From Arts and Crafts to DIY

‘Where does my baggage come from?’ was a talk Ted gave in 1986. It’s a good question to keep asking on our journey of practice. One - though not the only - source for our inspiration has been the Arts and Crafts movement. The ‘Father of Arts and Crafts Architecture’ was Philip Webb, who in 1859 designed the Red House with and for William Morris. Webb's view was that architecture is ‘a common tradition of honest building’, and that architecture must be ‘mastership in building-craft developed out of contact with needs and materials’. He wrote little himself but his theories were articulated in a series of articles in 1925 by his biographer, friend and disciple W.R.Lethaby in ‘Philip Webb and his Work’. Lethaby was himself an innovative if not prolific architect - his church at Brockhampton with its unique thatched mass concrete vault was certainly honest building from first principles.

These ideas seem so out of sync with current procurement, where in spite of much good talk of integrated teams, the pressures are often to separate design and construction. With modern construction seemingly trying its best to separate design from making – at the same time as accusing architects of being detached from the process of building – the relevance of remaining grounded in the process and pleasure of making has never been greater. We have a culture within our office of self-building and DIY and we try and share successes, advice and tools. So, rather than keep this within the office I thought I’d add a thread within our blog touching on DIY.

Tom Brooksbank recently lent me a copy he’d picked up of Nomadic Furniture, 1974, by Victor Papanek and James Hennessy – ‘how to build and where to buy lightweight furniture that fold, inflates, knocks down, stacks or is disposable and can be recycled’. You can just feel the wobbliness and rough edges in most of these designs, although I particularly like this space-saving drop down desk.

IKEA has adopted these principles and made them work on a global scale, at the same time internationalising a seemingly acceptable level of wobble.

Here’s a tip for self assembly that is not wobbly and can be used to make self-build furniture composed in our beloved post-Cubist manner using floating planes and disengaged elements. Cut 6mm threaded stud to suitable lengths. Cut a slot in one end wide enough to take a screw driver bit. Set up your pieces with spacers and cramp together - it’s a good idea to prefinish them. Drill an undersized hole of 5 or 5.5mm depending on the material and drive the stud in. Remove the spacers and hey presto!

Here are some bedside units I made 15 years ago using this technique:

…. and more recently a unit for my daughter using some offcuts of shuttering ply.

Mary Lou Arscott taught me this tip, using it for door handle details in our self-built cubicles in office. I copied it for handles on wardrobe doors that turn light softwood framing into a rigid beam. Global wobble? – no thanks!