image below).
 

  

To create the external walls, timber formwork is erected around a core of insulation, reinforcement mesh and basalt ties (which eliminate thermal bridging), into which concrete is poured in layers. Between each pour the layers of concrete are vibrated with a poker to remove air bubbles and create a clean surface. This construction allows us to create the structure, insulation and finish simultaneously.

For the formwork to the external walls we have used locally sourced English Larch which has been finished to provide a relief of the grain on the concrete surface. The timber is then sealed and coated with a release agent prior to fixing into the formwork.

We have spent many months researching the techniques and construction methods in order to create an efficient building envelope and a high quality architectural finish. This research has allowed us to test innovate concrete construction methods to eliminate cold bridging and improve thermal performance - I will write a more technical blog on this subject sometime in the future.

Keep posted for that, and further updates from Friern Road as construction works progress.  

Eashing House on site progress and Metal Sample Panel

On Monday I travelled to leafy Godalming to see the progress of our project Eashing House. http://www.edgleydesign.co.uk/Projects/Residential/Eashing-House.aspx

Recently published in the AJ, we are upcycling a 1960s country house wrapping the existing building in high performance insulation and shiny stainless steel. There is a large extension, all the glazing is being replaced by triple glazed sliding windows and doors, and the interiors are all being completely refurbished.

It has been on site since August and the Contractors are making great progress. On Monday we recieved approval for the facing materials, with the help of the below sample panel. We chose the material, together with the Clients, as it reflected the beautiful Surrey countryside, acting as an invisibility cloak for the building.

The specific finish has never been used as a cladding material before as far as we know. Architect's tend to either go for the perfect mirror finish, or the extremely matte non-reflective.

This metal acts like a lens - go close up and the reflections are perfect almost like a mirror. As you move further away, the image begins to blur, moving out of focus. Continuing to move away from the metal, the distortions of the metal abstract the image even further, until you are left with a watercolour like image of the surrounding landscape, the variety of colour, shapes, light, and shade.

We look forward to seeing the project develop further into the winter months.

Rising Action/Falling Action

 

 As part of the Bloomsbury Festival, I was invited by the curators of SSE Space to create an installation interpreting a portion of the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus along with around 20 other teams of artists, architects and designers. Working together with Ifigeneia Liangi and Amelia Leeson, I created an inflated pair of wing-like forms, anchored to a timber framework which formed a doorway to an unoccupied shop on Store Street.

The project was a great opportunity to test out a new building technology. Much was learned about the manufacture and fragility of inflatable structures, which we'll certainly be putting to good use in the future. The day itself saw lots of amazing temporary structures, interactive games and performances in the street. For more information on the project, see SSE Space.

Mirror Mirror In The Park, Reflector Of Day And Dark

With Eashing House on-site, Edgley Design needed to decide on material finishes. The most noticable concern is the finish of the stainless steel cladding. Happy with the aesthetic of our drawing, our aim was to find the right level of polished material to reflect the colours and create a distorted vision of the surrounding park as close as possible.

 

Team Edgley took our samples down to the local park to discover the effects of light and the park environment on various grades of polished stainless steel, as this was the best way to test the material against its inevitable context in the Surrey countryside.

We had expected from looking at the drawing to opt for a more rough finish, that the highly polished material would be too much like a mirror and too bright. 

The users experience of the material at different distances (1m, 3m, 5m, 10m)  different distances.







On Site at Amhurst Road

Yesterday we visited our project situated off a busy thoroughfare in Hackney - Rubber House/Aluminium Studio.

The main volume of the house is articulated as a black rubber clad box, tactile and seamless with a white wall that wraps around as a separate element, forming rooflights to the hall and stair.

The concept for the artists studio is for a simple aluminium clad shed. The shiny industrial material reflects the working nature of the studio, offset by minimal detailing to give a domestic quality.

It was looking good, some of the spaces were starting to reveal themselves, the kitchen dining room and its connection with the courtyard worked well. A particularly nice moment is in the snug where the rubber cladding moves from outside to inside (visually) through the glass (below image right).

The client is hoping to move in on the 6th December 2011, so not long until the inside is complete. We'll post the finished product on here soon. Watch this space for more of Rubber House/Aluminium Studio

Oriel Mostyn Gallery

In between getting hailed on and shivering on a recent holiday in Caernarfon, North Wales, I spent a morning at the Oriel Mostyn contemporary art gallery in Llandudno.

The project, by Architects EllisWilliams, is a refurbishment of a listed Victorian gallery building and has a central circulation core of board-faced concrete.




The variations in the concrete wall surfaces generated by the timber formwork created a wonderful play of light, accentuating the horizontality and persepctive of the space. The contrast between the warmth of the timber used for the stairs and the cool concrete also created a pleasing aesthetic which I hope we can explore in some of our current projects.



Exhibiting at the gallery was the work of David Nash which has a strong sculptural and material quality. Timber was the primary material and several of the pieces were made from burning the surface of the wood. This is a technique which I have been exploring in the office and the potential to use burnt timber as a cladding material. It was interesting to see the finish first hand and how the technique had been used in a different discipline.

To summarise, I had 'Oriel' good time

Cracking concrete conference on the Southbank

Yesterday I spent the day at the Southbank Centre, London with fellow 'concrete-ophiles' for the 'Specifying Visual Concrete' Conference. The audience was a mix of Architects, Consultants and Suppliers and the guest speakers provided a great insight into different features and uses of concrete in construction. @thisisconcrete were 'tweeting' throughout the conference if you're interested in seeing what went on...

The Angel Building by AHMM

The big themes of the conference seemed to be about how the construction industry can change clients' perception towards concrete and how it can be used sustainably. Thermal mass was the buzz word for the day and it was shown how it could be used to negate the need for air conditioning and thus offset the carbon created during its construction.

Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield by David Chipperfield

All the guest speakers were engaging though my particular highlights were the talks by Steve Smith from AHMM on the Angel Building, Alex Waight from Allies and Morrison on their office building, Anton Sawicki from Ramboll on the new Hepworth Gallery and PhD candidate John Orr on fabric formed concrete which introduced some exciting possibilities for the way concrete could be used in the future to achieve structural efficiency and complex geometry.

To summarise, this conference really cemented my love for concrete.

'One must be entirely sensitive to the structure of the material that one is handling. One must yield to it in tiny details of execution, perhaps the handling of the surface or grain, and one must master it as a whole.'
Barbara Hepworth