Nicky Hirst, 'Stillmann Eastwick-Field Partnership, London 1997'
In: Artists-in-Research 1996-98. Edited by Alistair Raphael and Victoria Clarke. London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 1999, pp. 36-45.
The Stillman Eastwick-Field Partnership is a small to medium-sized architectural practice with offices in Islington, London. Their architectural projects embrace a wide range of building types, including social housing, schools, halls of residence, university buildings, research laboratories, leisure and sports facilities, hospitals and other health-related buildings. A number of projects have involved buildings in a coservation area or those listed as of architectural or historic interest.
Nicky Hurst had the opportunity to observe and contribute to many day-to-day aspects of this busy practice. These included: observing at client meetings, attending site visits, meeting with contractors and using contemporary computer-aided drawing programmes. Hirst also examined specific issues related to projects such as the relationship and communication between designer and fabricator, and the selection and use of materials based on their performance over time, together with wider environmental issues.
I work as an installation artist, ideally working within a given space for a limited period of time. The work is about space and the uses of space, its idiosyncrasies and banalities, the shifts in emphasis, and evocations. The work can be slight, almost invisible and is often ephemeral. I work very particularly with detail and intention. The viewer is invited to wonder, to be uncertain and to engage with the processes and layer of revelation. I try to respond to specific design decisions that have already been made in a building whether it is a gallery, hospital, home or hotel.
To have the opportunity to go back a stage to observe and question how these original architectural and design decisions are made is fascinating for me. I am intrigued by the way architects read architectural plans, as if looking down into a building. To have this kind of overview and to be able to make informed decisions about how people move, function and behave within a building is very appealing. It is the is gap that I wanted to explore given the opportunity - the gap between how people are supposed to behave and how they actually do behave within a given environment.
Although certain aspects of my application did materialise during the residency, things also change once you embark on research and I wanted to follow my nose rather than stick to a plan. I spent the first few days of the research residency exploring the office library at Stillman Eastwick-Field architects scouring for useful material suppliers with reference to my existing art practice. These included finding manufacturers of specialist glass (and etchers), metal mirrors, shelving, vinyl and rubber flooring, and Formica catalogues, etc. Through this library I gained access to samples and directories as well as contact names and numbers. I also used this period to acclimatise in my new environment, to learn how the office operated and to get to know the people within it. It was an open-plan environment so the exchange of information was very public. I initially found this difficult, being used to working alone in a studio. All seven members of staff were very generous with their time and their knowledge. I felt that they had all been clearly briefed by Alistair Raphael at the Institute as to why I was around and the nature of the project.
Jonathan Darke is one of the partners in the practice and he was my main point of contact during the residency. He suggested that I join client planning meetings and site visits immediately. We also set up a programme of events that I could choose to attend in the following weeks. This was an excellent introduction and provided a structure as well as continuity with their project developments. Stillman Eastwick-Field were working on a number of different sites simultaneously. The projects included work on a housing estate that would integrate people with disabilities; a new arts and performance faculty building at Brunel University, London; and a few public health buildings.
I concentrated my research on the hospital and health-related buildings as they made the most sense to me and had connections with my own work and experiences. There were three main projects in which I was interested:
- Improvements to the outpatients department at he Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital in Gray's Inn Road, London. Phase 1 of this project was well under way. I joined a series of meetings attended by front of building staff and ancillary workers with the architects, clients, structural engineers, quantity surveyor and contractors. I was made to feel very welcome although the meetings were formal, very detailed and often dull. However, they were fascinating for me with respect to the procedures and statutory requirements involved in planning the refurbishment of a building.
- Working party meetings for a new academic obstetrics and gynaecology building at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Imperial College, London. Stillman Eastwick-Field was responsible for carrying out work on the public sector comparator. The new building meant the relocation of the Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital to opposite Wormwood Scrubs Prison. Discussions mainly centred around strategies to get natural light into a large and extremely deep plan building and in order to contribute to discussions about the maternity building I began to research a Department of Health document entitled Changing Childbirth. I wanted to build upon my reading and observations at meetings during the design stage of the building. Jonathan Darke was very open to contributions and collaboration.
- The Royal Free Hospital, London and the redesign of the courtyard and waiting room at the HIV Unit has been the project which most interested me. This collaborative project was eventually made possible through a Royal Society for the Arts Art for Architecture Award which I will elaborate on later.
Via the architects I gained access to the RIBA Library where I spent time reading the document Changing Childbirth and furthered my research into current theory on 'female' architecture - a concept which I have always been curious about but never looked into. Around this time I discovered I was pregnant so the timing seemed all the more appropriate and the text was fascinating reading as Changing Childbirth concentrates on the notion of 'women-centred care'. This led to more interesting reading including reference to Martha Graham's 'feeling space and gravity' and 'choreography of movement through textural changes'. I looked into discussions concerning privacy and where personal boundaries could be defined within a building and consulted a range of interesting titles as part of my research.
Throughout the period of client and library research I made a space within the office to use as a base and temporary studio. I made a series of drawings, initially as a device to spend time in the office environment and feel connected. The drawings were constructed by perforating paper with a needle and were extremely time consuming to make. They had continuity with my own work but their source was in an oblique form of architecture. I came across a book entitled Homes Without Hands: Being a Description of the Habitations of Animals Classed According to their Principle of Construction by The Rev. J.G.Wood M.A. F.L.S.Etc. (1866). This is a description from the book of one of the illustrations I used:
The bark of a dying or damaged Elm tree can often be seen to be perforated with tiny circular holes. If the bark is removed this will reveal a system of tunnels radiating at more or less right angles from a main cylindrical tunnel. A mother Scolytus beetle has entered between wood and bark, cutting a tunnel in which she deposits her eggs. As each grub hatches it arranges its body at a right angle to the tunnel and eats steadily outwards. As they increase in size the burrows increase with them. The tiny circular holes in the bark indicate their escape.
Here was architecture without architects - the antithesis of all I had witnessed within the Stillman Eastwick-Field practice.
The book illustrations were first transferred onto A2 architectural plan tracing paper. I then reprinted this plan paper onto my own vegetable parchment and perforated the constructions into the surface. Some of these drawings were later shown in an exhibition called Perforated Observations at inIVA's library in July 1997. The information sheet read: 'Repetitive punctures are made in the paper to create "drawings". The images are made flat on a table, by looking down onto the surface the emerging images appear rather like a plan. Using this technique Nicky alludes to an obsessive, rigorous and labour intensive process made up of many elements.'
During the residency period I became aware of the Royal Society of Arts 'Art for Architecture' Awards Scheme, which encourages cross-disciplinary approaches to building and landscape projects by providing funds for artists to work as part of a design team. The emphasis is on collaboration, enabling artists to play a significant role in the initial stages of a project. Jonathan Darke and myself made a successful application to collaborate on the design of the waiting room and courtyard of the existing HIV unit within the Royal Free Hospital, London. As a team we have subsequently made applications to open architectural competitions, involving still further collaborations with other architects and artists.