THE LAST WORD
MATTHEW AUSTIN
Virtual versus Reality
In this digital era are we holding on to the craft of designing and making, and does real
experience outweigh the value of the virtual?
By MATTHEW AUSTIN, director, Austin Design Works
esign process is a big part of what we do at
Austin Design Works. By this we mean not
only the consideration of place, setting,
vernacular, weather and so on, but of the way in
which the materials of our projects are brought
together, and by whom. For us the creative process
often begins with the imagination processed
through pen on paper.
As a third generation architect I was brought up
to appreciate the craft of architecture, the reality of
what materials can do; how they look, feel and go
together. My sister Rachael and I run our landscape
and architecture practice in Gloucestershire with
this background in the craft of designing buildings
and landscapes, and as pre-Millennials we are the
generation to have trained through the transition
from drawing board to computer.
Growing up on a nearly perpetual building site
as a child meant that by the age of about 12 I was
fully au fait with the world of construction. Rachael
and I would often be collected from school with our
father’s familiar request: “Jjust need to pop by this
site on the way home, do you mind holding the end
of the tape?” This gave us an inherent – inherited
– language in the way of building, and of the people
who build.
In recent years I have had the opportunity
to interview many potential post graduate
architectural recruits, and I have noticed that with
many, the practical skills and ability to think about
scale, materials and how things go together is
becoming less evident. Whilst the ability to create
3D models is highly valuable as a tool, this should
not be at the detriment of logical and creative
thinking, and holds an inherent risk of copy-and-
paste abridgement of due process. The issue, as
I see it, is that the wish to evolve a design project
at speed into a virtual model, relying on object
D
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Landscape Insight | December 2017
libraries and pre-packaged products, produces a
sameness that is evident in current design practice
and is perhaps missing out the thinking and
rationalising part of the design process.
As a relatively small design practice ofering
the combination of architecture and landscape
architecture, we have a cross-over and hybridisation
of skills, which means a deeper than usual
understanding of each other’s disciplines. For us it’s
clear that buildings are not isolated objects, placed
onto a site, but an important part of the landscape
they inhabit and this integration ofers wonderful
opportunity. From a design sense we’re dealing
in the same essentials – light, shade, volume,
enclosure, threshold, touch, view, connection, smell
etc. We are just using diferent tools and operating
to diferent necessities.
As consultants we are entrusted by our clients
to assimilate their requirements, their wishes and
aspirations, and lead them through the journey of
cr