From James Stirling to Spitalfields, Chris Dyson opens up to Ben Flatman about the importance of place and how he grew his practice organically
建筑师经常在他们的工作中谈论位置的重要性，但很少有人像Chris Dyson那样将这一概念整体地融入到他们的实践中。他生活、工作在伦敦东部的斯皮塔菲尔德(Spitalfields)社区，并完全参与其中。他的许多委托都是通过他在该地区建立的复杂的商业联系和友谊网络产生的。
We meet in his office in Spitalfields, on the corner of Fashion Street, which he leases from a long-time collaborator and client. The building is a showcase for the practice, Chris Dyson Architects, but also a fascinating window into Dyson’s own personality and refreshingly playful approach to architecture.
It’s a converted pub, much knocked about and abused over the years, but now lovingly restored to something reminiscent of but quirkily updated from its Victorian heyday. This lively, actively curated hybrid space manages to be an office, coffee shop and community meeting space all rolled into one.
Characteristically of Dyson’s work, there are no strict rules at play. What comes through is a love of old buildings, and a joyful disregard for dull conventions around colour, materials and programme.
Dyson was born in the West Ridings of Yorkshire but, due to his father’s job with Lloyds Bank, soon found himself moving from Solihull to Guildford and later to London. The peripatetic lifestyle didn’t suit him, and he asked his parents if he could go to boarding school instead. He proceeded to spend several happy years at St John’s School, Leatherhead, where he found the close friendships and stability he had craved.
The importance of belonging to a place and being embedded in its community is something that is key to Dyson’s way of working. His life and work are intimately intertwined: he has lived in Spitalfields since 1990 and knows many of his neighbours personally, as friends or clients, and often both.
戴森对建筑的兴趣可以追溯到他上学的时候。他的美术老师发现了他的天赋，建议他把这当作一种职业。在20世纪80年代初，可供选择的英国建筑学院要少得多，戴森在乘坐公共交通工具前往参观之前，直接联系了其中的大多数学院。
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他在牛津理工大学定居下来，在杰里科和考利路住了三年，收获颇多。社交生活包括在牛津大学与朋友们愉快地交往，欣赏牛津大学的历史环境，庭院和回廊，以及古老和现代建筑的丰富融合。
Oxford helped instil in him a love of historic buildings – formative experiences still very much in evidence, with conservation architecture and creative reuse being a mainstay of his practice’s work. The other key carry-over from this time is a sense in Dyson’s work that architecture is not constrained by preconceived ideas or dogmas. The wave of postmodernism had already passed, leaving behind a more pluralistic school, open to varied influences. Dyson may not see himself as a postmodernist, but his work fully embraces the freedom that postmodernism provided to explore diverse ideas.
After a year out at Levitt Bernstein, the Mackintosh in Glasgow then beckoned for diploma. There Dyson was taught by Isi Metzstein and enjoyed the challenge of a far more theoretically orthodox environment. Corbusier and Kahn were the touchstones, not that Dyson found this in any way oppressive.
正是在麦克，戴森学会了“研究是重要的和有益的。它给你的思想施肥。”他告诉我，在格拉斯哥的时光如何帮助他抵制了先入为主的想法，而是“倾听场地和地方的想法”。这些想法一直影响着他今天的方法，历史和背景始终是实践工作中的关键考虑因素。
I ask whether recent discussion around an abusive culture at the Bartlett chimes with his own experiences. “There were ‘forceful characters’ at Glasgow and sometimes crits could be intimidating, but never abusive,” he tells me. “I found those lessons helpful. If someone doesn’t like it, the response isn’t to yell or cry about it. Respond rationally.”
当许多架构师从暴击系统中脱颖而出时，戴森似乎得到了一个完全不同的教训。戴森的理念不是为了一个设计而死在沟里，而是接受批评，然后以一种适用于所有人的方法回来:“吸收、倾听和以一种创造性的方式前进的能力是一种非常有用的技能，我今天仍然在使用它。”
Working with the environment you are in … is a continuous process of negotiation
He gives an example from a current project in Spitalfields. Tenter Ground is the former home and studio of Tracey Emin, and Dyson is converting it to multioccupancy residential use. The design team had come up with an idea for an undulating roofscape, but the community and planners weren’t supportive. Dyson says his team were unhappy to have had their idea knocked back, but he told them to go back and try a different approach. “All we had to do was come up with a different solution: we did it, and we got planning. That is working with the environment you are in. It is a continuous process of negotiation.”
他的妻子萨拉(Sarah)是他在牛津认识的，后来和他一起去了格拉斯哥。在那里，他们在一栋廉租房里买了一套公寓，他利用业余时间对公寓进行翻新。再次强调，感觉在一个地方扎根和定居的重要性体现得非常明显。戴森说，在他早期的家庭生活中，购买自己的房子(这是许多年轻建筑师所没有的)的机会是至关重要的，同时也提供了一个创造性实验和逃避的地方。
戴森在格拉斯哥的导师Ulla Wilke曾是斯图加特国家美术馆的项目建筑师，她认为戴森的图纸适合他加入James Stirling, Michael Wilford和Associates公司。尽管从来没有超过20人，但该公司在菲茨罗伊广场(Fitzroy Square)的办公室里管理着各种各样的项目。
戴森在詹姆斯•斯特林英年早逝前不久加入公司，斯特林的照片蒙太奇仍然装饰在他位于时尚街的办公室一楼会议室的墙上。他显然很享受职业生涯的这段时间。他说:“我们当时名声很好，但办公室很小。与之同时代的还有查理·萨瑟兰和查理·赫西，紧随希拉·奥唐奈和约翰·图米之后。“斯特灵喜欢苏格兰人和爱尔兰人，”戴森告诉我。
Stirling’s death hit the practice hard. “We were all in shock,” he says, but Dyson stayed on, continuing to work closely with Michael Wilford on a wide range of projects and eventually becoming an associate.
It was around this time that the practice’s work really took off. “All of a sudden the clients seemed to want to build what we had on the drawing boards,” he tells me. He was there for the transition from hand-drawing to CAD, and worked on the Berlin Embassy and the Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore, a project that he says “got us right through the early 1990s recession”.
When I ask Dyson what he learned during this time, he replies by telling me: “What I didn’t learn in that environment was about the business of architecture. But I did learn an awful lot about architectural design theory and history, place, and the importance of hierarchy and order – it was wonderful. Learning about how the work of an architect requires tolerance was really important. A lot of those ideals I’ve carried through into my current practice.”
From time to time Michael [Wilford] got a bit cheesed off about it – him being the business partner and Jim [Stirling] being the lead on desigm
On the pairing of Stirling and Wilford, he says: “Michael was a good business partner – they were a good pair.” But Dyson notes that the split responsibilities could be a source of tension. “I think from time to time Michael got a bit cheesed off about it – him being the business partner and Jim being the lead on design, but that was between them.”
It was while working on a project at the Tate Liverpool to remodel the upper floor of the sculpture gallery that he first got a taste for thinking creatively about reusing existing buildings. Dyson describes this as “something really interesting that connects with what I do now, in terms of how you can creatively and sensitively adapt a heritage building for new uses”. This has become a key focus for the practice, with recent assignments including the role of lead heritage and conservation architects on the Bishopsgate Goodsyard scheme.
Eventually Wilford closed the London practice but continued to operate a Stuttgart office, in partnership with Manuel Schupp. Dyson stayed on and found himself commuting to Germany. He was spending the week in Stuttgart and coming back to see his family for the weekend on Friday night, but soon realised this wasn’t sustainable.
Giles Martin (now a director at Wilkinson Eyre) helped set up a job with Terry Farrell, and a directorship followed from 2000 to 2003. While at Farrells, Dyson worked on several large hotel and office projects in China, as well as the Greenwich Peninsula masterplan. “I enjoyed working in the London environment again and learning from Terry’s encyclopaedic knowledge of London. He knew so much,” says Dyson.
但戴森已经迫不及待地想要开创自己的事业。“我想这要从吉姆·斯特林的死说起。我总是对自己说，我想以自己的方式成为一名建筑师。我看过两个查理(赫西和萨瑟兰)这样做，我想‘我能做到’——但我花了更长的时间才达到同样的水平。”
Then the opportunity arose to work with Wilford again on a proposed Museum of Africa in Stellenbosch, South Africa. It was a nine-month-long piece of work and, although the project never came to fruition, Dyson says: “It gave me the confidence that I could do it. After the project stopped, I was completely convinced I was going to be able to run a practice on my own.”
戴森在斯特灵和威尔福德的时候，在斯皮塔菲尔德买了他的第一套房子，他和妻子把它命名为11½福涅尔(他们不喜欢11B的发音)。从那以后，他在同一个小区域内搬了两次家，每次都小心翼翼地将一栋18世纪的房子重新装修，并赋予它新的生命。
Spitalfields has come to be central in Dyson’s life and work. He moved in at a time when many of the houses were still in a very poor state of repair and he has been one of the key figures in restoring many of them. But what is clear in speaking to him is that he’s not just invested in the bricks and mortar.
I am fortunate to live in an area of regeneration and my immediate neighbours came to me with projects
It’s the life and soul of the place which has seeped into him. He is just as animated by the work of the local community groups (who regularly co-opt the ground floor of his office for meetings) as by the buildings. “Having bought a house in the area because I loved the heritage and the architecture, the practice grew organically, largely as a consequence of a lot of recommendations.”
“Having walked the plank, I swam in the sea that happened to be Spitalfields,” he tells me. “I am fortunate to live in an area of regeneration and my immediate neighbours came to me with projects.”
Initially the work was piecemeal and unorthodox. “I was working on my own house, and I knew the contractors who could do the work. So I was sourcing suppliers and subcontractors for other people,” he tells me. In some cases Dyson was almost acting as the main contractor. “It was quite exhausting. I could only do it because it was on my street and neighbourhood, but it did get me established.”
The transition to a firmly grounded architectural practice was not immediate. It took time for Dyson to find his business feet. “I’d never come across the business of running an architecture studio until I was 40. It had always been done by someone else. I’d never been involved in running a practice,” he says.
I used to fret for days about whether the fee I’d put down was appropriate
Quoting fees was an early and intimidating hurdle. “I used to fret for days about whether the fee I’d put down was appropriate,” Dyson says. “Still today it’s always a bit of a challenge. However, I’ve got more confident at it. And after a while you know what a project will cost in terms of salaries and overheads and what the fee needs to be to make a little bit of profit.”
戴森告诉我，有些问题一次又一次地出现，比如对拟议计划的反对，以及人们不喜欢改变他们的环境。“学会对这些人保持耐心，学会用简单的语言解释自己，而不是显得冷漠:这些都是每个想要经营自己的实践的建筑师真正需要接受的教训。”
我问他职业生涯的动力是什么。“我真正欣赏的是作为一名建筑师的公民特质。我喜欢私人客户，但这些私人项目不一定能得到广大观众的欣赏，”戴森说。“对我来说，作为一名建筑师的乐趣是能够真正地建造和交付，并看到人们喜欢它——例如水晶宫公园，(我们)在那里与委员会密切合作了多年。”
On the subject of company structure and ownership, Dyson tells me: “I have tried the equity route, and it has not quite worked out the way I had imagined it. I am now back in as sole owner of the company, but I am open to other routes and have a good senior team.”
Like many practice principals with an eye to the future, he is keen to address the issue of staff advancement and reward. “We’ve had a testing two years, but we’re now busier than ever. I want to reach out and reward those people who have been loyal. I’d like to create that structure that allows people to see there is a future,” he says. Dyson talks of growing the practice: “We’ve got 20 or so people, and it feels like a luxury to be able to do that.”
But Dyson also sees reward as coming with responsibilities. “At the same time, I want those senior people to realise that they have to win the work.” Dyson spends a lot of his time winning work but would like to see his team doing more of this too: “Go to that party, schmooze, or whatever you need to do. I want them to get out there and bat for the team.”
On the subject of practice ethos, he says: “It’s about creating a culture and a business culture that underpins the creativity of the office.
“I’ve learned to say no. I think it’s a really important thing to say no politely. And even suggest another practice that you think might be better suited. If you do it well, it reflects well on you too.”
我们的会面结束后，戴森带我在附近转了一圈。几乎不可能不碰到另一个戴森的项目。我们参观了最近刚刚开始规划的Tenter Ground，以及最近刚刚完成的Cobb街的私人住宅和画廊项目。他最近为心理治疗专业出版商卡纳克书店(Karnac Books)在街角开了一家书店。
最后，我们来到了戴森的家。这借鉴了Soane的做法，并使用一种轻松和创造性的方法来修复，创造了一个完全当代但历史上同情18世纪斯皮塔菲尔德的更新。它既让人放松，又让人兴奋，很有它的感觉。很像戴森本人。
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