From rural Scottish highlands to the tropical climate of Costa Rica, our speakers will explore a series of projects designed to respond, and live in harmony within their own unique landscapes.
Join us Friday, 21 May at 12.30pm (BST) on a journey to these unique projects supported by presentations from the project architects. They will share their experiences, and challenges of resourcing and applying materials in remote settings with consideration for local climate and use.
Host
Kate Darby is an RIBA chartered architect and principal of Kate Darby Architects. She studied architecture at the Bartlett and the Architectural Association and has combined practice with teaching since 1997. She has been leading an MArch design studio at WSA since 2012, looking at the connection between materials and place through the lens of making. In 2018 she started the Local Adaptation unit with Gianni Botsford.
Speakers
Piers Taylor is an architect and principal of Invisible Studio. He is the founder of Studio in the Woods, where students test ideas through making at 1:1 alongside practising architects. Taylor also founded (with Martin Self) the Architectural Association graduate program AA Design and Make – where students spend 16 months designing and constructing buildings at the AA’s Hooke Park campus. Invisible Studio have recently won a 2017 National RIBA Award for their Tree Management Centre at Westonbirt Arboretum - a project that also won three regional RIBA Awards.
Taylor sits on the South West Design Review Panel, and is a regular contributor to a number of architectural journals and is also one of the leading architectural broadcasters for the BBC. Taylor has held a number of academic positions including Unit Master at the Architectural Association and the University of Cambridge and has delivered numerous lectures nationally and internationally.
Giani Botsford is originally from Venice, Italy and founded London-based practice Gianni Botsford Architects in 1996. He studied at Kingston University and the Architectural Association, London, in Professor John Frazer’s Evolutionary Architecture Unit. Botsford has taught at the Architectural Association, London Metropolitan University, and the Welsh School of Architecture, and is a founding group leader of the annual Studio in the Woods. He received the RIBA’s Lubetkin Prize and Architectural Record Design Vanguard in 2008.
Iain MacLeod is an Edinburgh-based architect who runs his own small practice and is co-founder of Bothy Project, a network of small-scale, off-grid art residency spaces in distinct and diverse locations around Scotland where residents are able to use their time to explore creativity, landscape and living simply. The Bothy Project received an RSA award in 2011. McLeod graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2006 and spent the next fifteen years working for practices both in the UK and internationally. In 2019 he set up his own architecture practice, Studio IMA, focussing on design led creative and residential sector projects across the UK. McLeod is currently working on a range of products for Bothy Stores, the commercial arm of Bothy Project, in response to the demand for multipurpose small-scale structures suitable for a range of situations.
