Journal Posts - Jamie Fobert Architects

We created a series of cast plaster models to develop the roof forms for our first Tate St Ives project. This inspired an Easter gift to the Tate St Ives team: a very special chocolate edition. We used high quality, rich, dark chocolate, with a hint of spice, layered carefully into the silicone mould.

For this exhibition, coinciding with JFA’s ten year anniversary, a long light box strip was made to display transparencies, telling the story of the practice’s built projects.

Another installation told a different story: of the process of designing interior spaces. Working models of interiors were fitted behind a large screen of black mdf. Brass viewfinders were inserted into the screen to allow viewers to peep inside the models, with scale distorted to make the views seem true to life. Yet walking behind the screen, viewers could see how the illusion had been created – with carefully arranged spot lights and the unfinished exteriors of the models, foam board, card and masking tape.

Our installation from our exhibition at the British School in Rome was transported to London and displayed at the Architecture Foundation’s exhibition space on Old Street. We also created a new piece for the display – a huge scale model of the gallery for Tate St Ives. It was elevated on stilts so that, by standing inside, you could view the interior space from approximately the correct eye-height. On the adjacent wall, a huge photograph of the sea view from the site gave the model some context.

We held a party at the exhibition to celebrate ten years of practice for JFA.

Our clients Konditor & Cook launched a fundraising initiative called ‘Cakes by Creatives’, inviting designers from a variety of disciplines to create a special edition of the boutique bakery’s signature ‘magic cakes’. Instead of icing a pattern, JFA decided to slice into the cakes. Inspired by Barbara Hepworth’s Group of Three Magical Stones, we carved the little cakes into unexpected, angular forms, coated in a dark, glossy chocolate.

For a ‘Friday Late’ event in association with the V&A exhibition ‘Blood on Paper: The Art of the Book’, JFA were invited to decorate an existing copy of a randomly selected vintage book. We were given a well-thumbed Penguin paperback edition of P.G. Wodehouse’s Right Ho, Jeeves. Rather than adding to the book, we decided to subtract from it. Painstakingly, every single mention of ‘Jeeves’ was cut from the pages, even down to the removal of his face from the cover.

To celebrate the birthday of one of our clients, we created a model of their house – which was at the time in the design development stage – made entirely out of Konditor & Cook’s finest cutting cake.

We flew to Seville to explore the architecture of this 2,000 year old city. From the top of the Giralda – the Cathedral bell tower – we could see the layered texture of the city, including the beautiful historic royal palace, the Alcazar.

Jamie was invited to exhibit his drawings at the Centre for Recent Drawing (C4RD). The exhibition installation included a continuous perspex panel, snaking along the corridor and around the gallery, to display loose-leaf sketches, mainly on trace.

A table was designed and built to display Jamie’s sketch books, opened to show a mixture of travel sketches and design sketches.

In association with the V&A exhibition ‘Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones’, JFA designed and made a magnificent hat to participate in a hat design competition. Constructed from copper piping, a snorkel and party blowers, the hat was presented on the catwalk with dignity and cool, with a surprising ‘toot’ on the blowers at intervals. The JFA team were very proud when Stephen Jones selected the hat as the competition winner.

A research trip to Marrakech included a visit to see the gilded plasterwork of the Saadian tombs and an escape from the hubbub of the market town to the Atlas Mountains, where we were invited into a square-set, mud-plastered Berber home to join in a wedding celebration.

Selfridges have made a short film about JFA’s design process for the marble floor in their Designer Womenswear Galleries.

The JFA team spent a day visiting the recently opened Louvre-Lens. Designed by SANAA, this low, light structure has been built on the site of a former coal mine. With a number of museum and gallery projects currently in our studio, this was a worthwhile and informative trip – and fortunately for us, the museum hosts a wonderful restaurant.

Jamie’s recent lecture as part of the ‘Talking Interiors’ series at the RCA is now available to watch on their website.

bd has reported good news about our extension to Kettle’s Yard Gallery in Cambridge. The piece focuses on the grants recently awarded by a joint funding initiative between the Culture Department and the charitable Wolfson Foundation.

‘Jamie Fobert gallery to start (11 years after he won it)’

JFA is working on a book to be published by Artifice Books.

The book is intended to convey not only the finished product of an architecture practice but also the process of design inherent in the work.

Luker House in Barnes has been awarded one of this year’s RIBA London Regional Awards.

Our congratulations go to the clients – Services Engineer Henry Luker and his wife Andrea – as well as to REM Projects Ltd (Contractor), Pole Associates (Structural Engineer) and Dickinson Joinery.

Together with Charles Saumarez Smith and Jeremy Dixon, Jamie Fobert discussed the challenges of renewal projects for cultural organisations.

Watch their discussion here.

Our transformation of the Grade II listed barns and hidden courtyards at Charleston aims to respect and honour the site’s history and special atmosphere whilst creating much needed new facilities.

Luker House in Barnes is one of the RIBA National Award Winners 2014. The house was also shortlisted for the Manser Medal.

The RIBA Jury said:

“This beautiful house is an essay in how to transform a totally unpromising site into something poetic and memorable … It is difficult to evoke the quality of visual refinement within this building. Wherever you look there are combinations of planes, surfaces and light of unusual quality.”

Jamie was invited to be the keynote speaker for the conference ‘Retrofitting during the urban transformation process’ at YEM, Turkey’s Building Information Center.

In Jamie’s lecture, ‘Retrofitting: Fabric and Form’, he described how working with heritage and conservation organizations on difficult urban sites can create the opportunity for a powerful architecture.

Luker House has been selected as one of six projects shortlisted to receive the RIBA Manser Medal for best house of 2014. The shortlist has been published by the Architect’s Journal this month which can also be read online here.

The Architect’s Journal, 4 September 2014