INSIGHTS
21
Sarah Wigglesworth Architects PRACTICE PROFILE
James Parker spoke to Sarah Wigglesworth about life running a successful practice from a pioneering, sustainable HQ which comprises two conjoined buildings – her office and her own home – and is an embodiment of her ethical approach
S
arah Wigglesworth is an award-winning architect who has been celebrated for a variety of community-focused projects that push sustainability as well as joyfulness to the foreground. Founding
Sarah Wigglesworth Architects (SWA) in 1994, her strong ethical approach remains the fulcrum around which the practice’s work revolves, and her presence as its driving force is hard to overplay. Wigglesworth long had one foot in academia, beginning teaching before she started her own practice in 1985. She and partner, architect Jeremy Till, were the first architects to be awarded the Fulbright Arts Fellowship, a bursary to study in the US in 1991, and she was given an MBE in 2003. In 2012 she was the first woman to receive the Royal Designer for Industry award for architecture from the Royal Society of Arts. The very fabric of her firm’s premises is intimately woven into
Wigglesworth’s life. She and Jeremy designed an ultra-sustainable straw bale building, completed in 2001 on a site next to the railway line in Islington, north London, which is occupied by the practice office and is also her home. ADF chats to the architect at what doubles as her dining and conference table, the designer having playfully created an impressive double-height meeting space that keeps its dual role close to its chest. There’s a crocheted bull’s head on the wall, mannequins sitting on a mezzanine, and pictures on the walls, but little else; the rest of the dwelling is located behind a sliding plywood screen.
The artworks and materials hint at the values which drive her and
SWA: she exemplifies having the courage of your convictions, sustainability, and craft. However the space negotiates between her domestic role and her position in the practice; it’s part of a long-standing conversation and commitment around addressing gender issues. “There is an acknowledgment there are other sides of your life and other duties you have to fulfil, she tells ADF. “I thought that’s a really important issue to try and talk about.” Wigglesworth is unafraid to tackle head-on several of the more awkward issues which continue to beset the profession and the wider construction industry. These range from what she sees as clients taking advantage of a “buyer’s market”, to how women can still be treated in client meetings. She asserts: “As a female, your ability is always called into question.”
ADF DECEMBER 2018
STOCK ORCHARD STREET The combined practice HQ and home was completed in 2001
Sarah has retained a strong interest in research, originating from her 12 years teaching at the architectural department at Kingston University to latterly, at the University of Sheffield. She says of Kingston, “it was an opportunity to experiment and work with really great people, and explore and test ideas. I got exposed to all kinds of ways of thinking.” This helped formulate her then innovative ethos as an architect, of combining “an interest in both the everyday and in sustainability – neither were very big on anyone’s horizons.”
Keeping it small Wigglesworth admits she wasn’t comfortable in commercially- oriented practices, where she found “a lack of intellectual debate,” and a “hostile response to academia and ideas.” She left her first job when she was offered a part-time teaching position, which she combined with working at RMJM. She founded her first firm in the late 80s, working out of her north London attic with an architect friend. “If I hadn’t set up at that point I’d probably never have done it.” She says she built the practice
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