i realised i

couldnt do it by
myself this time

Kathryn Findlay is back after a five-year hiatus, redefining her practice

with a collaborative approach, says Rory Olcayto. Portrait by Maja Flink
Try this. Fire up Google Earth, type in Doha
and watch as the planet spins round to the
capital of Qatar. Pan up until you meet the
coastline, then trace a line upwards along
Qatars sandy beaches. Youll know when
to stop. There do you see it? Four radiating
wings that spiral outwards from a central
hub. It looks like a UFO or a high-tech
weapons base. In truth, its a royal villa built
for the wife of the Qatari Emir. Stranger still,
it was originally planned for the green fields
of Grafton Hall in Cheshire. This is Ushida
Findlay Architects Grafton New Hall, a
2002 RIBA competition-winning scheme
for a 21st-century country house with a
twist. Its the sand-dune version of Grafton,
says Kathryn Findlay, who is now relaunching
her Edinburgh-based practice after five years
of quiet toil.
If Ushida Findlay hadnt gone bust in
2004, resorting to the internet to catch sight
of the practices work wouldnt be necessary.
Alongside Grafton New Hall, which failed
to entice an off-plan buyer, the practice had
several UK projects lined up at the time,
including two large-scale public buildings
in Bury St Edmunds, a visitors centre in
Hastings and a Maggies Centre in Wishaw,
near Glasgow. Another stunning house in
26

Doha, designed for the Qatari minister

of culture and shown at the 2004 Venice
Biennale, was also planned. But Ushida
Findlay folded, citing cash-flow problems, and
only a tiny poolhouse in south-east England,
Grafton-on-Gulf and a Glasgow housing
project that prompted the practices 1999
relocation from Japan were built.
Findlay went on to lead a research team
at Dundee University, Fieldwork, as professor
of design, but has since committed entirely
to practice, with Fieldwork refashioned as
a commercial research arm. One project,
commissioned in 2000 and completed last
year, bridges Findlays hiatus: Poolhouse 2,
a thatched extension that links a converted
barn and farmhouse in the Chilterns (see pages
30-37). Along with Park House, a grand-scale
eco-home in Preston, Poolhouse 2 signals
Ushida Findlays new business approach not
in form or aesthetic, as both projects build on
the practices unique organic modernism, but
in the way they are conceived and delivered.
Through collaboration, explains Findlay, who
names RHWL Architects principal director
Geoff Mann and Scottish firm Holmes
Partnership as her new conspirators.
Findlays reputation is huge and
global. On graduating from Londons >>
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27

Profile: Kathryn Findlay

Profile: Kathryn Findlay

Clockwise from
below Ushida
Findlays villa for the
Qatari minister of
culture; Park House

Grafton Hall,
Cheshire; A Google
Earth image of the
firms house for the
Qatari Emirs wife

prison or office in Manns words, the sharp

end of procurement is intriguing given
her methodology. I dont see architecture as
defined by walls. Its more about movement
and defining routes through a landscape, she
says, using a four-stage sketch of the Truss
House plan to explain. It resembles an apple
being eaten from within by a maggot. Its
easy to start with a box and fill it in. But if you
start with a route through a solid form, then
excavate out of it, conceptually it provides
a different starting point. Creating space
by walking and wayfinding is a legacy of
Findlays AA education and the musings
of her teachers Peter Cook and Leon van
Schaik, but also recalls the rural backdrop
to her childhood a landscape excavated
by ice-age glaciers in Forfar, Scotland.
How this might influence, say, prison
design, is open to debate, but Findlay, appalled
by government plans for Titan mega-prisons,
is taking collaboration even further than she
initially planned by writing to a career
prisoner. Its enlightening. Im learning a lot,
is all shell say of this unexpected development.
Meanwhile, at Grafton Hall, a country
house designed by neo-classical architect
Robert Adam was recently approved and has
a buyer. Adam has described the success of his
design where Findlays failed as the deathknell for experimental architecture at least
among Britains super-rich. That must have
hurt Findlay, surely. No, not at all. Robert is
a lovely man, she says. He was my planning
supervisor on the Chilterns Poolhouse. Id
love to do a project with him. <

google earth

Architectural Association (AA) in 1979, she

travelled to Japan on a scholarship and
worked with Arata Isozaki, eventually setting
up her own practice in 1987. A crop of Tokyo
townhouses startled the profession when they
were published in the early 1990s. The Truss
Wall House (1993) in particular, designed by
Findlay with her former husband and partner
Eisaku Ushida, stood out. Imagine a buildingsized fabject, or rapid prototype, that blends
Victor Horta with MC Escher and the spline
modelling curves created by 3D software. A
stark white, sinewy concrete bubble, Truss
Wall House seems to fold inwards and
outwards simultaneously. The tactile, sculpted
interior feels hollowed out rather than
planned, as if carved by the motion of people
passing through. It is spectacularly beautiful.
The Qatari ministers house in Doha was a
logical progression of these ideas. Had it been
built, Findlay would today be a superstar.
Lazy observers might group Findlays work
with that of Future Systems or Zaha Hadid,
but theyd be wrong. The expressive
materiality of her buildings and her interest
in ecology place her nearer to Bruce Goff or
Antoni Gaud. Holmes chairman Harry

Phillips has long admired her work. Some

architects are shape-shifters, sculptors, but
Kathryn should not be confused with them.
There is a hard-worked rationale underlying
her designs one that works closely with
environment and materiality, he says. The
result is a complete architecture, where
everything seems absolutely right.
Clearly RHWL and Holmes have much to
gain from collaboration with Findlay. Phillips,
who guided Park House through planning,
approached her in 2007. We wanted to help
Kathryn reactivate as a practitioner by
providing her with the resources to see
projects through and access to sectors such
as health centres, prisons and schools. But we
were also keen to work on the exotic projects
that Kathryn commands. Findlay, in turn, will
benefit from the firms hardened operational
and construction nous. I realised I couldnt
do it myself this time, she says.
Mann met Findlay at Arups Christmas
lunch just over a year ago. There is a huge
amount of goodwill towards Kathryn in the
industry. Developers are excited about seeing
Kathryn build again, he says. Shes a very free
thinker. We thought we could complement
those skills and collaborate on research. Were
looking at how office design can be more
responsive to its users. We think we can do
something better than the catch-all typologies
which dominate the industry. Already Findlay
and Mann have designed a cultural institute in
Kyoto, Japan, and another poolhouse, with a
boathouse and hotel on the way.
The prospect of a Findlay-designed school,

and section evolved;

The Truss Wall House,
Tokyo, Japan; Ushida
Findlays design for a
country house at

images courtesy of ushida findlay architects

I dont see architecture

as defined by walls.
Its about movement
through a landscape

groups five separate

homes together under
a green roof; Findlays
sketch shows how the
Truss Wall House plan

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29

Poolhouse 2, The Chilterns, by Ushida Findlay Architects

crafting
the poolhouse
Ushida Findlay Architects third poolhouse sees the
practice playing with the typology, says Rory Olcayto.
Photography by Katsuhisa Kida /FOTOTECA

30

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31

Poolhouse 2, The Chilterns, by Ushida Findlay Architects

An arced peak curves

along the barn-to
farmhouse route that
defines the plan

32

Discussing Kathryn Findlay in 2004, AJ

editor emeritus Paul Finch said that she is
one of only a few architects whose work
merits the word poetic. Even the type of
building she is hired to design seems loaded
with metaphor. Take the recently completed
Poolhouse 2 in the Chilterns. The typology
suggests reflection, depth, the subconscious,
and the excavated pool resonates with
Findlays Boolean design methodology:
hollowing out space from solids.
When Ushida Findlay Architects relocated
from Japan to London in 1999, one of
Findlays first commissions, the vernacularbusting Poolhouse 1 in south-east England,
was hailed for its fresh take on the merging
of old and new technologies in that case, a
thermally sealed, glazed skin with a thatched
roof. The bristling roof and its planted ridge
also recalled the tactile qualities of the
practices Soft and Hairy House in Japan,
completed in 1994. Poolhouse 1 was a stand-

alone structure, but Poolhouse 2, set on

the edge of the Aylesbury Vale, is more
immediately contextual. It is wedged between
a Grade II-listed farmhouse and a barn,
linking separate parts of the family home.
David Miller Architects role as executive
architect on this project reflects Findlays
new collaborative approach (see pages 26-29).
Ironically, Robert Adam, who is building a
neo-classical pile on the site of Findlays
abandoned starfish country house at Grafton
Hall in Cheshire served as planning
consultant. Adam also hired TV presenter and
architectural historian Dan Cruickshank to
counter the planning departments assertion
that long-preserved views would be blocked by
the poolhouse. Cruickshank showed that the
site had once been occupied by a non-descript
farm building.
The poolhouses thatch is supported by a
steel frame-structure roof augmented with
timber elements. As with Poolhouse 1, the >>
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Left The site plan

shows how the
poolhouse curves to
link the two existing
farm buildings
Above Exercise and

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study rooms are

located below the pool
Below The thatched
eaves trace an
undulating line that
hovers over the

planar glazing
Right The glassrod balustrade was
designed by furnituremaker Benjamin
Clayton

33

Poolhouse 2, The Chilterns, by Ushida Findlay Architects

Poolhouse 2, The Chilterns, by Ushida Findlay Architects

Left Columns are

placed closer together
where the roof and
eaves step up
Below left and below
right The unadorned
interior reinforces the
expressive sculptural
form of the poolhouse

The poolhouse typology

suggests reflection,
depth, the subconscious

34

elevations are glass-wrapped. The contrast

between the heaving, bulging grass roof, the
high-tech glazing and the fade-to-grey
columns is mesmerising. Reading the
courtyard-facing elevation from left to right,
the roof ridge undulates, stepping up in three
places to address the height of each adjoining
building. The thatched eaves do the same,
languidly sloping upwards, tracing a line that
hovers above the glazing.
Findlays interest in traditional roof
technology originates in Japan and in her
tenure as a professor at the University of
Tokyo, where she researched local thatching
methods. Initial designs for Poolhouse 2
detailed the roof as three separate, overlapped
entities with clerestory glass between them.

But the projects master thatcher advised

against this approach rain would have
collected at the overlapping edges and rotted
the thatch directly below. With the help of
spline modelling software, the roof shape was
moulded into one continuous form. Its all the
better for it. Four distinct roof sections would
have crowded out this tightly plotted site.
This blending of craft, dialogue and new
technology was also learned in Japan, where
construction details are often worked through
on site and new methods are readily absorbed
into craft techniques. Findlay has often
spoken about the relationship between digital
tools and handcrafting. The philosophical idea
underlying Poolhouse 2 reworking the
vernacular is also central to her work. >>
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35

Poolhouse 2, The Chilterns, by Ushida Findlay Architects

Poolhouse 2, The Chilterns, by Ushida Findlay Architects

overlaps would cause

the underlying thatch
to rot. Extensive 3D
modelling by Mark
OConnor at Dundee
University led to the
eventual built form,
shown here under
construction

computer model by Mark OConnor

All images The roofs

original design had
four distinct roofs
overlapping with
clerestory glass in
between. But master
thatcher Kit Davis
suggested a continuous sweeping form, as

Inside, the smoothly plastered ceiling has

an arced peak that curves along the barn-tofarmhouse route which defines the plan. At
the fringes, structural steel columns merge
gently into the plasterwork, rounded and
thick below the eaves. It looks like a layer of
heavy snow under, rather than on, the roof.
To the rear, several tonnes of earth were
removed to accommodate exercise and study
spaces below the pool. Limestone terraces on
both levels are lined with timber balustrades
expressed vertically with hundred of clear
glass rods. The impression is not one of ice,
but rather a heavy rainstorm.
Poolhouse 2 is actually Findlays third
poolhouse. The first, numberless scheme
was completed in Japan in the 1990s. Ushida
Findlay is already committed to another, with
Geoff Mann of RHWL Architects, which
will explore the application of tiles. Findlay is
probably the greatest poolhouse architect in the
world, but now a bigger challenge is needed. <
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Start on site date August 2006

Contract duration 24 months
Gross external floor area 280m2
Form of contract JCT intermediate
contract 2005
Total cost Undisclosed
Client Undisclosed
Architect Ushida Findlay Architects and
Fieldwork (2000-08)
Executive architect David Miller Architects
(2005-08)
Structural engineer Dewhurst Macfarlane
and Partners
M&E consultant XCO2
Quantity surveyor Selway Joyce
Partnership
Planning supervisor AKH Associates and
Robert Adam Architects
Main contractor Holloway White Allom
Annual CO2 emissions Not calculated

37