Design Build Practice

Lettice Drake

Last Night Lettice Drake of Practice Architecture gave the second talk of the Lecture@SAUL series hosted by Peter Carroll. 



Lettice is about to enter her fourth year of study at the London Metropolitan University, but has already made a name for herself with Paloma Gormley and Henry Stringer for their innovative design-build projects. Together they have created Practice Architecture, a practice focused on small scale design-builds with an emphasis on pragmatic design. In just a few years they have taken to completion 6 projects are about to start another later this year. 

Students enjoy their creations 

As part of her visit a day long workshop was ran with the second year student at SAUL to design through building, pieces of furniture form found materials. Together they came up with 6 designs ranging from a rather odd looking rocking chair to a very comfortable reclined bench. All of the designs could be easily folded up or disassembled for easy transport. These designs were on display and formed a backdrop for the talk. 


Lettice started her talk by explaining about the inspiration for their practice and the types of projects that inspired her work. One such project was the Cineroleum, a pop up cinema which occupied a derelict filling station on Clerkenwell Road in London. The build was made primarily out of found and donated materials. Created by a group of young artists and architects, the project was seen as a frontier into the re-thinking of how our unused urban space can become of benefit to the local community. 

Lettice and her captive audience 

We were then treated to a look at Practice Architecture's first project before Henry joined the practice, Franks Cafe. Commissioned by the Hannah Barry Gallery, which occupies the top two floors of an under-used multistory car park in Peckham. The brief was to create a cafe space on the roof of the car park for the gallery to accompany a sculpture exhibition. 


In order to create the space they ratchet strapped a bright red canopy onto a frame of reclaimed scaffolding boards and around the entire floor plate of the structure. The  project was constructed by Lettice and Paloma as well as unskilled volunteers working and living on site over 25 days. Lettice also described the process of making the practices' South Kilburn Studios, Yards Theatre and BT5 Auditorium projects before opening the floor to questions. 


Many questions were asked about the logistics of acquiring sites for such projects as well as the cost of management and the use of reclaimed materials. Lettice explained how within their practice they have been approached by clients due to word of mouth from their Franks Cafe project. She also mentioned that the South Kilburn Studios project, which involved the conversion of an office building had a meager budget of £10,000. 

Peter Carrol asks Lettice about her work

Next weeks lecture@SAUL lecture will be about Tullamore Community Arts Centre by Peter Carroll of A2  Architects.