BUILD 2016 London, Sutton House Architectural Event, MATT+FIONA Design, Architect, Images

BUILD 2016 London: Hackney

Architecture Event at Sutton House, the 500 year old National Trust property in Hackney, Northeast London

26 Aug 2016

BUILD 2016 at Sutton House in Hackney

Power Tools for Pre-Teens as they Create Hackney’s Latest Pop-Up

Process: MATT+FIONA with Tim Lucas, Price and Myers

Architect and educationist duo MATT+FIONA, the National Trust and a group of 7-14 year olds have proved that children can be as capable and inventive as adults when it comes to creating the built environment.

Building on the Borrowers theme the structure “scales up” small nooks and corners discovered in Sutton House, the 500 year old National Trust property in Hackney, to recreate a new Borrowers landscape, conceived to draw attention to the house and act as a place to gather, perform and explore the site in new ways. The nodal system of construction was developed by MATT+FIONA in collaboration with Tim Lucas of innovative engineers, Price and Myers. The system gave the young builders considerable design freedom, whilst ensuring the installation will remain structurally sound.

Following in the footsteps of the northern European tradition of environmental literacy and ‘baukulturelle bildung’ (built environment education) the venture would suggest that we can raise our expectations of what young people can do. In just 6 days, the group of children designed and created a new entrance way and open air performance space for Sutton House, in collaboration with a team of volunteers. The intergenerational workshop enabled the children to create on an equal footing with adults, their opinions being listened to and in turn requiring them to take responsibility for their design decisions.

For the months of August and September the children’s creation will form an integral part of Sutton House’s seasonal programming as well as being a place to play and gain a different perspective of the house.

MATT+FIONA hope that this will be the first of many collaborations with cultural partners who would like to uncover how the next generation will interpret their heritage for the future.

For more information please visit mattandfiona.org

Background:

MATT+FIONA is a collaborative venture between architect Matthew
Springett and educator Fiona MacDonald, built on a long history of working together on architectural-based education initiatives.

Through their projects they offer unique, hands-on, practical education programmes for children and young adults. BUILD is the exciting next step of their work.

Matthew Springett is principal of award-winning London-based architectural practice, MSA and has taught over the past 14 years at the Bartlett School of Architecture. He lectures widely in the UK and abroad. Fiona MacDonald is a director of Design Education CIC and has built up considerable experience leading education projects at Open-City, The Building Exploratory and The Royal Institute of British Architects.

BUILD 2016 London at Sutton House, Hackney images / information received from MATT+FIONA 260816

BUILD 2016 London Event

BUILD 2016, London, UK

Matt + Fiona and The National Trust would like to invite you to the opening of BUILD 2016 – an innovative week long live build project to enable 7-14 year olds to design and build a new summer performance space in front of Sutton house, Hackney’s oldest home, inspired by the story of The Borrowers. Please come visit at any point during the week.

When: Saturday 6th August 4-6pm
Where: Sutton house, 2 & 4 Homerton High Street, London E9 6JQ

For more information visit mattandfiona.org: BUILD 2016 Architecture Event

Follow the children’s progress during the week on Facebook @ MattAndFionaBUILD and Instagram @ matt_and_fiona

The nodal structure has been designed in such a way that the children can build big, but also have considerable design freedom. We are very grateful to Tim Lucas of Price & Myers who has helped to develop the structural system, and to James Lathams, T Chambers and B-Made at the Bartlett for supporting with materials and pre-fabrication.