REGISTER - SMITH TAYLOR

In this episode Ellis Woodman interviews Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor of Smith Taylor Architects. Ellis is director of the architecture foundation, and a valued thinker and writer about architecture. Jonathan and Timothy established their practice in 2010. In their practice and their teaching they investigate classicism, and its potential as a living language of architecture. They engage with this way of thinking, not through nostalgia or sentimentality, but with criticality. This is unusual among contemporary classicists, many of whom seek to make perfected classical fragments, solely by engagement with the classical treatises, and an elitist approach to brief and budget. This hermeticism misses the point that architecture gains its value by abrasion against the forces which bring it into being and shape it, be they technical, economic, legislative etc. It is in this friction between idealised and realisable that a conversation emerges that allows architecture to act as a carrier of cultural knowledge, and allow with an empathetic connection with individuals, and even of society more generally. In the work of Smith Taylor we see this conversation at work. Here classism is a living, malleable fabric, one informed as much by contemporary thoughts as by adherence to the orders. In writing this I am thinking of the columns, (as much brick piers as classical order) on a modest rear garden extension, the cleverly tuned plan of a competition entry for a chapel in Dublin or the exuberant modelled soffits which they use in many projects. Here the nature of contemporary construction allows (indeed requires) an engagement with the classical language in a new way. http://www.smithandtaylorllp.com/index.php/site --------- Credits: Register is the Research Centre in the Department of Architecture & Landscape at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston University London http://kingstonarchitecture.london Head of Department: Mary Johnson Producer: Laura Evans / Andrew Clancy Register: Christoph Lueder; Matt Wells; Matt Philips Interviewer: Andrew Clancy Editor: Andrew Clancy