The Modern House meets ... Graham Bizley

The Modern House meets Graham Bizley
The Modern House meets Graham Bizley
The Modern House meets Graham Bizley

This week we caught up with Graham Bizley, director of Prewett Bizley Architects whose London and Somerset-based practice specialises in high quality architecture with a strong emphasis on environmental design.

Alongside developing his own renowned practice over the past ten years, Graham also designed and built two houses for his own occupation, both strikingly different they offer a unique insight into his approach to residential architecture.

What inspired your interest in Modern architecture and design?
My dad liked Modern design and we always lived in modern houses. He was an engineer so I was brought up with a sense of excitement about innovation and with the Modernist belief that technology could make the world a better place. He made a cine film in the 1960s driving round in his Triumph Herald filming the new buildings in Croydon which I recently rediscovered.

If we could arrange a house swap for you, is there a house or apartment block in the UK that you’d go for?
For a country retreat I’d go to Alison & Peter Smithsons’ Upper Lawn Pavilion in Wiltshire. In the city it would have to be somewhere gritty and urban like the house by William Russell on Bacon Street. Both these buildings have a concrete structure that gives the interior a primitive feel, as if they were built around something that was there before.

Tell us about the house you grew up in.
I lived in quite a few houses, but when I was 10 my parents bought a plot of land in Kent and built a house for us. We had just come back from living in Alaska, so it was influenced by American houses with the living spaces upstairs and bedrooms below. They didn’t use an architect and it had plastic windows, so it wasn’t a design masterpiece, but it was built on a tight budget and my parents did a lot of the fitting out work themselves. They made a home that was particular to them and I grew up thinking that this was something I could do.

When you’re thinking about buying a house, what’s the one thing you won’t compromise on?
I have owned two houses, one in London on Newington Green and my current house in Somerset, both of which I designed and built myself, so I have never actually bought a house. If I did, I’d look for a house with a dramatic sense of space, a serene quality of light and a strong relationship to its surroundings because these are the things it is most difficult to change.

Is there a British architect or practice whose work you’re particularly excited by at the moment?
Buildings I like tend to tell a story about their construction and how they were made. A designer I really like is Michel Schranz. He comes from a carpentry background and his practice MS-DA have produced some exquisitely detailed work in which the character of the spaces is informed by the precise way particular elements have been crafted.

Who are you following on Instagram?
I don’t use Instagram that much, but two blogs I really like are socks-studio.com and diedrica.com (it’s worth translating from Spanish!). They are always finding inspiring new work and dredging up obscure gems from the past. My wife, Emily Bizley, is an interior designer so I like keeping an eye on what she’s up to, too – @emilybizleyint

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