Stuart Piercy, Partner
Piercy Conner
SymHouse mk1 Architects

What are you views on the importance of holistic thinking in architecture and how did you apply it to sustainable housing designs?

We prefer to think of it as urban sustainability - it’s not just about generating energy, it’s more about the actual community that the housing produces.  And that’s very important: to create a streetscape that is sustainable.  We believe that first, energy has to be fully integrated in the design--you can’t just stick a wind mill on the roof.  Second, planning the streetscape and the area around the base of the building are crucial to making it work for the community.  Third, is the story of the building skin. With SymHouse, each one of the panels responds exactly to which direction it’s facing and the way the sun hits the panel, based on extensive solar studies. But the skin also provides variation in the building appearance.  So we’re actually using the sustainability concept as a main design driver.

What are your views on steel, from a design perspective?

Our concept was all about lightness - a very gentle building through which the environment can filter.  Steel obviously lends itself perfectly to that concept while with other construction materials you inevitably end up with a fairly heavy building.  The lightness of steel, the fact that we can manipulate it and make it permeable: there really is no other material that can give you that option.  The other thing of course with steel is that we actually can build it.  Our work is based upon a kit of parts idea.  With steel, you can make the parts, bring them to the site and just assemble the building instead of construct it.