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Welcome to Office Talk, a fortnightly podcast featuring in-depth conversations with leading architects about their approach to business marketing and communications. I'm your host, Dave Sharp, an architectural marketing expert and director of Office Dave Sharp, a marketing practice offering specialized consultancy, marketing, and PR services tailored to meet the particular needs of architects. Visit office dave sharp.com to learn more or follow the practice on Instagram at officedavesharp. Joining me on the show today are William Burgess and Stephen Davies, the directors of 3144, a practice with offices in London and France known for making architecture that sits sits comfortably in the fabric of the city, introduced with care and consideration. In this episode, Will, Steve, and I discussed how teaching in both undergraduate and master's programs have changed the way that they communicate their work, and how they view their projects as being part of a research agenda.
Dave Sharp:We looked at the approach they took to their site in the early days of the practice when they didn't have as much built work to show and why they chose to begin sharing their readings, research, and travels alongside their built work. We discussed the importance of producing renders in house to maintain a level of control and consistency, and how it's more important to show a vignette with detail versus a full view of a space or building. We looked at why physical models produced at varying scales have been a vital part of their design process, but also an essential presentation tool. And finally, we discussed the importance of shifting the tone of communication to address the specific needs of the different audiences architects encounter, whether it's a client, students, planning authorities, or the local community. So I hope you enjoy my conversation with William Burgess and Stephen Davies of
William Burges:3144.
Dave Sharp:Will and Steve, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
William Burges:Thanks for having us, for inviting us. Oh,
Dave Sharp:as always, probably good to start off with a little bit of a background on the studio just to familiarize the audience.
William Burges:So we are currently 10 people, and we have a little we have a studio in just off Brick Lane in London, and we also have a studio in Nantes on the West Coast of France. We established the practice. We all coming the original sort of partners all met at a firm called Procter and Matthews many years ago now, and we were all kind of happily working away, and I I got approached by one of my friends who had some sort of extra private word that they could that more than they can handle. And I thought if I don't try this now, I never will. So I left slightly reluctant in a way.
William Burges:I was very happy there. And, one of my other ex colleagues was just returning from traveling around South America, and he'd gone to Amsterdam. And I kind of set up I I then got more work than I could manage. And I approached him and said, you're in Amsterdam. You know, you could start doing some work, and we could kind of just see where it goes.
William Burges:And that's really where the name kind of originally came from. We didn't want it to be, blah and blah named after the kind of original partners. We wanted something that's felt a bit more inclusive, a bit more democratic, and something where we would actually, in a way, be a bit less visible. We wouldn't be demanded at every meeting or it wouldn't become a kind of noose that, you know, we where are the named partners? We didn't really like that.
William Burges:And I don't think we're like that as people. We didn't really want our name in a brass plaque on the door. So it started as 3144 because we had an office in the Netherlands, and the area code there is 31 and the UK is 44. So it's a very kind of just a name of that place. But I think it sort of speaks a lot about our kind of characters.
William Burges:So we that original partner was called James. He's still, an architect living and working in Amsterdam, and he left 2 or 3 years ago because all the work really was still in London. And I don't think that wasn't very satisfying for him bluntly. And we were a couple of years in and we thought, oh, we need another we need another set of hands that's prepared to take a risk and come and join this crazy endeavor. So we got back in touch with Steve.
William Burges:I mean, we hadn't got been out of touch, but we got in touch with Steve and said, come on, you know, you want to. And I think we felt Steve had kind of complimentary skills. Steve had already built his own house, you know, done a self build project. And that's the sort of obviously very practical, but also real tenacious, you know, to sort of stick with doing self build. He then did number 2.
William Burges:I've done my first self build and he's now on number 3, but that's a completely separate story. But I think also that tells you something about our practice that we are practical at our hearts, really.
Dave Sharp:Steve, where were you before joining in 3144? Were you working with the studio in some way?
Stephen Davies:I was still working at Procter and Matthews Architects at the time, and, and we'd gone through I think, it was gone through the recession. So there was kind of quite an up and down sort of period in the economy and managed to kind of weather through that and then had this opportunity to do a self taught project while I was still working in the practice. So I was kinda doing all of that stuff, and then, yeah, I got in touch with or Will and James were kind of we were in touch, and we're chatting a little bit about potential things. And then I think there was just a moment, and it was that point where I'm sure this happens to many, many people. It's like, do I go now?
Stephen Davies:You know? And there's no right time. There's no wrong time. And you just got to kind of think, yeah, let's try this. You know?
Stephen Davies:What have you really got to lose? And there was enough. You know, Will and I are quite practical people, I think, and quite cautious people. We can plan as much as we possibly can, and there just seemed enough there just seemed enough to take that measured kind of opportunity in chance. So we did.
Stephen Davies:And and as Will said, we worked we worked in the in the studio, and James is based in Amsterdam, and that kind of we started to just get a couple of little things happening, couple of things those guys already had in the pipeline started to move forward, and a couple of new things started to turn up. So it felt like there was a little bit of momentum. So we had
William Burges:the inevitable. We had a few kind of small residential jobs. We actually I think, because Steve had already built a difficult triangular house on a on a very tricky site. We started to get a couple more of those just through doing a little bit of publicity, getting them in newspapers or you know, and then those things kind of coordinate. So I think, one of our own clients had seen Steve's house in The Guardian newspaper at the weekend, and then he walked past it walking his dog.
William Burges:And it just that that kind of coincidence meant, oh, we'll get in touch with them. And we gradually just got a few one off houses, and that kind of got us up and running really. And since then, we sort of grown grown about 1 person a year, very sort of slow and steady. And we now, have another director called Tobias who's kind of been with us for a very long while.
Dave Sharp:During this period from 2010 to to now, when did teaching become an important aspect to what you guys were doing? Because you were sort of teaching and running studios, I believe, or what was the sort of the timeline with that?
William Burges:That was I think I'd I left my original job in about 2008. I I got into teaching because it was an old friend. Again, somebody that, yeah, we are used to work with at Procter and Matthews, was teaching at Kingston School of Art. She'd asked me a couple of times if I'd join and I thought, well, maybe next year, maybe next year. And then I I think there was there was a kind of recession on the horizon, and I kind of thought, oh, maybe that's not such a bad idea, to teach.
William Burges:I mean, it works out one day week, and it's for about half the year effectively. Since we've done that, it's kind of taken various forms over the years, teaching with different people in the studio. We've taught in the kind of undergraduate degree school. We now teach in the kind of master's school, I'd be very reluctant to give it up. I think the office would have to be under a lot of pressure and super busy to give it up because I just think it's it's brought real value to our studio.
William Burges:I think that kind of active teaching and unpicking complex things for youngsters is really essential, and it's changed the way that we talk about buildings and architecture and try not to be too too much architectural jargon. It's also because you're kind of in an academic environment and you've, you've got all of these well educated peers to also teach with you, you kind of think, oh, goodness, they're looking at our work. We've got to make sure our work lives up to it. And the students too. You know, we can talk about something.
William Burges:It's a tough, it's
Dave Sharp:a tough audience, isn't it?
William Burges:Yeah, it is. So it's a real bit of discipline, I think, for our day to day. And I think it's kept us reading. It's kept us kind of thinking about our building as being part of a kind of research agenda. It's like, well, each one has to learn.
William Burges:So I think it stops you being lazy and think, oh, that that worked quite well last time. Why don't we just bang that out again and move on quickly? We sort of torture ourselves because we also teach money.
Dave Sharp:I'm interested in how the stuff you're doing in teaching might have informed some of the things you did in the early days of the practice from a communication standpoint. I'm thinking about kind of column and made found and the way you approached Instagram and all these sorts of things. I feel like they had a quite research driven sort of lens to them, which is kind of a handy way to do things given that, you know, in the early days of a practice, architecture is so slow. Don't really have a very active output of finished work in those early days. It takes a long time for that to develop.
Dave Sharp:So I'm just a little curious about that, what those sort of some pretty interesting projects that you can still sort of find on your website that you're still actively working on and maintaining. But, yeah, maybe just talk us through a little bit of those ideas that you had over those initial years.
William Burges:Yeah. In the early days of the practice, we were quite worried that, architecture is construction is slow and that we wanted a lively kind of website. So we had a kind of 6040 split. We had 2 columns on our website, 60% projects and 40%, and they were both on screen at the same time, was a column called made found. And it was obviously things we'd made, but also things that we'd found.
William Burges:So it was sort of our architectural baggage, if you will. And it was very eclectic. All these things we'd visited. It was a kind of news feed of sorts. It was sadly, we're old enough that that was kind of pre Instagram or it was when Instagram was still just a kind of fun app with filters on it rather than the kind of because now it was it was a way to kind of look active and lively, and it did kind of connect back to teaching.
William Burges:So we'd have things on there that were like, well, here's our baggage. This is how this kind of contextual references found its way into a project or and then that that kind of grew. We did a thing called column, which was sort of like a newspaper format newsletter. Because I guess we we kind of we thought, well, we've got architectural values, but we don't define them every anywhere. And we we're very reluctant writers, and we'd find it very slow, but we kind of recognized in other practices the value of actually laying it down and saying, well, here is only maybe 4, 500 words, but here's what we think about when we start a building for the city, or this is what we think about when we put a building in a landscape.
William Burges:And I guess to kind of, yeah, just help define what we were about, that kind of bit of reflection that that forced us to that, you know, trying to put together a little tiny little mini publication may forced us to reflect.
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Dave Sharp:To learn more about our process and book a consultation, simply visit officedavesharpe.com. Yeah. So it's always a tough challenge, those early days, where there's that gap between the sort of work you want to be doing or you wanna put the message out there that this is the sort of stuff that we're into. This is what we wanna be doing. This is the sort of work we like, which I guess is that found component.
Dave Sharp:Right? And then there's the gap between that and then what you're kind of currently able to show. And I guess it's just trying to, yeah, cross that gap a little bit. And I guess there is a little bit of, the hesitation out there around whether playing that kind of curator and DJ role of going, here's stuff that I've found that we like, that we want to show. You know, some practices aren't sure if that's the right way to go, but but you found a approach to doing that that was tasteful, that worked, that that felt like a genuine thing for you to be doing for your studio.
Stephen Davies:I think for me and and and certainly in the studio, in those earlier years, it was really, really useful for us to try and understand collectively what was happening and what we were collecting or thinking about. Because I think, we didn't go to college together. You know, Will and James and I didn't go to college together, and we worked together. So there wasn't a long time of kind of having conversations about what what's our architecture going to be like. It's some sort of big grand idea.
Stephen Davies:It was more when we started working together and we brought this skill set and we were thinking about, okay, well, let's, you know, make a building. Let's try and focus on how far we can get to making that happen. But then, you know, what are our thoughts and what are our values, ideas, and what and so on. So it was a really for me, it was a good way to visualize it. And Will was bringing lots of things to the table and saying, well, what about this precedent?
Stephen Davies:What about this idea? And I, you know, visited them. So I think that was really good for the studio, and I think then that started to you know, you're asking that question inside the studio more and more, and then you kind of think, well, how do you take it further to take it outside of the of the of the studio?
William Burges:I think what's happened, sadly, and we're just trying to readdress it, is that you become much more uptight about the stuff that you put out there. So in, where I'm trying to think what was on there, but there would be, there was a kind of there was a street sign in London where it's like one version of it. Somebody come along 50 years later, painted another one just to the left. Somebody had applied the latest 90 19 eighties metal version just to the right. So there was this kind of trace of street signs.
William Burges:So there was a sense of not raising what had gone before, but it needed renewing. And that was so there were things in there that kind of ideas about buildings or attitudes. There was a wheelbarrow. Yeah. A photo I took a wheelbarrow on Long Island, which sounds really random, but it was a really clever use of material.
William Burges:And these things used to pop up in our kind of little student lectures. And now it's like, we'd never post anything like that. And actually, we've been going through this thing in the office kind of saying, we probably need to loosen up and sharing those things is interesting. And then your Instagram feed just becomes kind of less social and more more. I mean, again, that's a different story.
William Burges:But, yeah, it's yeah. What's what's happened in that space? We're trying to kind of refine that. So we've now got rather than made found on our website, we've got a peep we've kind of made column digital. So digital was always printed, although we only ever managed to print 4 of them
Stephen Davies:in
William Burges:12 years or something. And now we're thinking, well, column could be more inclusive again. You know, it could have like friends and contributors. And so it's more kind of forms a cultural picture of what the practice is interested in rather than saying, oh, thank God we've completed a building. We can finally show something.
William Burges:I mean, we've had a period where we've got, we've had quite a lot on, but stuff goes slowly. So we haven't finished anything in, in ages.
Dave Sharp:Do you think that having that finished work now and that photography sort of rolling in and that sort of stuff, it's maybe taken away a little bit of the purpose of that more sort of, like, found material, Really, the big mood board exercise that you guys had going on for a few years of kind of going, let's build this internal kind of culture of images and writing and stuff like that that maybe now the culture's just gelled and you guys just have it going on, and it's just rolling out through buildings now, or is it just kind of you guys bringing it back for nostalgia sake?
William Burges:There's kind of a lot to pick there in the sense that I think we're now in the early days we were saying, we were kind of saying we've done this and this is why we've done it. This is why this neighbor, this new building is the right thing to attack. You know, there are all of these kind of very obvious connections in our buildings. And I guess as you get older and perhaps more confident as an architect, you can allow things to kind of stand alone a little bit more and you feel less pressured to say, this is why we've done it. This is why we've done it.
William Burges:I mean, that that that does partly come from teaching as well. So we started to perhaps get a little bit more obtuse about those references and not be quite so direct about them. And now we're thinking, oh, maybe we should get over that. And actually it's really interesting, especially in the kind of teaching space to say, well, this is kind of where this came from. And actually we'd like the fact that our buildings are quite accessible to non architects, that they're not these kind of peculiar, slightly alienating objects in the city that people can really see early obvious connections.
William Burges:There might be kind of other layers that are more appealing to a kind of longer reading by our peers and friends. But, I I
Stephen Davies:think it's that point where you're trying to in the early days and just the early days were 2,010 and 2,011. It's not like it was that that long ago. And and and I think there was probably a couple of things happening whereby you're trying to kind of understand what sort of direction you you're thinking about taking or kind of trying to put pieces together, but at the same time, you're desperate to make something. Make a building is like, wow, we've got to make a building. How quickly can we make a building and stand in it?
Stephen Davies:And and then because you feel like you need that to happen so that you can go through all of that process, learn from it, and then start to kind of bring that into the into the kind of studio as a thing that you could talk more and more about because all of those elements to making something. So I think we probably had a couple of things going on in that respect, and we were probably focusing on making something. And the other side of it might have been happening, like, quickly and subconsciously in some parts. And then you make a building, and then then you want to try and do it again in a different way or different you have different clients and so on. So I think that, for me, it was kind of get to the end of the building, and then we did that.
Stephen Davies:And then it was like, oh, now what happens? So there was a quick period of reflecting on that or we kind of, you know, thinking about what happens next. And then maybe that's when you start to slow down a bit and you start to think, okay. There's more to bring in here.
Dave Sharp:I'm interested in the communication. Many of our best practices, they do go very, very quiet. They go very quiet, and you don't see much, and you just see a few images, and then there's a complete radio silence for months months months, and I guess it comes with confidence. And on the other hand, you see practices that aren't very established that aren't really that confident doing a lot of talking and a lot of communicating. And there's probably a bit of a sweet spot in the middle, isn't there, where we want to do that communicating.
Dave Sharp:We still want to talk about our work even if we're quite confident in it, and we know what we're doing at that point. I like what you're talking about in terms of trying to explain it in those easier to understand sort of ways and to have a bit of a commitment to doing that. And I guess that's something that for you guys has felt pretty important because you've been putting out content about your ideas and your work for ages and putting a lot work into it. So what's the key you felt after having so much practice doing that? What do you feel like the key has been to these simple explanations for some of these ideas or these things that are easy for the public to understand?
William Burges:I think we started it because we did come from a background where you have to have a reason for everything in architecture, and that kind of like abstract godlike master of, you know, some of the kind of elderly Swiss architects or something where they're making art pieces that just come in coincidentally are buildings. We were never we were always, I'm not saying we didn't like that, but I don't think we have the confidence just to kind of produce that. And so I think there was always this like, well, this is what we've done. And it was also, we used narrative and still do a lot to actually get consents for things. So when we're talking to planning officers and conservation officers, we're often in zones of kind of London or Britain, which are protected in some way.
William Burges:So if you make a kind of strong narrative connection, that often helps that process. So often those things were quite practical choices because it's like we've got to get consent, and we don't want this to be a back and forth battle. We go in with a kind of carefully articulated position to get consent as quickly as possible. It it kind of started through that kind of, kind of educational background, I guess. It's like, why have you done that?
William Burges:I mean, that that's that's what architecture schools do a little bit too much of. They kind of, oh god, you've got to stand up and justify yourself. And that just transferred into practice for us. You know, every time everything we did, it was like, why have you done that? And it I mean, you know, that's not can make quite a rigorous process, but I think there is there's a point in all good architecture where it's like you are it's okay to say, well, that feels right.
William Burges:And I can't tell you why now, but there's a kind of proportional judgment. There's something which is a kind of gut instinct that is like, well, that feels right. And I think we started when we built a couple of things and they got kind of, recognized through the kind of awards process, I think we started to think, well, something's kind of right, so maybe we should be a bit more confident to push and push at the edges and be a little bit quieter about sharing everything and actually just a bit more confident that we might do something which is alright. And it doesn't need to be underwritten by all of this kind of justification.
Stephen Davies:As well in in this in the studio, just somebody might do something. And then it's through the conversation and kind of starting to unpick it a little bit that then you start to think, oh, hang on. That can go in this direction now. So it it it is something where you might, yes, do something that is feels right, but then try and then explain that after the event. And I think that's quite interesting because that's certainly something that, yeah, was not in my education or my kind of kind of way of doing things.
Stephen Davies:So to test that and then have those conversations and kind of loosen it up a bit or to shake it around a bit was really interesting. And then you start to layer it, and it's it's it always comes back to a set of principles, a set of kind of key ideas that you can hopefully clearly and quickly explain, but then you can start to take that into, well, here's the kind of snapshot, and then you can start to talk more and more through those kind of layers of the project. And I think that's where it does start to get a lot more interesting and exciting.
William Burges:We've done a couple of things recently that, that we were asked to do. We didn't instigate them that I think were really helpful. So we participated. It's 2 things for the Architecture Foundation. We were asked to participate in the kind of reflective so a sort of set of videos on kind of postmodernism in architecture.
William Burges:And they picked 3 British practices and, 3 Dutch practices because your florists, also helped curate it. And it was kind of what does postmodernism mean to you? And we'd gone through education where postmodernism was some sort of dirty swear word in a way it's like, oh, it's an, it's not authentic. It's kind of plastic. It's not.
William Burges:And then we, this, this sort of little 15 minute chat, you get to the end of it and saying, yeah, we are kind of post modern in many ways. And actually we are willful about how we put things together. There is a kind of element of composition to it. And that was kind of useful therapy. And we started at a time we were teaching, we were talking about our the architecture may we make as being a kind of we call it bad language, because we like terrible puns when we teach.
William Burges:So it was saying, well, we're we're classicists, we're modernists, we're postmodern. You know, we we want everything all at once. That was super helpful. And then that was a couple of years ago. And then we've just done one, which for quite a long while we've been thinking how does the architecture that we make, how does that relate to the climate emergency?
William Burges:How will we seem to respond to that? And we kept looking at other practices, and we thought, well, it isn't necessarily about making suddenly everything out of timber. We don't have a supply chain of timber in the UK. And the IAF said, can you write a short piece about an issue your practice is facing? So we thought, well, we're gonna write it on, you know, our response to help us get our heads around what we want to do.
William Burges:And we wrote it ended up and it was a kind of an office discussion. We pinned stuff on the wall. It was it was kind of a very useful thing. So it was a kind of shared, manifesto or philosophy, if you like. And we called it we've called it Massenaere.
William Burges:And I suppose it's about trying to kind of maintain those values of the city that we really like, buildings with a kind of heavy presence. And, you know, we've relied upon there's a brick building next door, so we use bricks. You know, there is kind of, we want to make this big spanning patterned arch, so we use concrete. And it was we now see those as lazy choices obviously, but we still enjoy the character of those buildings that we made. So we're trying to kind of go through an exercise of kind of decarbonising our material language, but still holding on to the kind of visual language.
William Burges:And we're also then we've taken that into the teaching studio, so it's also the theme for this year's kind of teaching. So I think it's it's good when you get provoked by an outsider to write something. It it really is because it's so hard to reflect when you're just concentrating on finishing a job or finding the next one. I mean, the kind of reality of those things.
Dave Sharp:It seems like these activities and exercises, this sort of research components of what you guys do in the practice where you get together as a team and think about something or take on a challenge or try to write a manifesto or try to publish an issue of column or these sort of creation of these outputs having to, you know, go into the exercise, not knowing exactly what's gonna come out the other end. They seem to be quite transformative in in hearing you guys talk about it that you go in there. You're not sure what's gonna happen. You do this exercise as a group, and you come out the other side going, oh, we really found out something about ourselves that we didn't know previously. And now we're seeing our work in a completely different way.
Dave Sharp:It's actually quite amazing to listen to her, and I I don't think that's very common in a lot of studios to have these sorts of exercise. So I guess it is that teaching universe bleeding into the studio, spilling over into the studio that's getting you doing that. Right?
Stephen Davies:Yeah. I I I think that the learning, the continual learning, like, in the studio, will lead on more of the teaching element of it in that aspect, and and therefore, I have a different role in the studio. But it percolates, and it's a conversation that's happening. And if you can get everybody more involved in that through just the discussion, all of things happening, then I think that is really, really interesting because you continually start to kind of feed off each other and think more about, well, you know, the the the references, the the kind of the research, the kind of going back and looking at things that you may have forgotten about or may have never known about. But there's nothing wrong with that.
Stephen Davies:And and I think that's really interesting. And then you start to apply that into the into practice. And, you know, how are we how does that then influence the work? How does that then influence the day to day element of what's going on? How do we communicate that to clients?
Stephen Davies:So I think it's kind of the to be open to learning and to kind of embracing that and not being worried to say, oh, I just don't know about that building. I just didn't know about that idea.
William Burges:What you're touching on there is it's not willful. It's not will, it's not academically indulgent to us. So we're thinking, well, we want, we like make big, buildings that were kind of civic quality. We don't, we're not making big buildings, but buildings like even our houses, we think we'd want them to be sort of, positive contributors to the the idea of the city. So we're we're kind of thinking, well, if we if we do a bunch of research and we think, well, what is the language?
William Burges:You know, you look at something like the City of London, the kind of financial district as it's more commonly seen. There are some kind of you know, there's sort of 4 or 500 years worth of building there in different forms, and we do all strongly in a kind of intensively used mixed use city. I think, you know, the dense of the city, if it's well designed, then it is still the most sustainable model we have to kind of live. So we are interested in, well, how could you do a 14 story building? But, of course, that will be steel or concrete today.
William Burges:It could be load bearing stone, you know, that there's a lot and that actually is a much lower embodied carbon material, but equally not everywhere has stone. So if we would think of it more as a piece of research, we might have a kind of 12 storey concrete frame, but we take out every other floor or we only build one floor every 3. And then we say, well, they the infill then is kind of rammed earth. And there are these deep overhangs that kind of protect it. And what what would that architectural language be?
William Burges:I mean, this is more what we're doing in our teaching studio, but we're seeing it as an opportunity to sort of think, well, as a practice, we really want to build for people that carry, carry on owning their buildings. They're not in it for a quick profit. They don't build something, sell it and move on. We've always kind of sought those kinds of clients. So we're hoping that if we talk about those things, then we will be able to connect with those clients, and they'll come to us and say, oh, well, you know, what do you think a contemporary stone building for the City of London looks like?
William Burges:Because I've got a building plot and I want
Dave Sharp:That's the part, I guess, I'm quite interested in because how have you found the the concentration on those sorts of ideas or those problems that you're thinking of solutions to, and you're sort of doing it in advance of a client approaching Have you found that it's been Have you found that it's been possible to sort of filter those out and irrigate those out successfully to to the public and to potential clients to the point where I'm wondering if a client has come to you and gone, oh, brilliant idea with the rammed earth. Perfect solution to exactly my problem. Saw it on Instagram, let's let's grab a beer. We have to talk. Or is it more that it's the preparation of a set of ideas and and schemes that maybe a client then comes in unknowingly with the problem, and then you're able to have that conversation with them and say, well, it's an area that we've been developing.
Dave Sharp:So I guess I'm just interested in how immersed you found, like, potential clients have been in some of these ideas and how you sort of apply the knowledge, I suppose.
Stephen Davies:Yeah. I suppose it's it's usually the latter, I think in at this stage. And but I would say that it's the value in what's happening is is the beginning of the conversation. It's how, you know, when you're developing a proposal, the value in certain elements and the appropriateness. We're not gonna take everything to make a 100% difference, but each project is kind of has the opportunity to make a contribution.
Stephen Davies:And as we go forward and as we all get more information and we all learn more, then, hopefully, that gets that progresses and snowballs a bit. But, I think it is the the the point of clients come, we have conversations about the project, and then it starts to develop. I don't think yet correct me if I'm wrong, Will, but I don't think yet we've had anyone who's come and said, you know, that's front and center of what their their their idea is for the project.
William Burges:No. No. I mean, I guess that's where, like, everyone, we're kind of in the early days of that kind of reconsidering how we do everything. I mean, the one the life project that we have got is we're doing 2 houses in a very traditional Victorian, quite a grand street. So there's this whole sort of series of big villas with all of you can kind of picture the detail and, you know, kind of arched openings and heavy bay windows, but they're all made of render, and they're all made actually quite badly.
William Burges:But that render is imitating stone. So we're able to say, well, why don't we now make a kind of our version of that but out of solid load bearing stone? So I mean, that's the first one, but it's quite small scale. But I think we're going to kind of need that evidence to actually kind of approach, you know, kind of bigger scale developers. I mean, we do have we're not all doing houses.
William Burges:We've got a whole series of care room projects. We've got a couple of hotels in the pipeline, and we have we're fortunate to have a nice mix of buildings, but somehow those hope the houses are they're obviously more accessible test beds, and you have a very close relationship with the client. So they can say, I completely get that. We're gonna go, you know, go with the idea with you. And, you can kind of carry people along where it's much harder if you're building for an institution.
Dave Sharp:With that residential example of that project where that ties in beautifully with this theme that you've this this idea that you've been developing. Do you feel that you had already planted the seed with that client in some way at some point earlier on, where they had sort of an underlying interest in that idea, or was it a completely fresh introduction when, you know, you start going into the project and then you start talking to them about some of these ideas even though it sort of aligned with an area that you had a longer term kind of interest in, this idea of stone and and that sort of thing. I guess I'm interested in how you engage the level that your clients come in at in terms of their level of awareness or engagement or involvement in these ideas and then how you have that conversation because I think it's really interesting.
Stephen Davies:Well, because we have a vary we have a varying mix of clients. So that the in to in answer to your question, I suppose it is varied for us as a small as a small studio that we're having different conversations with different people. So some people will come to us and they have very, very limited knowledge of that whole process and even the process of making the building or the project and then some are are more informed So you're catching it further along the the the the the journey or or the kind of knowledge base of of different people. So I think that that is something that we have to understand when we're starting a project, and that just happens in a conversation. You know, even though you might think, oh, well, you're assuming that someone knows more, but there are some early conversations.
Stephen Davies:And then there are obviously a number of elements that start to attach themselves to the project, which usually make it more complex. So that's when a client who doesn't know very much about the process has goes on quite a swift learning process, a journey. So I think it is varying all the time, and that makes it quite difficult to to gauge, well, what the contribution is in the project.
William Burges:I think you do really have to perform quite differently. So for I I sort of to just think three quick examples. The houses we've just spoken of, they the clients came to us because they obviously wanted to try and create an opportunity out of a blank piece of land for money, you know, their developer clients. And then we proposed this thing, and they liked it so much. It's it's 2 different business partners.
William Burges:One of them is like, well, I would like to keep my one because I really like that house. So I think it was partly it was a kind of an attractive you know, they appreciated the architecture then. So, I mean, that felt really nice. And then we've got another client I can think of where they're building a really lovely house, but it will be their only you know, will be their lifetime house. So they don't actually want to make too much compromise because they see a very long life in the building and we're having a difficult conversation going, yeah, but there's still the embodied carbon today, you know, just because that house might be there in 200 years time.
William Burges:So we're kind of you have to kind of chip away at things and find some space in the middle. And then we have another client who's a more kind of a commercial client. Who's a kind of an American investor. And there's a big space in between where we are delivering the project here. There's a literal physical space, but all you know, I don't have kind of space for us to maneuver.
William Burges:Whereas if we stay within the spreadsheet, then it's a benefit for all. So then you do have a bit more, a zone to kind of say, well, we can steer this and we can push this because if we're living up to the bottom line of what they want out of this development, then we've we've won well by that project and well by the city because we're doing as much as we can. And as long as we don't go over the line, then our client isn't going to kind of say, that, you know, it's a it's a benefit for all then, I guess. So in some ways, it depends how closely attached the client is to the the project.
Stephen Davies:I think then there's there are either or's, and there are kind of opportunities to take things further. So I think on the scale of projects, then if it's a if it's a major application, you know, then it will come with a number of parameters. You know, there will be a number of things that need to happen within that project that take it to a kind of next level of technical sophistication. And then in the lower kind of a smaller project, then, yeah, you're searching for kind of well. What what what are the opportunities?
Dave Sharp:One thing that is interesting, I wanna get to this sense of how you can have different clients that are at sort of different levels of sophistication as a practice when you guys have quite an ideas and process and research driven studio that naturally, I think, sits at, like, a fairly high level in terms of the ideas that come out of the studio. But you have to adapt that to all these different levels. And I'm kind of just interested in, like, maybe some of your thoughts on ways that you do that that you found over time and developed in terms of how you can take some of these more complex ideas in your projects, but also at the same time break them down to a a residential client that maybe is just thinking kind of in quite practical terms about their home or a developer who might just be thinking about the spreadsheet. You mentioned narrative earlier, Will, and I think maybe that's what we're talking about a little bit. You're sort of saying, like, how do we explain and sort of tell the story around why some of these choices, why we recommending them?
William Burges:I mean, I think definitely the domestic clients appreciate the narrative because they're you can kind of you start a story and you carry them with you and that, you know, they kind of you're taking a longer process. And we often use a narrative, what seems like an unquestionable logic kind of narrative, I suppose, to go down the route that we're most interested in. And it is always the route that we think is the best solution. It's kind of like going to a planning meeting that we kind of diagram the site and we sort of say, well, we did this and then we did this and this is why, and then we did this and this and the, and so they're kind of each step you hope means that you don't then unpick all of that work. And, in the early days, I think we learned it because sometimes you can turn up a meeting and there's a kind of tada moment.
William Burges:And that can be deeply alienating for clients, community, stakeholders, planning team, you know, it can really push people away. So we've never really liked that kind of the big reveal of an architect. So we always present things in a kind of step by step way, whether it's the very first meeting or whether it's kind of pre app number 12. And we're now talking about refuse stores and bike, you know, cycle parking. You know, we we everything we kind of go in through a kind of so slow and steady logic, I guess.
William Burges:And I think it really helps. You then sort of have to show the wrong decisions as well. So you sort of say because you kind of sometimes you start a project and you think, well, they're expecting this. So we have to show why we don't think that is quite right because that's our responsibility as an architect to say, well, we have drawn this thing, but we do think there's more opportunities. So here's, like, options.
William Burges:We know here's your option a, perhaps what you came with, but here's b, c, and d as well. And so, we that we try and do that through a kind of step by step kind of design process.
Dave Sharp:That's interesting. You don't wanna have that situation where you're pulling off the curtain and unveiling the project and going, ta da. Here it is. Like because if there's any gap there in terms of their or alignment, it's a sort of a make or break moment, isn't it? Because it could go horribly wrong or they could love it or whatever.
Dave Sharp:I think it totally makes sense to be doing it in these sort of iterative steps so that you can kind of take them along on a bit of a journey with that design that's developing. But is there any danger, I suppose, in how do you manage the kind of the the leadership in the project, I guess? Or clients, I mean, do they like to kind of take over and get involved at every one of those presentations? Not that I'm against that. We love clients to be, you know, involved, but how do you steer it and make sure we don't get kind of veered off the road a little bit at each of those incremental stages.
William Burges:I think we have to sort of shift the voice. So when we sort of think about a project, and this is something we're doing now where we sort of think, well, we can write the long form version of how this project, this building is like it is. And then we can pull out the bits which the planning team might want to hear. We can pull out the bits that a domestic client might want to hear, but equally, we can do the heavily edited message that a time poor commercial client might want to hear. You know, one of our clients, we used to have 30 minutes in a London hotel with them, and it'd be like a 1 month update and gone.
William Burges:You know, it you'd have to be very careful with clipping the message. So they had so I think we, in our minds, we have the long form and then we try and draw out different strands when we present it to different people or different forums. And, you know, if we're if we're talking about a project giving a lecture in a university, what we say will be very we know we probably leave out a bunch of the practical things, but that might be an error because we'll be too too engrossed in talking about the architectural language that was resulted where we we could should be saying, it does also face south and we've minimised the windows on this elevation. And, you know, there are whole you can't tell the whole story all of the time. So I think it's just being alert to what people want to hear really and what, where their interests are.
Stephen Davies:Just to kind of carry on really talking about what we were saying that through all of those different scenarios, you know, if you're if you're discussing this, a planning meeting or a kind of technical area of a project, then you're going to be focusing on different specifics and different areas, but the whole project is still evolving. And I think that's similar with with clients as well. I think that you can kind of, present a scheme or discuss ideas, and then you get a kind of pushback from it. It wasn't really what they were expecting to see or the direction it was going to take. Now I'm not that's not right or wrong, but then they might still want to look at an idea that we're moving further away from.
Stephen Davies:And I think that sometimes through thinking, okay, well, let's kinda go back. Let's retrace our steps a little bit here. Let's test that and see what happens. And then what, hopefully, is the good solution, is you can you can then pick a few of those points out and they go into something else and form a solution that you kind of think, oh, yeah. That is something that's something that we might not have done if we hadn't been pushed back on something.
Stephen Davies:I think we've always been quite good as a studio when we've been we've got lots of difficult parameters and lots of problems to solve. And I think that's when it starts to get particularly interesting.
William Burges:And we we are preppers. You know, we don't, and we're kind of kind critics to each other. So we we sort of think, oh, you've got that one tomorrow. It's historic England. What are they going to want to hear?
William Burges:Or, Steve's got that tricky one to a planning officer. And I think, you know, we each have we all in the studio have different strengths and it's not just us presenting the work anymore, which is really satisfying, and a great relief. And so I think I, as you can tell, we'll tend to go off and get stuck down a certain tangent. And I think Steve will often, if we're in a meeting together, he'll sit at a distance and he'll be kind of reading the room and it's like, no, no, they need to we need to go back through this bit. And it would like so the proportion matches, the scale matches, the window sizes match, you know, and so that you're ticking boxes for people in the room.
William Burges:You know, you're kind of making their decision making processes easy through steering your language and the depth of the story.
Dave Sharp:It's really quite more impressive that you have quite a forgiving process that's quite flexible and can, you know, embrace quite a lot of pushback and backwards stepping and kind of, well, let's go back to that thing or whatever. Because I definitely speak to a lot of studios that have built, like, a complete pushback defense mechanism from the moment the client comes in. Do we detect any backbone in this client? Get rid of them kind of from the first meeting sort of thing because we can't possibly handle any sort of give and take. It blows my mind.
Dave Sharp:It's interesting, nonetheless, that I think that you guys have the much more realistic situation, and I think it speaks to the clients that you guys get. Clients are eclectic. And as you were saying earlier, Steve, like, there's a whole range, and we don't really pick and choose. Right? Like, to a degree, we do, but at the end of the day, as a small practice, you know, we get all types, and we have to be a bit more flexible, don't we?
Stephen Davies:Yeah. I think your clients are coming from all all all angles, and and and you can have a recommendation for a client that comes to speak to you about project or someone might have read something that you've written, whether that's even in a planning statement. We had one client once who had met someone, and then he'd gone off and read the planning application and read the design and access statement, and then was kind of like, this is thoughtful. This is an interesting proposition. And then they got in touch with us to talk about the project.
Stephen Davies:And then sometimes you're one of 5, you know, when you're pitching for a job and so on. And it come there's no you know, we don't have a there's no strategy for for us in terms of how we're how we're approaching new clients. We are kind of making work and, you know, trying to, I suppose, kind of, you know, work through a number of projects that we're currently working with clients on and then see where that goes.
William Burges:We've kind of had to be flexible. We don't we we can't be I mean, a, we don't believe in the big ego kind of architect because that makes for weird cities, kind of cities made of ego driven icons. We like things to be kind of consistent and accommodating and kind of a kind of collective endeavour. So we, we've kind of always had that as an attitude, a big a big pot of money behind us that allows us to wait for the right clients to come along. We have to kind of be accommodating and and kind of get along with with them really.
William Burges:And actually in probably 98, and we've had so many meetings where it's like, oh God, we're gonna have to reinvent this or go at this again. I mean, that's just inevitable in the profession. Most of the time, I think we've probably ended up with a better result, you know, certainly 95%. There are probably a couple of occasions you sort of think that the that external meddling has actually really spoiled the potential building. But most of the time, it's like a good designer, if you're forced to go at it again, you should get a better solution.
William Burges:And still, you know, we, as a practice, we and people, we want to be liked. You know, we want to kind of do things that people enjoy. And I think with yeah. The our process kind of reflects that and but there's a financial reality underlying it all as well, quite frankly.
Dave Sharp:Yeah. I think there's a lot of misconceptions, urban legends perpetuated by marketing people that you can get into this, like, position where every single client that approaches you is the perfect client, and you never have to have any misgivings ever again about anybody that you work with. But, like, the reality is not like that at all. You're always going to have those challenges. It's about, I guess, still managing to find a way to kind of make it work.
Dave Sharp:In terms of, like, the type of clients that you guys do maybe tend to attract, obviously, word-of-mouth is a big factor, so and referral and recommendations. So that is gonna bring a pretty kinda random bunch. But have you found any patterns or any kind of clusters in your clients? Like, maybe do you guys have a bit of a type in terms of the people that tend to be most attracted to your studio and want to work with 3144?
William Burges:We've we've had more than our fair share of ex architect turned developer. We do get quite a few of those. And that
Dave Sharp:What? Really?
William Burges:Yeah. So that, that can be quite obviously quite good because you've got a, you've got a really informed client.
Dave Sharp:God, they're smart, aren't they?
William Burges:Yeah. I don't I think that that was a definite thing that we had. But, no. I mean, it's it's it is very strange. We'd finished a barn.
William Burges:We kind of converted a a sort of tin shed in in the tiny village into a domestic space. A very, really lovely kind of setting and a really lovely house for a really great client. They were kind of kind of industrial designers and interior designers. So, I mean, that's a kind of dream setting. And they committed to everything, and they did it immaculately.
William Burges:And then you get that published, and getting published does help. You know, it's we we realize it's not maybe about landing on the kitchen table of the person that wants the project. That's but actually just getting building a level of recognition, maybe by amongst your peers. But the the kind of following week, we got at least 15 to 20 phone calls from farmers, but unsurprisingly owned quite a lot of tin sheds. And the complexity of getting to, you know, to and unused, you know, disused ones, because of what's perhaps what's happened to the farming sector sector and the way technology has changed farming practices.
William Burges:But to get to the point where you've got a really lovely house in a tin shed is an incredibly long and complex journey, especially in the open countryside. And it's as soon as you present the realities of that process to each and every one of those potential clients, they just kind of faded away. And it just, you know, just it didn't work as a bit of marketing, but it's the most inquiries we've had from one single project that you could really directly attribute to one article in the Sunday Times. So it's it's such a kind of strange and peculiar thing finding a client.
Stephen Davies:Yeah. We we finished a project in in Shoreditch on in on Redchurch Street and for a client we've mentioned earlier who's based in in New York. And, and it was a kind of a real it was a brilliant project to be involved with, and it was a real kind of it was a massive team effort to deliver something on a really, really tight program and go through, you know, its conservation area and so on with the consents. But there was a lot of energy on that project. And the building was completed, and we were so excited that, you know, we'd gone through this whole process.
Stephen Davies:The building was built and, you know, the achievement of doing so. And it's it's a project that has received not really any sort of kind of further it's not led to any other projects of that scale or that type, really. And Will and I have talked about that thinking, well, why is that? Why is that kind of not, you know then just by the process of it, it's it stands there, and then there are no others, you know, or inquiries. Not even like, oh, we didn't get the we went for the fight war and then we weren't successful with them.
Stephen Davies:It was just that was kind of that for that one.
William Burges:Yeah. And it that I mean, that is an odd I mean, the same client gave us the big the bigger next project, but we've not been able to kind of find other equivalent clients that think, oh, that's a quiet that, you know, that's good sophisticated urban building. They've pulled that off. That was, you know, very, incredibly rapid programme. It was, you know, the kind of overlaying processes with the contractor was all everybody, you know, it was a remarkable achievement.
William Burges:So within the achievement. So within the office, it felt mega. And then it went out there. It's like, oh, okay. There's nothing kind of coming from that.
William Burges:And maybe maybe it will happen with yet more time, but, that, you know, some of them can be super frustrating. You think, yeah, we'll get more of this. And then then you don't. I mean, ironically, that project has led to a domestic client who said, oh, I really like that hotel. And we really like that building.
William Burges:And we're building a house for them, which is almost the size of a small hotel, but, it's, you know, it's led to a really lovely project, but not the project we thought it would be. You know, they don't these things do not travel in, legible kind of directions.
Dave Sharp:So you guys have tended to view it as project of a certain type will go out there, and then that will lead to more of that type of project coming directly from that. That's how you've generally expected it to go?
Stephen Davies:I think so. I mean, maybe that's linear. But yeah. Yeah.
William Burges:I mean, I I think because it did happen with the houses, you know, we did 2 or 3 early houses on very constrained difficult sites, so you just get more difficult sites. So that that that was through that was our experience on that kind of model of work, I guess. But so we thought complete a nice sensible urban building. We'll get more urban infill, and we've had bits of it, but, it's not come to anything yet. So we've got another bigger one that hopefully will be on-site next year, but it's a slow
Dave Sharp:game. I'm interested just briefly in terms of photography and imagery. You guys have done an incredible job of that. I'm I'm giving you the credit for your photographer's work here, but you have done an excellent job organizing that photography and picking those photographers. Looking at your website, your Instagram, and everything from very early on, I mean, you guys have been very careful about consistency in the visual output of the studio, I feel, anyway.
Dave Sharp:I mean, is that something that you guys have put quite a bit of thought into and has always been a high priority. Maybe talk me through that a little bit because it's evolved slightly over time maybe, like, sometimes different choices of photography and things like that. But
Stephen Davies:But one of the things that I found really interesting, with the studio, as you say, the image is slightly changing, developing, was I think there was a conscious idea that it wouldn't be from one hand. So the way it was developed as a studio and the image making is conversation and then how we make images, and the same with the photography and how you represent the project. So there are lots of conversations about where it's going before it kind of starts to go in that direction and then trial and error. But it isn't, you know, it isn't like it's gonna be one thing 1 year and then flip and be something completely different. It was something where a number of people could contribute to it.
William Burges:Yeah. I think, I mean, in terms of the internal image making, well, it's always been internal. So we've never used an external CGI, you know, those digital images. We've always kind of controlled that in house, even though it's possibly limited the, kind of quality of them. But I think we've always liked the idea that there were still drawings, and we would add something in some kind of level of humor to kind of subvert the the seriousness of the, you know, oh god, here's a kind of accurate digital render of a building.
William Burges:It's kind of, well, how do we just like the build? We kind of quite like the subverted attitude in our building. So we like it in our drawings as well. And then with the photography, I mean, we, over the years, we've worked a lot with Claire Curtis publicists, and Claire has, we would have conversations with Claire about what would be the right kind of photographer, and she would have a kind of portfolio of people that she'd kind of met or, you know, people would introduce themselves to her or her all the time. So that's we Claire introduced us to Rory Gardner, who did a couple of our projects that were shot really beautifully.
William Burges:And, Rory's now returned mainly to Australia and he's moved on to very big
Dave Sharp:You hate to hear it. His work in the UK is it's really good.
William Burges:I think he managed to kind of capture the kind of melancholy of a a London spring or a London autumn, and we liked that kind of calm. Like, London does get blue skies, whatever the Australians think. It does honestly. But, we liked that kind of gentle tone. And we're now working with somebody who've just done another house shot with a, a photographer called Nick Dearden, building narratives.
William Burges:And he's of a similar school, so he's shooting on film. He's kind of looking for a certain, character in all of his shots. And, they're not no. And none of those guys are kind of big wide angles. You know, it's all like, well, if we can't get it all in, we get the best bit in that, you know, that they compose things so carefully, I guess.
William Burges:Rory made a couple of sets of photographs that, were so the houses, they made them look they were so photogenic basically. Just they suddenly seemed to be everywhere and we finished a house, a little house in Peckham that was that happened quite quickly in the office for us, and it got so much publicity. We were really quite shocked actually because it was, to us, it was a simple project and a simple solution, but it got us an awful lot of exposure.
Dave Sharp:Yeah. It's pretty incredible the magical effect that Rory Gardner photos can have on a project. The publicity factor goes up to 11 with the right photography style, and it's a it's a challenge. We talk about it a lot on the podcast that there's a certain style of photography that is so incredibly popular, and it is so tempting to go down that avenue. And, you know, it suits our work so well.
Dave Sharp:But at the same time, kind of, I guess, thinking about it overall and how it fits into the brand over the longer term is one of the tough parts, isn't it? Because it is a film style. It does have a very specific kind of color grade to it. So I guess, like, fitting that into the brand is, I suppose, the challenge, isn't it? It is good how but what you're talking about earlier, Steve, in terms of, we don't want it to just be a one note thing.
Dave Sharp:We want it to have this sense of different voices and different approaches, but still feel like part of this overall collection that all makes sense and is all coherent. I don't know. Have you guys kind of had some thought about that in terms of creative direction around photography, thinking a bit about carving your own sort of style there and how it sits against that style, which we know has become, you know, pretty popular, the sort of the film aesthetic?
William Burges:I mean, I guess I'm, I mean, probably like a few updates, we're starting to feel slightly all anxious that everything does have this melancholy golden globe. You can kind of tell which photography you can look at it and think, oh, that's, that's Rory, that's Lorenzo, that's Nick, that's, you know, you
Dave Sharp:Very signature style with each photographer. Yeah.
William Burges:But when I first started working for an architect, it people would wait wait weeks for, you know, really intense blue skies with shocking, difficult sun, you know, like life really, really hard actually. So it is funny how those things kind of go in fashions. And then I think also the photographer, even in mine that the tube we've just had, the photographer has a magazine he would quite like to get into. So he's then also thinking, well, I need to pick, get this kind of color tone to suit their editorial quality. And we're thinking, yeah, that is representing the building and it's very old.
William Burges:And then we've had, we've kind of done our own shoot. And then actually what can sometimes happen is you get another magazine that wants to do more of a life style kind of shoot, and they send their own photographer. And you look at the turn and think, I like different buildings. It's it's kind of crazy, but but that's also quite enjoyable.
Dave Sharp:I like what you were saying about the internal images as well, the the sort of the illustrations of the renders. Can be such a competitive advantage to be good at that and to have a consistent way of doing that over time because, you know, I think if you become reliant on an external sort of rendering studio, even if you use one that's amazing and popular that everybody's kind of getting into, it's not your own unique distinctive way of doing things. Half the battle is having a a style of imagery that is sort of unique to your practice and visually distinctive. And that's amazing that you've kind of developed that process for doing it, because then you look across your whole portfolio, your Instagram, and it it's all coming from the same place. It's it's great.
Dave Sharp:Kudos to you guys. I think with that drawings sort of approach as well, it doesn't mean that every new update of the software that gets brought out of the rendering plug in doesn't change the look and feel of of your imagery. So it has a sort of timelessness to it as well, which I think is so important. Do you see it as a sort of fairly static and consistency thing, or is it similar to what you're saying before, Steve, where it's like, we'd like to have this clash, this beautiful clash of different things at all these different these different voices.
Stephen Davies:Yeah. I suppose there are so many decisions day in, day out that you're working through that actually a consistency in some areas is quite, is is, I suppose, just quite a good thing to hold on to, and you can then refine it. I think going back to some of that early made found conversation, I think we quite like things that get refined. We don't like processes that start and stop, and therefore, same with the image making. And it, you know, it it will be different people making the images in the studio, you know, now as to 2012 or whatever.
Stephen Davies:So I think that it's just to see the progression and to see how it will evolve And I think that that is something that, yeah, we we probably have been quite careful about to some degree, but then there's been trial and error in in that. And then how does Will was saying, how do you how do you make it normal? How do you kind of, you know, how do you inhabit it? How do you kind of take that image and give it some life? So, but, yeah, refinement, I think, is something we come back to.
William Burges:I mean, I mean, to be honest then the images that get the most, comment externally, I'm not necessarily talking about likes on Instagram, but, you know, the kind of the stuff that we that people like about what we do is is photographs of large scale model making. I mean, that that seems to be the thing that people kind of appreciate most. I mean, I think we've always done stuff in house as well because we've never had projects with big budgets where you think, oh, we can go and spend this money with a model maker. We can go and spend this money with a image.
Dave Sharp:Crazy money. For visualization and model making is just, like, exorbitant. If you were to compare it to actual photography of a finished project, it's like 10 times. You know? It's crazy.
Stephen Davies:Model making has been brilliant in terms of working working out the building. I mean, you know, you start with the model and and developing it and it then reveals things and, you know, you have to then remake a part of it and so on and and but we've been working in models to that degree whereby you can do that. And I think that is and then people in the studio see it, and then people can then kind of walk around it, react to it, see what else is happening, and see where certain themes in a project that they're doing are coming from from a previous one because the models are around us. So I think that's just a brilliant thing to keep doing, and it is sometimes difficult, project dependent.
William Burges:That process has evolved for us as well. We used to make them kind of out of big kind of foam core boards and wrap them. You know, we'd print the materials and wrap them. Now we tend to actually make a digital model of the model we're going to make, and we might have something laser cut, And then we put it all back together so all the components actually sit more loosely like they would in a building. And then fingers crossed, we're about to make a model with a stonemason who's generously suggested that they could help us make a stone model of of a house, which would Yeah.
William Burges:You know, again, would be, like, a really fun process.
Dave Sharp:And is that gonna be more about the kind of the massing of the, because I guess, like, the level of detail. But maybe are they gonna get quite intricate with the detail in that model potential? Yeah.
William Burges:I think if we can make it to a decent scale, then we'll make a piece of the facade so you can really see, you know, how the pieces of
Dave Sharp:I can just see the Instagram likes right now and the Pinterest shares. It is gonna be off the charts. You know? All those, like, best models, Instagram accounts are all gonna be reposting. Oh, it's gonna be a big day for you guys when those videos go out.
Dave Sharp:That sort of stuff is so uncommon, I guess, these days in the industry, not just like model making as a practice and even the image making, what you guys were talking about with the the kind of the collages and the drawings, I mean, it's become really a bit of a lost art in the vast majority of practices have kind of they've lost the skill set. Sounds like kind of a negative thing, but I speak to them all the time, and they go, we don't have anybody that works here that knows how to do this stuff anymore. We're working on trying to refine a process internally with some of their team on, like, let's get into Photoshop, and let's see what we can do with some of these images. And it's like, we have to almost, like, relearn that. But I think for studios that have it, it's such a big self sufficiency thing from a marketing standpoint to be able to create your own images without having to wait for a building to be complete, which is not really a timeline that you're really in control of.
Dave Sharp:Right?
William Burges:The, the image viewpoint, we we often develop projects through that. So we'll have we might have half a dozen key views of a building, and then we keep revisiting that image, You know? So we do we'd have to we'd have to kind of make it in house because it's embedded in our process. We couldn't leave it to the end and say, right. It's ready for the agency to do their magic with it.
Stephen Davies:I think that, well, in terms of creating the image or making a model, the the I mean, Will is incredibly good at sketching, and he'll sit and sketch and come through a number of ideas and and draw. And it is you know, that's a kind of lost skill. You don't see many people who can just sit and draw it out and visualize it that quickly. I'm I I solve problems through sketching and drawing. It's all a lot more lined in and accurate.
Stephen Davies:And but I think it's a really interesting process because people come with that skill set, which is the shorthand, and how to quickly communicate something. But then, as you were saying, where do you go to then develop an image, or kind of to present something to a client or in a in a meeting or in a presentation that has that level of communication so that people can, through a a cropped in view of a building, understand its its material qualities, and then be kind of like, oh, I'd like to see more of this. Can we zoom out now from this from this from this angle? So
Dave Sharp:That image that's on your Instagram feed at the moment from July. But work in progress, think thinking about stone where it's just that kinda cropped in shot of the arch, and then there's a little ginger cat down the bottom, and it's like just a little hint of a building. Right? That's something that I think is also a a trick that gets missed often in the creation of these images that we always think we need to take the old school architectural photograph where we stand all the way back and take this huge wide angle of the entire project. Or, God forbid, they do the drone sort of shot from up above looking down.
Dave Sharp:But you guys are going, no. No. It's more sort of zoom in, capture the corner and the shadow and that metal detail, and it's just that little bit that tells you a lot. Right?
William Burges:Yeah. I mean, we talk quite a lot with our students about how to make an image. And if you think what good photographers do, usually the images that get selected by kind of picture, editors for magazines, They're not the big overview. They are the kind of kept the kind of more carefully composed fragment of a building, and, they're much more revealing because you can actually kind of see the detail. So we we did go through a phase where we we felt this obligation to tell the full picture of every single project on our website.
William Burges:And then you would look at some of your peers and think, oh, this is really nice. The kind of mystery that they've put one image in a plan on here, and you have to kind of put it back together yourself almost. So we're, we, we do swing around all over the place on that thing, but yeah. And also that image was probably that's about as much as we'd worked out on that building. So that's.
Dave Sharp:I've had people mention. We have this beautiful kind of nostalgic sort of melancholy film photography style. We love it. Like, our team loves it. Other architects love it.
Dave Sharp:But we get phone calls from clients going, what the hell's wrong with your photography? You need a new photographer, that sort of thing. And then you also get the mystique and the imagery and the less is more approach, and you get clients going, oh, this is horrible. What's the pantry like? Where's the kitchen?
Dave Sharp:I can't even see any of the bathrooms. You know, there's definitely sometimes an overt disconnect with clients there where they're quite antagonized by this imagery sometimes. I I think, like, part of them obviously falls in love with aspects of it, but there is quite a lot of clients out there that do have this sort of quite opposite reaction to what we're kind of going for. Have you guys kind of experienced that a little bit? How do we reconcile that at the end of the day?
Dave Sharp:We do what's right for us. Right? And we we kinda put it out there what we like in our approach. But have you guys faced any kind of issues or situations around that where clients have you feel like maybe they're on a slightly different wavelength in terms of how these projects are kind of represented?
Stephen Davies:It's an interesting it's an interesting one because we've worked with a few interior designers, and, they've not produced lots of 3 d imagery on projects. And so which we found quite, oh, revealing in some ways. So that was kind of I just expected a whole buck of image by image of every room for the client in 3 d, so it let left nothing to the imagination. So that was interesting. And then I think for projects with us, yes, we do have to kind of sometimes we make an image and then we're making other images to kind of communicate to clients to solve problems or to understand an area of the building, same in a sort of planning presentation meeting, the zooming out of something rather than going in to the detail to show it, just more in the background of its context.
Stephen Davies:So, yeah, it's an ongoing element of what you're doing in the project.
William Burges:I think it is the different voices thing, isn't it? I mean, we've had it more with planners than we have with clients where sometimes you present something at a meeting and you think we told them too much here. And they zoom in on little details, and they want to say, well, why and it's like, well, if I haven't told you about this tiny detail in this corner of this building's elevation, you wouldn't actually it would just get built. You know, it's out kind of almost outside of planning controls. So we did have one project where we specifically zoomed all the way back, and we said this is the building in its context at a distance, and that is the level of interrogation it should, you know, be put under.
William Burges:Had it less with clients, I think, but we do it was the different voices thing. We produce different kinds of images, and they're the they're work in progress. So maybe they don't make it out there as it were. And then we just pick a couple at the end that we're comfortable with that become a bit more public.
Dave Sharp:That's a real theme with you guys that's gone through this, the shifting the voice. I guess to sort of summarize things a little bit or to kind of think maybe towards the future or the way things are heading. I know that you guys are just going through a bit of a process of kind of revisiting your marketing and stuff at the moment, I guess, some aspects of your communications and things like that. But in terms of goals or ideas that you've got for the studio over the the longer term, is is there anything in particular that that you guys have in mind in terms of where you're trying to have things head, the journey that you wanna take the studio on?
William Burges:We don't talk about ourselves as being a mega big office. That doesn't really engage us. And the people we've got at the moment, they don't really want to get involved with building that kind of practice. I'm sure we could do with being a little bit bigger in terms of achieving a so I I suppose I mean, I think we're quite happy with what we've got. We'd just like more of it.
William Burges:We've really enjoyed we really enjoyed the hotel building on Red Shirt Street. We've got another hotel in the pipeline attached to a listed building, which is kind of super interesting to us. We we kind of like building for cities. I I don't see us kind of chasing a visitor center in the middle of the countryside somewhere that has a kind of wispy roof. And I don't I think we do like things that, feel like utility in a way.
William Burges:You know, they're kind of tough, usable things. Yep. But we've not really I mean, and we we've all I mean, especially in last few years, we've been trying to chase doing kind of public work and, you know, doing housing for local authorities rather than housing for developers. But we've found it just so difficult to get into. And we that we're in this odd situation where some of our single houses are in local authority planning guidance as being exemplars of, you know, a certain kind of contextual approach, yet we can't get those same the same people that are this in their documents.
William Burges:We can't get them to be our clients. And it's like, well, how how do we do that? What are we doing wrong? It's not our buildings are not mega budgets usually any often. I mean, couple, you know, the larger houses are different kinds of clients, but all of our regular, you know, with me and Steve have built houses and had to pay for them ourselves.
William Burges:They're modest simply made things, you know, that that's quite a good discipline paying for your own building at some stage of your career, I think. So I think it it's kind of more of the same. We have got we've got some projects emerging in France and that is actually really enjoyable because it's a different cultural context and different building traditions and with you know we we are enjoying that, we've got a couple of a tiny building in Belgium that we're working on with a local Belgian practice that's also been interesting just to work in a different culture. So
Stephen Davies:I think we can kind of walk walk the line between it being, an idea and some of the things that we've talked about today and something that we develop and and work through into then getting it to site and actually realizing it. And I think that we take a lot of there's a lot of excitement, and there's a lot of energy. And I think that that for us is the process. I think it's we get really disheartened when a job stops, as as I'm sure many people do. But I think we're not people that work on a project up to a certain stage, or we lose interest or we're we're, you know, really interested in the process of going through all of the of the project stages.
Stephen Davies:So kind of making it happen is something that we've continually tried to kind of find a way in our projects. So, yeah, to see more of them get to site, would be brilliant.
Dave Sharp:It's really just focusing on the fundamentals, isn't it? Just like getting those right and those things, like getting to site, right, and then worrying about the big jump to a new area or a new category or whatever kind of will get there once we get this first part that we're sort of focusing on.
William Burges:I think that's what's so frustrating about being an architect. You you really rely rely upon your built work, and it takes so long. I mean, we've got 3 or 4 buildings that have kind of been in the pipeline forever now. We've got one in a couple of sites in the northwest, which, you know, in a year's time, we'll suddenly we'll have a couple of larger, specialist care home projects to share, you know, a kind of different building type. And but they've been so long in the making and it it was you know, we were getting slightly overexcited just seeing a beam and block floor in Ellesmere Port on a photo yesterday.
William Burges:Yesterday. It's like, oh, wow. It's it's actually really happening. And, you know, it's it's ungramorous stuff, but the architects that don't build, it's a kind of an odd thing. You know, we we, in the early days, we worked really hard to make sure stuff got built.
William Burges:We really were very careful with not over egging design because we knew we had to have buildings to get the next one, the next one. And then you go through you get bigger buildings, and they take longer. And obviously, what the world has been through in the last 3 or 4 years, and in our case, what our country has chosen to subject itself to economically, ridiculously, you know, it's it's slowed loads of those things down and it's it's there'll be there'll be nice in a couple of years to actually look back and think, yeah, we we were quite busy. It just didn't really look or feel like it.
Dave Sharp:Thank you so much for your time and for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it.
William Burges:Thanks thanks for the therapy. Thank you. Thank you very much. Deeply enjoyed it, love.
Dave Sharp:Thanks for the therapy. Thanks, guys. That was my conversation with William Burgess and Stephen Davies of 3144. If you'd like to learn more about their studio, you can visit 3144 architects.com or follow them on Instagram at 31_44. Office talk is hosted by Office Dave Sharp, a strategic marketing and brand definition practice for architecture.
Dave Sharp:We work collaboratively with clients across the globe, so to learn more about our process and book a consultation, simply visit officedavesharpe.com. Today's episode of Office Talk was edited and engineered by Anthony Richardson of Simple Dwelling Studio. That's all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next time.
