E W A N . C O O P E R

My role: Job runner, design lead, client liaison - RIBA stages 1-4

At Eckford Chong we built the projects that we designed, using our co-located studio and workshop. I took this project from initial client, inquiry, through the design process to preparing tender information, having established a design team and worked within an agreed budget. This project is due to start on site late 2020.

We proposed a simple side return in-fill extension that carefully controlled natural light and privacy by making the majority of the openings deep skylights, whilst views onto the garden made valuable connections to the outdoor space whilst considering short back-to-back distances between terraces.

A brick column and exposed steel beam created a legible tectonic whilst marking out places for storage, utility, cooking, dining and entertaining. This set off a language of natural materials and textures against muted yet playful coloured accents. Once lit from large skylights within the exposed timber roof structure, this space will change throughout the days and the seasons - always warm with an aspiration for domestic comfort before all else.

My role: Conceptual design, written content, graphic presentation

This competition entry, was our second submission for the ‘Antepvailion’ series in Hoxton Docks, hosted by the Architecture Foundation

We made the 1:20 model shown here and I wrote the text below to accompany and describe the proposal:

“The first port of call in dispute resolution is negotiation - just start talking.

Smoke and mirrors

The enforcement notice made against previous pavilions is made in the nebulous voice of planning control.

This ill defined penumbral force that can appear to be the gate-keeper to ambition and progress may well represent good-will but rarely feels (in practise) like an open, helping hand.

It might serve the public interest and has almost certainly stopped a thousand bad ideas in their tracks and protected much of our valuable built heritage from the avarice of speculative development.

However its not always easy to tell if this is the case, because something is all too frequently lost in translation. The dialogue has become frustrated and the machine is broken.

A rudimental second glance suggests that the people behind the ideas, their facilitators and their objectors step out from behind their drawings and their emails and shake hands at ground zero.

MetaBox makes a forum for public engagement. Its indeterminate life will be spent hosting an on-going, open dialogue on the planning process:

This will include open seminars, debates, public consultations on current applications or regular surgeries for duty planning officers and design professionals to engage with the public and the community to whom the place belongs and help keep the process moving and open.

As described in David Levitt’s housing design handbook, a sense of place is concerned with ‘a residents permanent sense of belonging to somewhere of value’.

The idea of ‘belonging’ goes both ways; a place is often best perceived as belonging to those who dwell within it. Terms like belonging and ownership have emotional import and change needs to be considered carefully. Sense and clarity don’t stand much of a chance when peoples backs are up.

By creating a forum for taking ideas and proposals to the next stage, we propose to put people at the front-&- centre of the debate.”Closed

A mirrored box when closed, MetaBox is essentially faceless and manifests only to continue the conversation.

The faceted, reflective panels resemble and reflect the surface of the water.This modest shift in the façade’s surface speaks of its placement at the canal side and sends fractured visions of its neighbours back to them when not in use.

Open

When it opens, the sides and roof unfold to nearly double its visible mass and presence. When lit internally a rigid timber and steel structure is revealed and projected through the translucent skin, in a language of cross braced framework in tension, reminiscent of Potemkin Theatre.

It also alludes to Air Draft in its luminescence and H-Vac in its singular silver skin.The continuity created in re-presenting the familiar virtues of past pavilions brings their plight back to the front of the debate.

Open to the roof and all sides, this building turns itself inside out and opens up completely – a metaphor for transparency and receptivity.

This kinetic blooming and illumination is a signal, an invitation to neighbours and passers by to visit, join in and to engage.

Construction

Two-way Silver Mirror Acrylic Sheets are fixed to a sustainable LVL (laminated veneered lumber) frame.The opening mechanism is hand operated with a block and tackle system , the open shutters are then propped into place with struts.

The raised floor is back lit recycled cardboard and acrylic panels.

The panel system is designed to the proportions of one pontoon (an elegant 1:2 ratio) so that the pavilion can be simply dismantled and transported which enables relocation and a new phase of life beyond the commission.”

My role: Project Lead, Design and client contact. RIBA Stages 1-5

(awaiting professional photography - currently on site)

This garden studio was designed for a busy family in a north London terraced house within a conservation area beneath the canopy of a protected tree.

The brief was to create as large a space as possible within the small site, for music rehearsal, study and flexible recreation.

Written narrative that accompanied Stage 2 concept design proposals:

“The proposal comprises a simple orthogonal timber box of crisp cut, fine grained, natural Larch sitting on a robust, tiled plinth.The legible openings pinwheel off a singular solid timber post that holds the prominent corner. This post carries memories of both the tree trunk beyond (its presence having largely defined the siting of the building) and, more significantly [the client’s], childhood family holidays.

The knots and grains of the post are expressed and celebrated with slick marine grade varnish which, not only protects but draws further on the cabin aesthetic of Breton gites (as remembered in their late 20th c. restored state). The post can be touched from the chair of the writers desk, acknowledging the immediacy of ‘timber’ and its relevance to the project; as a structural and cladding material, as a defining element of the brief in the existing tree and the Proustian connection with [the client’s] childhood.

Below the windows is a simple tiled plinth, which borrows from mid century utilitarian and Modernist architecture.The elegant steel doors and window frames fit and sit back within the reveal of the mass.The tiles themselves are set on a grid that aligns with the Larch above, grout lines and expansion joints meeting shadow gaps in the true Modernist ambition that celebrates the elegance which can be achieved through mechanised methods of manufacture.”

My role: Project Lead. Design and client liaison RIBA stages 1-5

(awaiting professional photography)

The replanning and renovation of ground and first floor of a private house in south London. We simplified the plan of the ground floor and created a new bespoke kitchen in Walnut veneered ply, designed and built in our studio workshop.

Although the scope was relatively small and potentially simple (a kitchen, hallway, basement access and the connecting of two rooms at first floor) we spent time in establishing a language of arches which was taken from the Victorian fireplaces and a sweeping curved wall in the (plan of the) main ground floor reception. We made two arched thresholds, one at ground and one upstairs and made bespoke brass ‘dropped’ handles with arched tops in the kitchen. Timber partitions in the kitchen joinery had arched bases allowing room for your feet when preparing food.

I was responsible for brief writing with the client and then concept design, compiling schedules of work alongside the contractor and negotiating final fixed costs with the client. The project has just been completed.

My role: Project Architect RIBA Stages 2-4

Metropolitan Workshop were appointed by Igloo Regeneration on behalf of Nationwide Building Society to design a new ‘intergenerational’ neighbourhood at the site previously occupied by the University of Bath Campus, Swindon.

The proposed development comprises the construction of 239 residential units, primarily residential dwelling houses and a single residential apartment block with flexible commercial/ community uses on the ground floor level.

The proposed scheme will deliver 30% affordable housing by unit, with some units designed for older people, younger people and families.

Key to the scheme’s success was the reception and approval of local residents. Nationwide employed a public engagement officer and we ran a thorough and extensive series of ‘listening events’ through which we established the trust of local residents by demonstrating that their input had palpable impact on the neighbourhood and homes as designs were developed.

The design principles were to knit surrounding neighbourhoods together and connect them to local shops and facilities through a network of green, cycle and walking routes. Reduced dependancy on cars was balanced against a typical suburban requirement fro 1+ spaces per dwelling.

Homes were arranged around large communal gardens (‘homesteads’) designed to encourage neighbourliness and build a sense of community within a neighbourhood of housing for elderly residents placed at the corners of mixed tenure blocks.

The scheme will be the first housing development for Nationwide building society.

“The homes we design and build at Oakfield are seen as the catalyst for wider change in the neighbourhood, not merely as an end in themselves…

…By challenging existing practice in just a small way here in Swindon and ensuring the views of locals shape our development, we hope to make an innovative contribution to the national housing debate.”

- Joe Garner, Nationwide’s Chief Executive

My role: client introduction and liaison, bid runner

Whilst at Metropolitan Workshop, I was invited by the CEO of CTVC, a television production company owned and run by the Rank Foundation to bid for the design of their new office and studio space.

I worked closely with David Sanderson the CEO of the Rank Foundation and Caroline Matthews CEO of CTVC helping to write a brief for the co-location of their offices.

With the help of a part1 assistant, I created a concept and sketch scheme and introduced the clients to the office. The (bid) project involved the careful management of long standing internal politics whilst establishing a brief which accommodated the requirements of both organisations.

Although we made great progress and worked up a number of innovative ‘business case’ ideas involving the employment of Rank Foundation apprentices in creating the new space, the long standing issues which had hitherto kept the offices apart, maintain the stalemate today.

Despite not resulting in built work, I established a relationship with a new client and a new sector for Metropolitan Workshop and ran the bid to hit deadlines in a short and fast paced timeframe; resulting in a perceived success.

My role: Design Lead, Client

Although this kitchen was designed and built before my time at Eckford Chong, as the client I was responsible for the design and specification, working closely with Eckford Chong through delivery

Since completing the build, we have worked on the garden which was designed to work with the interior, but phased to come later due to costing, the delicate nature of plants and the need for the garden to serve as a builders yard during construction.

I wrote the following description to accompany the project on the Eckford Chong website and in printed promotional literature:

“The usual choice for a larger new kitchen to 3 bedroom detached houses is to create a side extension to the outrigger at ground floor. This often brings the compromise of reduced daylight to the existing back room and can be costly with new-build elements as well as party wall and lawful development consents to be considered. In order to side step these complications, we reconfigured the existing spaces of the ground floor to create a more effective layout that combined a small kitchen (previously big enough for just one person with virtually no useable work surfaces) and a good sized yet unused dining room.

With no new build elements, money was saved, leaving a wider choice of finish materials and detailing. The result is a light, warm kitchen and day room that has become the hub of the family house. The fitted cabinets are confined to the original kitchen space whilst furniture in the larger space is free standing so that designed elements dissolve into the spaces. (The intention was not simply to create one large kitchen but to provide enough storage and useful surface). The narrow outrigger meant that units to one side of the kitchen could be no more that 360mm deep.

The mass was reduced further by referencing the open style of joinery (characterised by planes of timber that appear to overlap and float past each other) often found in older Japanese cabinetry made for smaller houses. In the morning light the whole space glows and is filled with sounds of breakfast and the smell of fresh coffee, full of family life - which was simply not possible with the previous arrangement. Strictly an exercise in interior design, yet something which drew on all of our experience and practise of architecture.”

My role: Architect / Collaborator

Before joining Eckford Chong full time, I worked with them on a number of projects. This competition entry, was for the ‘Antepvailion’ series in Hoxton Docks and is hosted by the Architecture Foundation

I made the drawings and collages shown here and developed the narrative along with the team. I wrote the text below to accompany and describe the proposal:

"London is often thought of as a congregation of separate neighbourhoods, like a crowd of villages, one against the other, each spilling into the next but every one with its own character, separately identifiable by architectural and spatial idiosyncrasies. Do they reflect or infect the people that live and work among them?

Do the inhabitants of Hackney, Brixton or Marylebone inform the sense of place or do they absorb it? In each case it is likely that local character is in a state of flux, yet here and there consistencies prevail and London is at once ancient and recent. It grows and preserves in equal measure with cultural and technological shifts leaving their scars as infrastructure becomes irrelevant and disconnected.

The canals, once the pumping trade arteries of an industrial London are now gardens and streets; they have become a London neighbourhood as stretched, squeezed and bustling as any other. They feature common architectural typologies: floating homes and re-appropriated warehouses and factories enclose the streets and bridges, paths and gardens that line the waterways themselves. These are streets that have a common character yet are so dynamic that they are rarely the same from one day to the next. As such they have no town centre or village square. The usual civic structures that form and perform a vital framework for a functioning community are notably absent.

A city, much of which is shaped by Victorian industrial energy, London has suffered the loss of a civic program historically supported by the religious precincts that have prevailed in mainland European (Catholic) cities.

In Christian religious architecture, the word given to that part of the church reserved for the laity is the Nave, sharing an etymology with nautical references from the Latin ‘Navis’ meaning ship. Credit for this may be due to St Peter (known as ‘the fisherman’) who is allegedly buried under the altar at the Basilica that bears his name. Mythology and ancient religious practise abound with significant rivers and seas and the pope wears the fisherman’s ring, further binding Christianity with watery themes.

In a modern, post religious or multi faith London, the liturgical relevance could be in question but the original function of the Nave as taken from the ancient Basilica was to provide a place for other civic functions such as trials, trade and political debate.

The proposal offers the stretched, linear neighbourhood of the canals a moving centre; a village hall, a Nave. An ancient typology with its nautical heritage gives the opportunity for a relevant, and historically revealing floating pavilion.

It relocates on the moving tides and flows, offering a gathering place, a space to commune and encounter for those itinerant neighbours which form a very unique London community. It is an exhibition space, a lecture theatre, a live music venue, a debating chamber and a day to day meeting place."

My role: Client / Architect

This was our first kitchen built as collaborating clients, with Eckford Chong building and fitting it along with another general builder. I designed the layout and furniture, centred around the kitchen, doubling as a transitional space between the house and the garden. The format and colour of the floor tiles was made to match inside and out and large floor to ceiling openings were made in the two rooms that access the garden. I wrote the following text to accompany photographs in Eckford Chong promotional material.

“Redeveloping a 100 year old railway workers terrace house in a garden estate in North London. We created a connecting series of rooms that step down towards a small, lush garden.

Two ground floor receptions were connected by removing an internal structural wall. A sash window became tall double doors which let morning light deep into the plan. The ground floor cloak room was removed and the space given to the kitchen which allowed us to make a seat next to new double doors. This made a place to sit and view the garden. (The seat doubled as a store for gardening equipment). 

When viewed from the lounge, the garden is visible through both sets of doors while the new timber and concrete kitchen tucks away from view behind the remaining rear wall and the staircase. The floor pattern in the kitchen matches the slab pattern for the garden.

Internal and external became intimately connected and a new view across the complete depth of the plot made an efficient floorplan feel generous and dynamic.”

My role: Project Architect. RIBA stages 1-3+

Grahame Park is Barnet’s largest Estate. The 1960s estate will be redeveloped to create three neighbourhoods with associated parks, play areas, shops and facilities. The design promotes family housing in low to mid-rise buildings.

Mæ were appointed, by Genesis Housing Association, as lead designer for the latest phase comprising 1,083 homes. This followed their previous work masterplanning the wider neighbourhood of 2,161 mixed tenure homes and with mixed use facilities, which was adopted as Supplementary Planning Guidance.

We worked with a design team comprising 3 Architectural practises (Mae, Avanti & Karakusevic Carson), the Diocese of London, Genesis H.A., Tibbalds planning consultants among others. The stakeholders were many and complex and submitting a single planning application comprising 3 parcels by 3 different practises posed new challenges.

My role: Architect. RIBA Stage 4

A landmark retirement home for Pegasus Life. The scheme provides 36 assisted living flats on six floors together with communal kitchen-café, storage areas, wellness centre/spa, guest accommodation, and apartments for staff.

I worked as part of a small team delivering stage 4 tender information.

“This project marks an important moment for all those who share the ambition to create a long-term change in how people see retirement living. This will be a place to enjoy life and to ensure that not a second of that life is wasted.” - Roger Black, Pegasus Life

My role: Architect, Job runner

RIBA stages 1-4

Working for a client living in Thailand to design the renovation of his 3 story townhouse, converting it from a H.M.O to a single dwelling, this project was an interesting exercise in working a relatively large brief into a tight budget, timeframe and site.

I proposed a small ground floor rear extension to create a comfortable living space at ground. I negotiated a build over agreement with Thames Water under the watchful eye and in spite of cooperative co-freeholders.

As the client was remote, I was on site for an unusual amount of time in the early stages. Despite the small extension, the available amenity was so small that the job required 3 party wall notices. The project achieved planning permission and has since moved on to construction.

My role: Architect, bid runner, managing a small team to deliver a fast and clear submission

This proposal for an extra care facility and housing for older residents in a small town, was built around the idea of integrating residents within the life of the town whilst enhancing townscape, creating new suburban realm in streets, squares and ginnels. The facility was spread over 4 separate buildings, with housing over new commercial units. Conversations with residents and local shop keepers suggested that an existing precinct had little footfall, being tucked away and cut off from half the town by a busy road.

The scheme, while providing safe, well designed residences to elderly care standards, created new spaces beneath and around them, improving the streetscape for all residents of the town.

My role: Architect

As a small team, we made this relatively quick feasibility study to create 18 dwellings for a complex ‘left over’ site on the banks of the Trent River. It was to explore the feasibility and viability of a second phase for the Trent Basin regeneration project in Nottingham undertaken by Igloo Regeneration.

The building was designed to gradually reveal views of the river on approach, with river views from every room in every apartment. The aspect made full use of the southern sun, reducing the need for heating but mitigated the impact of excessive solar gain by the addition of winter gardens (outside the thermal line) to the front of each apartment.

The proposal created the opportunity for a new pedestrian footbridge enabling a connection with the existing ‘Lady Bay’ neighbourhood to the south.

My role: Part 2 Architectural Assistant / Project Architect - RIBA stages 2-3

Whilst working as member of a small team that took stage 2 work through to Stage 3 and a planning submission, I was design lead on the facades and envelope on this large mixed use block (Block 1a of the first development site of the 25 year masterplan to regenerate and rebuild the Aylesbury Estate in south London).

We worked (alongside Hawkins Brown and HTA) to design a block that faced onto 3 very different urban street types and enclosed a private courtyard garden. The block contained Extra Care housing, shared ownership housing and social ‘target’ rental block.

We made innovative use of open deck galleries which used district heat pipes to ensure that the floor didnt freeze in winter whilst partly closed ‘belvederes’ made spaces for residents to gather and encounter familiar faces.

My role: Client contact, job runner, Architect

A collaborative project with Michael Dillon. Concept design and planning drawings for an extension to a family home in a north London Victorian terrace.

(Planning was awarded)

Conversations with the client quickly lead to a brief that wanted simple, inexpensive proprietary materials and fittings in order to allow the best use of a modest budget and a relatively confined site. A simple, single storey rear extension comprised of concrete block and exposed timber beams created a new family garden room which encloses a new entrance courtyard.

Two new birch trees placed at the centre and rear doors reference an established tree adjacent to the existing entrance. Roof lights above deep timber rafters allow light deep into the plan while allowing wall space to be used for valuable storage.  

My Role: Part2 Architectural Assistant.

Interior design and fit out for ‘Strasburgo’, a mens clothes shop in Tokyo Midtown. This included the detailed design for fitted and loose furniture, fabric walls and a floating stone floor. We collaborated with George Sexton for lighting design. 

Run by operator Aman, this 24 villa boutique hotel sits above a private beach on the Atlantic coast in the Dominican Republic. A small design team delivered the project along with large (for sale) villas, a beach club, back of house and ancillary buildings, main lodge, restaurant and landscaping, from concept to on site delivery. Faceted in-situ, white concrete cantilevered green roofs taper to 100mm thick at the edge and are built to withstand hurricane conditions. 

Designing the project required a deep understanding of how these resorts operate and the unique requirements of 5+ star front of house operations. We worked closely with the contractor, hotel and site managers as well as joiners and stone masons. The uncompromising level of detail included the design of the tile pattern for the floor of the villas, which was all produced locally using traditional methods. 

My role: Part 2 Assistant, client facing, design lead

For the operator 'Brilliant Spa', this very large luxury spa is located at the site of natural springs within a UNESCO World Heritage site.

We worked closely with the contractor / client throughout the concept, design and build processes to deliver a complex steel building that combines a traditional structural language with modern methods of construction to create a building that is able to deliver a high number of different treatments and experiences to the highest level.

The building responds to a difficult site at the confluence of two rivers. Its mass is broken into a harmonious 'jumble' of forms which conceal a flowing internal arrangement that enables staff and guests to move effortless around the building with a very controlled level of encounter.

My role: Part2 Architectural assistant

At Heah&Co, much of our work was in Asia, the Americas and other resort locations. These images are selected details and views of some of the large private houses we built in London. We used the same design team as for the resorts, working closely with the client as well as the various craftsmen and contractors to hand over (final completion).

The houses are new builds in The Boltons, Little Boltons and the refurbishment of a house Cheyne Walk.

This one bedroom flat in a converted London tea warehouse had been a city bolt hole for twenty years; having served its purpose as a home from home and in need of some modernisation.

The plan was opened up, freeing the previously internal kitchen by linking it to the living space. Removing its the partition wall with the living room let light in and enabled the host to cook and entertain simultaneously.

New Walnut floors bounce light around whilst the reshaped bathroom found space for a walk-in shower. The client uses the apartment to entertain and to stop-over in London when he is too busy to travel out of the city to his home; therefore we focussed our attention on the kitchen and the bedroom.

A bespoke bed was built with a headboard set at the angle that best suited his troubled back, making reading in bed a possibility again. The new kitchen allowed him to make the most of new cooking lessons whilst a bespoke desk tied together the walnut floor and birch ply finishes of the fitted furniture.

My role: student. 5th year - P.Lynch & A.Jones studio

For my 5th year design thesis project I collaborated with Martin Goodfellow and Pete Youthed to design a city park around which our individual projects were sited. I proposed a burial ground and funeral chapels. The site was the Mount Pleasant Post Office site in Clerkenwell, London.

The culverted River Fleet ran through this site, its valley forming the hills up to Grays Inn Rd in the west and towards Amwell St in the east. The proposal reassigned the largely defunct post office site into a city garden that restored the Fleet and made a place for a renewable burial model which references the mythology of ancient Rivers and gives the site back to its original bucolic condition as was the intention of the Metropolitan Open Spaces Act of 1881.

In ‘greening’ a large singular site in such a dense area within a natural valley, the potential benefits to S.U.D.S and biodiversity as well as the well being of the many thousands of residents in the surrounding neighbourhoods would be significant and yet achievable. The funeral model addressed a very modern issue in the ageing of our cities and was designed to work within predicted death rates over the next hundred years while knitting the new open space into the mat of Islington squares that stretch north from here. These square when over laid with a map of the historic (pre reformation) religious precincts show a street layout that is clearly informed y land ownership that spiralled out of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.