“Functionalism, Rationalism, and Conceptualism Are Not Enough”: In Conversation with Alison Brooks
London-based architect Alison Brooks was born and grew up in Canada and studied architecture at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. Upon graduation in 1988, she left for London where after working with designer Ron Arad for seven years she started Alison Brooks Architects in 1996. Her most representative works include the Stirling Prize-winning Accordia Brass Building in Cambridge, Exeter College Cohen Quad in Oxford, the Smile Pavilion for the 2016 London Design Festival, and several expressive single-family residences in London: VXO House, Fold House, Lens House, Mesh House, and Windward House.
Among the studio’s current projects are The Passages in Surrey, Canada; Homerton College in Cambridge, and other residential and cultural projects throughout Britain and in North America. This month the architects’ design was shortlisted for the LSE Firoz Lalji Global Hub and Institute for Africa in London. Together with Nigerian practice Studio Contra, the ABA-led team was one of six finalists chosen from 190 international submissions.
Brooks exhibited her work at Venice Architecture Biennales and after having taught at the University of Central London, the Architectural Association, and Harvard GSD, she is currently teaching at ETSAM, Universidad Politécnica of Madrid. What follows is our interview with Alison Brooks over a Zoom call between New York and London. Alison spoke about growing up in Southern Ontario and what triggered her interest in architecture, her experience of working with Ron Arad, enjoying both establishing her own design rules and breaking them, expressing authenticity and developing distinguished authorship in architecture, and most importantly, insisting on beauty because “Everyone needs beauty as a part of everyday experience.”
Vladimir Belogolovsky: Could you touch on how you came across architecture?
Alison Brooks: Until I was thirteen, I lived in a rambling old house in Welland in southern Ontario. The house was originally owned by my grandfather. There were rooms in the basement filled with suitcases and furniture dating from the 1930s, so my two sisters and I always felt the house was filled with secrets and ghosts. In the 1950s the house was extended and refurbished by an architect fond of storage. My two sisters and I would pull out the drawers to make a kind of step-ladder and we’d climb up to these deep, unusable cupboards under the ceilings. The house was a brilliant playground [Laughs.] When I was thirteen, my mother, two sisters and I moved to Guelph, a university city west of Toronto. That’s when I decided to draw it. I measured all the rooms and made detailed plans. I suppose that was my first architectural act. [Laughs.]
I was also deeply influenced by my mother. She loved history and literature and taught courses in Canadian antique furniture and textiles. She would drive me around the southern Ontario countryside to admire the 19th-century farmhouses and barns and the way farm fields can make beautiful curved lines against the horizon. Or, if we were in Toronto, she’d point out the details of the Romanesque and neo-Gothic buildings. She would always point out these moments, objects, and places that represented craft and history. Through her, I saw how architecture could impact someone’s everyday life.
I also have profound memories of contemporary architecture from that period, like Viljo Revell’s Toronto City Hall, the O’Keefe Centre, and in particular, Ontario Place, Toronto’s answer to Montreal Expo ’67. It opened in 1971 and it was an incredibly brave, metabolist vision of the future, with cubic exhibition pods that hovered over the water, cantilevered from central pylons. There were skywalks instead of cars that connected all the venues — a geodesic dome, the Cinesphere, and the Forum, a huge music venue with a hyperbolic paraboloid roof and tensioned fabric. As a young girl, I understood architecture as art meeting science. So, in High School, I took a course in design and drafting. The minute I sat down at this big table with a set square and the first design assignment, which was a house, I knew that was what I could do for the rest of my life. I was very lucky.
I chose to study architecture at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. It was known for its Rome-based design program in the fourth year and its unique “co-op program” system that alternates academic terms with work terms in a practice. So, by the time I graduated I had several years of solid applied knowledge, including a year and a half at Diamond Schmitt Architects, an established corporate firm in Toronto.
VB: You graduated from Waterloo in 1988 and immediately left for London. Why London and why did you decide to stay there?
AB: I didn’t know that I wouldn’t go back. [Laughs.] I felt that I knew the architectural scene in North America, and I needed to try something different, to taste a new city, a new culture. And as a Commonwealth citizen, you can obtain a two-year working holiday visa. I felt London was the closest I could get to Europe, and I felt attached to the Architectural Association whose output through publication was a strong point of reference at my school, as far as design based on research and a kind of intense cultural criticism underpinning the work. And, of course, my intention was to work with an internationally known architect. I had a list.
VB: Was Ron Arad, for whom you ended up working, on that list?
AB: No, he wasn’t. I hadn’t heard about him before I came. My list had Peter Wilson, Peter Cook, and Matthias Sauerbruch of Sauerbruch Hutton. In fact, my goal was to work with Matthias. He was the architect for the Checkpoint Charlie building in Berlin with OMA. In fact, OMA’s work was my strongest point of reference as a student. But when I arrived in London, Matthias and many other architects were moving to Germany. We met for tea, and he told me about Ron Arad who was working on competition and needed help. No other architects from my list were hiring, so I contacted Ron and was interviewed in the One Off, which was the name of his furniture showroom. That’s how I joined his team to work on the foyer design of the Tel Aviv Opera. And we won. At that time Ron had no real office. He had assembled a team to work on this competition. So, after finishing the competition, I started looking for other work and had some offers. But then he called and asked if I would come back to work on an installation in Notting Hill and that was the start of a long and fruitful design partnership. I worked with Ron for seven years, completing our One Off studio in 1991, Belgo Noord in 1993, the Tel Aviv Opera Foyers in 1994, and finally Belgo Centraal in Covent Garden. I started my practice in 1996 with the intention to pursue public buildings, urban design, housing, and in general, the social project of architecture; bringing high-quality design to people who normally don’t have access to it. That became my personal quest.
VB: I like how you described the projects that you worked on with Ron Arad at the time — sculptural, fluid, and blob-like. How did that experience change your expectations of what architecture could be?
AB: It was liberating because we were working outside of conventions, breaking lots of rules, and thinking of architecture as a pure art form. Before that, I was steeped in the modernist canon, referencing, but trying to escape, heroes of the modern movement — Corb and Mies. Working with Ron was about ignoring all those conventions. It was all about hand drawing, form-finding, object-making, and working directly with materials, particularly with metals — at Chalk Farm Studio our design studio was upstairs, above all the cutting and bending, and polishing, and welding shop. It was a formative experience that I suppose helped me to become free of all those modernist heroes, to find my own voice. And to respond to your earlier question about moving to London. In retrospect, I think, I wanted to leave Canada to define myself, be free from expectations, and prove I could do it alone.
VB: You described two of your projects — VXO House and Fold House — as being driven by two different ideas. While in the first house you expressed every element — a stair, a wall, and structural elements, all as autonomous elements — in the second house, you explored something completely different — how to make architecture out of one thing and one thing alone, a single sheet of metal Such elements as roofs, walls, columns, canopies, and benches were achieved through the act of folding the skin — 3mm-thick brass plates. Could you talk about how you identify these very different directions? Is every project like an essay or do they also form chapters in a book, so to speak?
AB: It is true that some of my projects can be seen as a lineage. But the most enjoyable moments for me, as an architect, are the ones where you arrive at the opposite of what was your last rule, of what may seem obvious. Letting go of certain ways of doing things and starting something completely new, to me, is the most interesting thing. That’s why I enjoy competitions. I often start with three different ideas with different teams and we then discuss and debate until we arrive at either selecting one of them or abandoning all three to go into a completely new direction. For me, the new direction starts when you exhaust all the possibilities. If something has been done one way, why do it again? Architecture becomes relevant when you respond to each circumstance differently. My team and I are on a path of discovery and learning about the places and communities where we work so that our design solutions are recognizably serving that audience and that constituency. I want to surprise both myself and my clientele with something we haven’t seen before but that embeds their values and speaks to their needs. And yes, it’s important to discover something that represents me as an author. And there is a feminist agenda in this quest. I am one of the very few female-led practices here in the UK and it is important to have my own voice. Not necessarily developing a signature style, but doing work that’s groundbreaking in some way, exploring new territory.
VB: I am glad you say this because interviewing architects quite regularly I can see that there is a tendency in recent years to give up authorship and pursue projects collaboratively and objectively. But my quest is to identify more and more authors who bring their autonomy and unique visions into the profession. Honestly, there would be no reason for interviewing different architects if they all repeated the exact same objectives over and over again.
AB: Absolutely. Having authorship is integral for me, particularly as a female architect. So many of us are still relatively invisible. We are still not accepted or understood as being inventive, we are not recognized as exemplary cultural figures. So, we can’t just give up that mission to focus solely on collaborative architecture. [Laughs.] When are we ever going to claim that role?! Just think of it — have you ever heard the phrase “a female inventor?” They are always men. Why is that?! No, women are as inventive as men and it is very important to author your work and celebrate that. Of course, there will always be collaborative architecture and we already operate a more participatory form of practice. We are really good listeners. I am also not saying that authorship is a claim to originality. No one can claim to be entirely original, especially as a UK practice, we work in contexts full of historic references and deep histories. History is a great sourcebook for inspiration and invention. Architects are always borrowing, and we are always in dialogue with the past, and that’s a good thing. But we need to put things together in new ways, always. That’s where authenticity and authorship bring value.
VB: I would like you to elaborate on some of your quotes. You said, “Architecture is about creating new narratives.”
AB: There are ways through which architecture can tell stories that draw on our collective memory, or that can help create a sense of community. When you move through a building, it can amplify particular historical references, materiality, and light conditions, it can emphasize the framing of particular views to reinforce a sense of connection and place. For example, in my project for Exeter College Oxford, which is both an academic and residential building, I transformed the historic quadrangle typology from an enclosed, four-sided courtyard plan form to an open-sided S-shaped plan form that creates and weaves between two courtyards. Each courtyard has very different uses and qualities of light that enable the building’s academics and students to enjoy different perspectives throughout the day, as they use the building. Internally, I challenged the given idea of “circulation” space by reinterpreting it as spaces for gathering and social exchange. So, the main circulation route through the building is a contemporary cloister — a transparent glass-walled passage framed by timber arches, with teaching rooms on one side and a courtyard on the other. This cloister leads to the multi-level Learning Commons, which is Oxford’s first dedicated social learning space. The next sequence is a concrete cloister that overlooks the North Quad and leads to the multi-purpose Auditorium, which is a jewel-like building and the Quad’s destination gathering space. So that journey through the complex allows students and visitors to experience the building as a sort of landscape of multiple references, my intention was that the new Quad’s form and spatial choreography connect people in this community to each other, to the city, and to Oxford University’s monastic tradition. So, architecture can be instrumental, in enhancing the experience of place and community. It’s about a sense of being valued.
VB: “A lack of precedent for the solutions that we strive for is what’s interesting.”
AB: It enables a kind of imaginative freedom, to shake off everything that you’ve been taught. Of course, what you learn has value, but it is really important to be able to let go of the kinds of conventions that you’ve assumed or that people expect and try to challenge them in ways that are creative and not alienating. I work incrementally, bringing our clients and stakeholders along and sharing the entire process, our research, inspirations, and intentions. The point is to push ideas to their limits and to develop the foundational arguments that make them both accessible and convincing. But most of my commissions are won in competition and the kind of intellectual or imaginative scope that competitions bring is really rewarding because you are given a chance to produce a complete work. I am also looking for opportunities to bring new ideas into my work in a very concentrated timeframe. I am also seeking opportunities to engage in collaborations. For example, I have invited a small practice in Lagos to join me in a competition for the London School of Economics Global Hub which is a building that will house several academic departments and the LSE’s Institute for Africa. I think European cities and universities and our civic places really need more architecture that represents a non-western way of thinking. This is especially true in the UK, a former empire that has virtually no example of public architecture that represents the culture and significance of its former colonies or the Global South. It is time for new voices and new architectural languages to express the true cultural pluralism of our time.
VB: “We live by a quest towards things that exist in our imagination.”
AB: Like many architects, I am on a quest to deliver architecture that will fulfill every ambition in terms of sustainability, inclusion, artfulness, and beauty. These are the kinds of impossible quests that I am striving to achieve. We, architects, are problem-solvers as well as artists. That synthesis of problem-solving and empathetic artfulness that serves the common good is a challenging balancing act. Everybody should have access to beautiful places.
VB: “I’m interested in reducing the number of materials that you have to work with to as few as possible, so you have a sense of essentialness to everything.”
AB: Yes, this is another quest, which I think I achieved with the Smile. That pavilion/sculpture was made from one material, tulipwood CLT, and that material was the structure, the finish, the geometry, and the spatial experience — all in one significant object in the public realm. It was a singularity; nothing could be removed.
VB: And finally: “Insist on Beauty.”
AB: We mustn’t forget the value of beauty as both an objective and subjective property of architecture. I believe architects need to reclaim our role in the wider cultural discourse around the philosophy of beauty. For much of the 20th century, we spoke of functionality and efficiency as the only valid way of improving quality of life, but now we can speak of beautiful ways to bring people together through working with light, materials, proportions, ornament, iconography, how to relate space to the human body, how to enable nature and architecture to coexist visually and physically. Our profession lacks the metrics to prove that these qualities in architecture can create long-term societal value in terms of health and well-being, productivity, and social capital. This is of course a wider political and economic project but it’s also a project of architecture. The experience of beauty is still too rare for too many people who live in degraded urban and suburban environments. Everyone needs beauty as a part of everyday experience. It is a longing innate in all of us, just like we need to produce art. Functionalism, rationalism, and conceptualism are not enough.