Residency as Method

I am interested in side-stepping the traditional procurement methods in architecture. I have instead been developing an approach to work that comes from research and direct engagement with materials and collaborators, distantly separated from profit-led development. This led me to working with small cultural organisations in a grassroots manner, an approach I have procured through residencies.

Generally during residencies, an artist benefits from new experience but often struggles to create lasting meaningful impact ‘on the ground.’ Too often they remain extractive. Rather, my method seeks to develop an approach at the confluence of two streams of research: the relationship between the organisation itself within the building it occupies, and the cycles of material and waste streams in the region.

During the residency I produce a kind of architectural feasibility study for ‘clients’ that all-too-often occupy unsatisfactory premises. Single glazed windows, broken heating systems, poor air quality, less than ideal locations in squatted properties or rentals that they struggle to make work to their requirements. This study then leads to a new permanent architectural intervention that grapples with these complexities. The intervention is seen as a gift to the institution that allows them some agency over their environment, hopefully a salve to some of the issues that the organisation would have not otherwise had the means to address.

In recent years this method has led to, amongst other things, the renovation of a studio in Heerlen (NL), the introduction of a replacement heating system as electrical radiator benches in Belfast (UK/IE), more heated benches in Valga (EE), and the construction of a wayfinding lamppost in rammed earth for a campsite in Groede (NL).