Blurring boundaries between inhabiting, designing, and making

In this evening lecture created by Eric Guibert for the London Festival of Architecture, Anthony Meacock from the Turner Prize winning collective Assemble, the landscape architect Johanna Gibbons, the architect Takeshi Hayatsu, social practice artist Jenny Dunn and gardener architect Eric Guibert, will each present a few case studies where inhabitants and architects design and make, where processes of co-design and co-making are investigated. 

These five practices blur the boundaries that our modern world tends to draw between the stages of architectural creation: design – done by consultants – making – organised by contractors – and living – done by inhabitants. In these projects, architects design with the creativity of a place and its communities.

We will conclude with a discussion on the qualities and challenges that such an approach creates, chaired by Professor Kester Rattenbury, University of Westminster. How do you design and practice to produce such works? What are the architectural qualities that result? What is the role of the professional designer?

The debate will continue over drinks.

Date: 6th June @ 18:30 to 21:15

Location: University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road LONDON NW1 5LS

Booking: the event is free but registering – here – is essential for access.

The lecture is a collaboration between studio Eric Guibert and the University of Westminster.

Granby Four Streets Winter Garden (credit: Assemble)

Jenny Dunn

Jenny Dunn is an artist and spatial designer, working in a social context around themes of community and the environment. She graduated from Manchester School of Art with a BA (hons) in Interior Architecture and worked for 8 years in design and architecture before completing an MA in Art and Social Practice in 2018. Jenny is currently teaching and working on the project Phygital, setting up community driven makerspaces, at The University of Nicosia in Cyprus. 

Website: www.jenny-dunn.com - Instagram: @jenrdunn

Columbia Community Making by Jenny Dunn (image credit: Jenny Dunn)

Kester Rattenbury

Kester Rattenbury is Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster. She trained as an architect, completed her PhD on the coverage of architecture in the mass media, and went on to work as an architectural journalist, critic and author, hundreds of publications including This is Not Architecture and The Wessex Project. She set up the research group Experimental Practice at the University of Westminster, leading its Archigram Archival Project and Supercrit series of events and books. She works in collaboration with Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology on its PhD by Practice, and leads the Westminster version of this practice-centred research model. She is a FRIBA and a member of the international critics' committee CICA.

Website: www.westminster.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/directory/rattenbury-kester

Everyone can make by Takeshi Hayatsu, part of the RIBA’s exhibition Making It Happen: New Community Architecture (image credit: Edmund Sumner)

Granby Four Streets Winter Garden (credit Assemble)

Anthony Engi Meacock

Anthony is a founding partner of the art and architecture practice Assemble. Their work is engaged with the problem of enabling people to have an active relationship with their built environment, working at a range of scales from Liverpool to Hong Kong.  Anthony currently teaches at The Architecture Association, London and has previously taught at the University of Westminster, HEAD Geneva, and London School of Architecture. Most recently Anthony has  focused on the creation of a new community garden and artists residency space in Liverpool.

Website: www.assemblestudio.co.uk - Instagram: @assembleofficial 

Eric Guibert 

Eric Guibert is a gardener architect and founding director of studio Eric Guibert. He is a lecturer at the University of Westminster and teaches in the MA in Landscape Architecture at the Bartlett. His research uses the media of both built and grown architectures and investigates ways of designing with the emergent quality of ecosystems, the creative capacity of both human and other than human inhabitants. 

Website: www.ericguibert.com - Instagram: @ericguibert

The Literacy Library by Eric Guibert (image by the talented Alistair Hall)

 Johanna Gibbons

Johanna Gibbons is a Landscape Architect, founding member of J & L Gibbons LLP established in 1986 and founding Director of Landscape Learn, a social enterprise with Neil Davidson. She is a Fellow of the Landscape Institute and the RSA and serves on several advisory panels including Historic England’s Urban Panel and the Forestry Commission’s London FWAC.She is an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London and a core research partner of Urban Mind, a cross-disciplinary project lead by Kings College London with Nomad Projects, exploring how the urban environment affects mental wellbeing, recently published in Bioscience. Jo’s expertise concerns heritage, green infrastructure and urban regeneration and she leads on collaborative cross-disciplinary practice at a strategic and local level, mostly in London. Many of her projects are international award winning,including the 2011 Landscape Institute President’s Award for the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden as part of Making Space in Dalston. 

Website: www.jlg-london.com - Instagram: @jlg–london 

The Dalston Eastern Curve Garden (image credit J&L Gibbons)

Takeshi Hayatsu

Takeshi Hayatsu is a Japanese architect practicing in London, and a founding director of Hayatsu Architects. Alongside his practice Takeshi teaches post graduate architecture studios at Central Saint Martins and Kingston University. His research focuses on exploring craft, material, traditional and contemporary building techniques and self-build for community engagement.

Website: www.hayatsuarchitects.com - Instagram: @takeshi_hayatsu