The Element Of Surprise

THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE

NOVEMBER 2014

Sarah-Jane McGee, Project Architect (Right) and and Sophia Tibbo, Structural Engineer (Left) on site, 2014

I recently explained to a relative that the most exciting part of my job is the element of surprise. I compared the world of desktops and emails and repetitive strain injury to that thrill I get each Wednesday when arriving on site to inspect progress. It is the uplifting discovery of the unexpected that is most satisfying to me.

The origin of the word ‘surprise’ ranges in meaning from ‘overcome with emotion’, ‘strike of astonishment’ or ‘a taking unawares’. This is also common to the early process of design during which the building takes shape inside your mind as a sequence of spaces, moments and details. As architects, our job for many months and even years on a single project is to translate this purely imaginary set of ideas into a two-dimensional rule-book for eventual construction. The resulting documentation is scientific, precise, and impersonal. It is accompanied by reams of contracts, costs, schedules and sums. It is in short, quite dull to the naked eye.

This document then comes into contact with a wide range of people; contract managers, site agents, sub-contractors, labourers and tradesmen. They have a unique ability to bring this pile of paper to life. Over the days and months the team forms the structure like bees in a hive. One week there is a hole in the ground, soon after the steel is measured and delivered, the floors and stairs go in, the roof lights are installed, the doors are hung and the whole thing is ‘buttoned up’. Suddenly what was abstract becomes real, what were lines become tangible surfaces, shocking in their dimension and materiality.

Construction is simply connecting one thing to another thing, layering over and over and over. The physical actions are drilling, digging, hammering, stacking, lifting, fixing, pouring, spreading, sticking, brushing, nailing. It is a human activity, with each person lending his or her very specific skills to create the whole.

To me it seems surprising and almost contradictory that something as animated, chaotic and personal as a construction site can become a silent space of light falling on blank walls. The story is hidden behind white layers of plasterboard, a secret that will only be uncovered in the next round of renovation or demolition.

After all the humming and drilling the building gets built. The bees move on; an enchantingly empty hive remains. And we begin to imagine again.

^{Sarah-Jane McGee graduated with a first class honors degree from University College Dublin in 2008. Sarah-Jane won the Irish Architectural Graduates Association Gold Medal in 2008 and her thesis project was highly commended in the OPUS Construction Awards in 2008. Having worked in Ireland for O’Donnell and Tuomey Architects and in Italy for Mario Cucinella Architects, she joined Niall McLaughlin Architects in 2011. Since joining the practice she has worked as Project Architect on a recently completed private house in Hampstead, London as well as working on St. Cross College, St. Teresa’s Carmelite prayer room in Dublin, a fishing hut in Hampshire and the ROQ Masterplan in Oxford.}

A DAY OUT OF THE OFFICE

MAY 2014

We breathlessly boarded the 08.55 to Darlington. Like skilled waitresses we had kept our homemade, oversized, A1 box perfectly level throughout our chase through Kings Cross Station. The immaculate foam-board creation fitted perfectly on top of a double-seat on the near-empty train. East-Coast mainline rules are clear however; the guard reminded us that seats are for people only and at Peterborough we were duly ordered to deliver our carefully crafted friend to the dedicated luggage wagon at the front of the train.

The box was purposefully constructed to house a 1:150 context model of Bishop Auckland Town Square with ‘slot-inable’ building options for the site in question. The model was made for a meeting with Durham County Council and English Heritage at Auckland Castle that same afternoon.
Despite our ticket inspector’s fussiness, we were carried to our destination with the box and its contents in good order.

After a communal lunch with the review panel, the dozen-odd experts collected themselves around a table where the model had been assembled. The object took up so much space that notebooks occasionally and apologetically slid from the edges of the table.

For the following three hours, a multitude of building blocks representing different proposals for the new Welcome Building were inserted into the corner site. The new building is to link town and castle, engaging the new with the old, with our site at the axis of this pirouetting dance.
As we waltzed around the model, interchanging different pieces into our self-made jigsaw, a negotiation occurred between the many different people around the room, a parallel perhaps to the building itself.

During the second part of the afternoon, the presentation became more conceptual. The tower – the key feature of the proposal – was discussed in its meaning, shape and materiality. Was it a campanile, a siege tower, a lighthouse or a scaffold? Each version was debated with varying levels of approval or skepticism. We answered questions by pulling off bits of white card or finding any handy props to add on to the model; notepads, milk jugs and i-phones were used.
We left the meeting feeling excited, there was only this box to get all the way back to the office.

Image shows part of the paper model, with multiple versions scattered about, sitting on a windowsill after the meeting.

Anne Schroell studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture. She worked for Tonkin Liu and De Matos Storey Ryan as well as practices in Luxembourg and Austria before joining Niall McLaughlin Architects in 2006. The main projects Anne worked on are Deal Pier Café in Kent, Somerville College Student Accommodation in Oxford, Peabody Housing in London. She is currently running the Auckland Castle project which consists of 2 new buildings. One is a new gallery attached to the castle and the other is the Welcome Building and Tower for orientation and ticketing.