Modern Masters: Niall Maxwell from the Rural Office for Architecture
“My wife Helen and I moved from London to Wales in the early Noughties, as a kind of working gap year to help a friend develop the historic port of Cardigan. At the end of the year we decided to stay, so bought a farm, started a family and founded the Rural Office for Architecture.
“When we arrived, we didn’t know Wales very well. Settling in a predominantly Welsh-speaking area dominated by farming and tourism, we felt quite out of context, so to speak! We had no real experience of the area, and a sense of having no point of reference. The stark shift from London to rural Wales made me re-evaluate my previous ideas on place, home, community and personal identity.
“This was the starting point from which we developed our architecture practice.
“I think the name of our practice – Rural Office for Architecture – has shaped the types of projects we do. We initially chose it to reflect where we worked, rather than what we worked on. It just happens that clients came to us with rural projects, and we’ve built our reputation with this type of work. I’m happy with that.
“Rural Office for Architecture’s early projects were designed to provide an antidote to the west-coast pebbledash, and to challenge people’s ideas of what contemporary architecture in provincial Wales could be. Local residents, and the local market, started to take note and things have grown from there.
“We work on projects across the UK now. We’ve got projects on the go in Norfolk and Suffolk, but are also adapting our approach to offer a new take on work in London, Cardiff and Carmarthen – all of which are decidedly not rural!
“One of my absolute favourite projects was Emily Erlam’s barn in north Norfolk. Emily is a landscape designer, and totally understood the value of design. She and her family were really immersed in the process the whole way through.
“The early stages of a project are what I enjoy the most. I love the dialogue you have with clients; there’s an intimacy to the conversations as you work together to find a solution that will fit with their lifestyle and needs. It’s a really personal journey that you share, and there’s a responsibility that comes with that process.
“We live in strange times. As far back as 2000, when we started to think about leaving London for a rural life, we realised there were aspects of modern life that we didn’t enjoy. We were looking for a life that was connected to nature, that was driven in third gear and that gave us time and control away from the pressures of consumption and status anxiety. We’ve since learnt that this isn’t a physical state … it’s affected by your age and responsibilities, but it’s also completely connected to the spaces and places you inhabit.
“Our desire to move away from materialism and consumption is also at the centre of our design process. Building is a horrendously wasteful and expensive practice, but there are innovators out there trying to change this. We’re focusing on energy consumption at the moment – we’re currently building our own Passivhaus at our farm to test how architecture will look and behave in the future.”
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