A Conversation with Kevin Carmody and Andy Groarke 

By David Chipperfield

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DC: British architects of my generation, and even the following one, had to find opportunities abroad to build up a portfolio when we started. I wonder whether that has really changed for your generation? My sense is that the UK is still a difficult place to establish an architectural practice. 

Andy Groarke: Our generation set up just before the global recession. At that point there were plenty of opportunities in the UK and in London. There were competitions, but these were mainly overseas. That all changed after the recession. So we had to equip ourselves with very unusual tactics to get work and to make work. We made some very unusual projects through that period, borne out of unusual circumstances, which are arguably on the margins of conventional architecture, including for example memorials, exhibitions and temporary projects. 

Do you think it would have made a difference if you had started at a different time?

Kevin Carmody: I think so. The hubris of development in London during the late stages of the economic super-boom went largely unquestioned by developers (and architects). I would say young practices such as ours found it relatively easy to get a particular type of work at that time; I think most of our projects then were for high-end fit-outs and things like that. They were small projects which we enjoyed immensely at the time and they helped us develop a confidence in our craft, but they didn’t tend to lead to any further opportunities to make public or civic projects. 

That’s what I mean. Small private jobs have always been there. The question is how do you get larger or civic commissions, if that’s where your interests lie?

KC: We realised that you need to employ a multiplicity of strategies and tactics in order to make work.

Yes, but what interests me is how else do architectural practices start out in this country, because you cannot rely entirely on the competition process.

AG: We agree. Just after the recession we were fortunate enough to be able to work on some collaborations with artists and the art world. The influence of the art world has certainly changed over our generation and I think we benefitted from that. There’s a certain like-mindedness between ‘client’ and architect.

KC: We found a certain expediency &mdash a common language in the experience of things and spaces. And there is a bit of mutual respect, as you are working in the applied arts.

AG: I think you’re right. Working on the early projects with artists was incredibly invigorating, and there were always quick turn-arounds. And in a sense they were our first projects in the public realm, even though we couldn’t claim creative authorship for them. Antony Gormley’s Blind Light pavilion and Carsten Höller’s Double Club were particularly influential projects for us. Working with these artists was like completing a number of intense apprenticeships, learning from masters of very different forms of spatial practice to our own architectural one.

BLIND LIGHT EXHIBITION. Antony Gormley. Hayward Gallery, London. 2007

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