The joy of designing and building appropriately

The term “sustainability” is being used to an ever-greater extent, not only in the architectural world. Whether it is a grassroots project constructing low-cost housing with local materials or a global corporate player greenwashing its operations, both will happily make liberal use of a poorly defined term that the climate crisis has rightly pushed to the top of the human agenda.

作为一名在乌干达工作的建筑师，我一直在努力寻找具有环保意识和地域意义的设计和建筑方式，我对可持续发展的标签越来越警惕。虽然我对可持续发展的理解一直是整体的、定性的——不是基于高科技优化、数字运算或碳抵消——但正是这种概念的模糊性促使我寻找更根本、更有条理的东西。它让我发现了我对“适当”这个概念的热爱。

The starting point for my understanding of “appropriate architecture” would be a design posture of “creative observation”; context is everything, and a design needs to be discovered, not invented. The simple question, “what is appropriate?” can be applied to virtually every design decision and has a clarity to it that is often missing from discussions around sustainability.

Appropriate means getting the priorities right at the very beginning of the design process

The answers will almost always be gradual, relative, practical and rarely uniform and unquestionable. Appropriateness is about finding balance more than coming to radical answers.

One of the many questions an architect must find an answer to early on in a project is, “what are the right materials for this project?” An architect thinking about what was appropriate would approach this issue by exploring the vicinity of the site, by looking for available materials nearby and by understanding what the locals are using for their buildings, and why – it is that simple.

As is embracing the need to utilise materials with low embodied energy. A product that is manufactured with high amounts of energy or comes from far away will rarely be a more appropriate choice than stone from the locality or earth excavated on the site itself. No cooling technique will be smarter than orienting a building correctly to the sun and wind.

A design philosophy of contextualism opens the designer’s mind to a location or to a problem

人类已经发明了如此多的创新技术——空调、隔热、太阳能玻璃——但最有力的答案永远是正确地确定建筑的方向，并设计出能够应对阳光、风和雨的外墙。

Appropriate means getting the priorities right at the very beginning of the design process, rather than having to fix a preventable problem at a later point. Certainly, in an African context where operational budgets tend to be low to non-existent, “passive” and “low-tech” will almost always be preferable to solutions that are based on complex technologies or imported solutions.

But the desire to find appropriate answers is not limited to construction technology and engineering. Every location, every user, every function, every social or cultural context can be approached with a similar mindset.

A design philosophy of contextualism opens the designer’s mind to a location or to a problem. It encourages spatial organisms to grow organically, rather than for objects to be manufactured, and for spaces to emerge rather than sculptural statements to be imposed.

It is therefore important to find an appropriate type of procurement, too - one that is in harmony with design, location and economy

It is almost self-evident that such attitude is not limited to “sustainable architecture in Africa” and would apply whether one designs for refugees in Uganda or for stockbrokers in Frankfurt. A contextual design philosophy will work everywhere on the globe – poor or rich, hot or cold, rural or urban – but the successful implementation of projects does require an approach that is tailored to the local economy.

It is therefore important to find an appropriate type of procurement, too – one that is in harmony with design, location and economy. In the case of East Africa such tailoring is largely related to a lack of skilled builders and contractors.

Within the formal sector, the procurement system most common to Uganda is a traditional general contractor arrangement, with architect and consultants acting as the client’s agents during the design and implementation phase of the project.

This system deliberately keeps designers and builders apart, based on the idea that each party controls and regulates the other, thereby protecting the interests of a non-technical client. At its core, it is a system based on adversity with financial gain the glue that binds the parties together.

Seen in this way, it is a pretty poor starting point for any creative process to take place and, having spent most of my professional life implementing projects under this type of procurement, it is my view that good projects emerge despite rather than because of it.

In 2019, this led to the creation of Localworks, a multi-disciplinary design and build collaborative

Over the years, our team deployed numerous strategies to improve our way of delivering, with varying levels of success and frustration. While our desire to design and experiment never suffered, we did eventually come to the realisation that this traditional procurement approach was not benefiting the client or ourselves and that, if not addressed boldly, there was an acute risk of losing the joy of building.

In 2019, this led to the creation of Localworks, a multi-disciplinary design and build collaborative. Under what we refer to as the “master builder” approach, designers and builders are now part of the same team and deliver turnkey projects from beginning to end.

Localworks诞生于“如何”与“做什么”同样重要的意识;设计和建造一座建筑的过程本身就是一件艺术品;and that art tends not to grow out of an adversarial, profit-driven relationship, but out of a genuine desire to create, collaborate and produce something of real value.

But more critically, what we do is again based on the most important resource an architect can draw from: the joy of building

我们相信，如果我们更多地关注设计和建造的过程，如果我们把所有的精力和想象力都投入到创造一个富有成效的创造性过程中，也会有更大的可能性获得高质量的结果。

We elevated designers to become builders, and builders became part of the design team. 1:1 mock-ups are now often built together – right in the studio where they are later turned into technical drawings – and architects and engineers are directly involved in the execution of their own fabrication drawings by supporting the craftsmen on site.

While still early days, we feel that we may have found an appropriate model of delivering our type of sustainable architecture for this region. But more critically, what we do is again based on the most important resource an architect can draw from: the joy of building.