Month: March 2018

On 16^th February, the collective of participants of the Londonon research programme (Carl Turner Architects, Coffey Architects, Duggan Morris Architects, Gort Scott, Haptic Architects, and Mæ) assembled at the mid-point of Waterloo Bridge to celebrate the launch of the inaugural European workshop to harness the collective knowledge of those practices involved.

Londonon was formed to ask questions of how we can reach out and look beyond our small island. Londonon is a self-funded research and residency programme in cities around the world, starting in Europe. We are pooling resources to question, collaborate, make and experience, to broaden our minds, expand our reach and widen our worldview. Each Londonon practice nominates a researcher in the field, for each week long study period as we travel the globe.

The inaugural international research trip to El Ejido, led by Coffey Architects, is focussed on how light and climate shape how we make and inhabit cities. It is hoped through this approach, we are able to reveal the qualitative aspects of EL Ejido with a specific analysis of how the climate and light have defined this area as it is today. In demystifying intensification in El Ejido, Londonon can overlay relevant conditions onto London to better understand our current issues and constraints.

Read more about the research programme here.

Director Phil Coffey was recently interviewed for London Magazine, the city’s monthly glossy publication covering people, places and property.

Looking at the sunlight streaming in through the huge expanse of razor-sharp rooflights in a a modern extension, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re in southern California, or perhaps somewhere even more exotic. But each of the buildings on these pages are in London, creations of one of architecture’s rising stars, Phil Coffey.

That you can be described as a rising star at the age of 42 says something of how long it takes to establish a successful career as an architect, but Coffey and his studio have made a name for themselves transforming London’s often dark and narrow period houses into buildings so light, spacious and airy, they seem to belong somewhere else altogether. “My first thought on any project is “‘Where’s the sun?’,” Coffey says. “The sun makes spaces fresh and makes it feel like the building is alive.”

Read the rest of Phil’s interview with London Magazine here.