The birds began to sing.

Just before Christmas 2011 Richard Murphy, a Scottish architect asked me to write a short essay for his forthcoming book, it was to be a history of their architectural practice, Richard Murphy Architects. My own company, Inscape Joinery, had worked with RMA since it was founded so the subject of the essay, I thought, would be to plot this association.

This was an early draft of the essay. The book has now been published and the essay is included within its pages much to my suprise and pleasure.

Copies available here...

.http://www.amazon.co.uk/Of-Its-Time-Place-Architects/dp/1907317767

A very potted history of Inscape Joinery and its connections with Richard Murphy Architects and with Richard Murphy himself.

Almost twenty years ago, a slightly forlorn Richard Murphy sat at our dining table. The sea was proving unboatworthy and an unappreciated and impatient architect was considering his options.

My own business, Inscape Joinery began its life in the Orwellian dawn of 1984. There was no plan, no vision...not even a little white van. It was just a case of doing something which seemed to come naturally to me, something I always felt I had an affinity for. My mother once told me, many years ago, that I was never happier than when I had a mash hammer in my hand. She could have been right, mothers usually are.

Having graduated from Edinburgh University with an MA in Sociology, my gravitation back to the building trade was in part driven by the need to supplement an inadequate student income. The Thatcher years had eroded the value of the student grant, even for a mature student and I started helping out a plumbing and heating engineer in Edinburgh. From this association, Inscape Plumbing and Joinery was established which quite quickly became Inscape Joinery as I set out alone; a stranger in a strange city.

The business grew modestly but organically. Inscape took on its first employee, Donald McLean Logan, and we acquired our first workshop in the form of Donald’s oversized, but amply equipped garage. On a personal level, my family was also growing as my wife Gail, gave birth to our first child, Jason and the small flat where we lived in Maryfield suddenly seemed insufficient. All of this led to my first meeting with Richard Murphy.

Before we could sell the flat, it was necessary to have the Edinburgh Council Building Department grant a retrospective building warrant. I had demolished an internal wall in the flat with my trusty mash hammer and you are meant to ask their permission to do that.

Donald had an architect producing designs for his Colony House and, by coincidence, the architect was a neighbour of mine in Maryfield. So it was then that Richard Murphy, with his student apostle, tenant and future junior partner at Richard Murphy Architects, came around to do the most mundane of architectural tasks. He and Graeme Montgommery surveyed the flat and put forward the application for a retrospective building warrant.

At the same time, Inscape was working for Marion Blythman, doing some minor internal work in her flat in Zetland Place in Edinburgh. Marion had plans to move back into her former home on Inverleith Row which had been rented since the passing of her husband some years before. She wanted the house upgraded and had a vision of creating a garden room to improve her contact with a beautiful Japanese styled garden. One day, she asked me if I knew an architect 'with a bit of imagination.' I told her that I thought I did and apparently added,"He’s a bit quirky like you, I think you’ll get on well."

Richard designed the ground breaking and multi award winning ‘Garden Room’ extension for Marion and curiously he convinced her to build it on the first floor level. He asked me if Inscape would like to build it, which we did. So it began and 21 years later in a sense, we are still building it.

Inverleith Gardens was to be our first serious building project, it was full of shadow gaps, expressed steelwork and trademark disappearing corners. The ground rules from the very beginning made the unusual the norm and, as a result we never saw a problem in a lateral building concept. We tried to pride ourselves on the premise that we wouldn’t make a problem out of an idea and we adopted the Lennonesque motto, ‘There are no problems, only solutions.' The work of Richard Murphy Architects has tested this intent to its limit and beyond. Often technically very difficult and complex, every project also has the constraints of time and budget, but always with the insistence of quality. Against this, a business has to make profit to be viable. These would be the most testing of circumstances for any kind of relationship and yet the collaboration between Inscape Joinery and Richard Murphy has lasted over the course of these years with only the occasional and very minor hiccup. This may surprise some, but Richard Murphy is not a difficult man to deal with and although his dedication to his special skill is well known, he is not so blindly led by self belief that he fails to see the sometimes conflicting needs of the builder or the client.

Some architects will insist that the drawings are religiously adhered to, even if the detail sometimes needs to be inferred. In Richard’s case, he will work closely with the builder and is aware of the constraints of budget that we face. Jobs are often competitively tendered and costs are cut to the bone, mistakes on either side can ruin a budget, but mistakes are made from time to time. A detail can sometimes be misinterpreted, drawings cannot map every facet of a job and very occasionally, with the best intention, what is built isn’t exactly what was intended. In all these circumstances, Richard Murphy has never shown himself to be so precious as to demand his version of things to the exclusion of all else. There is a genuine professional relationship and respect in the process and for our part we also try to be proactive in that process. If we think a detail may be improved or that something won’t work or has been wrongly specified, we try to pin that down before it’s been built. We have often been told by young architects in the practice that there is a sense of relief when they know we are to be the builders for those very reasons. A successful project is in everybody’s interest, and, for us, successful does not just mean profitable.

Sitting around the dinner table that night, Gail and I tried to offer Richard some advice. The building trade is a tough place for self employed architects, no less than self employed builders. We had eked out a living over the first few years and tried to build up a loyal client base. Richard wasn’t as patient, he wanted to move quicker, but patience and resolve was all we could offer. I seem to remember telling him to ‘be thorough’ and not to give ‘them’ the excuse. 21 years later and the task is no easier, the next job has to be won, critics have to be answered, wages and bills have to be paid. Architectural ability alone is not enough. There are so many other skills required in business, but where the business focuses on an individual’s gift, then the demand and the pressure is more intense and it is the way of things in such a jealously practised discipline, that success tends to be measured against failure. In this context, 21 years of practice is no easy achievement. The body of work produced, as well as dozens of new young architects given the confidence and experience to step out into architectural practice on their own, needs to be admired and applauded.

All these years later, and with so many projects between and behind us, the next prospective RMA project is still as exciting and still has the same sense of anticipation as the others had. As I write, we are handing over the completed second extension and renovation of Ivy Bank House in Dirleton for RMA and the sense of having achieved something special is again present in this project. We work for many of the best architects in this city and it is genuinely an honour to be sought out by them, but an RMA protect often has that extra spark to it...an excitement. Some tiny piece of elegant simplicity in the design, maybe a touch of genius, who knows, but the finished result can be breathtaking. For me as the builder of these little crafted edifices, they are part of my claim to the future, my small piece of immortality. I imagine my great-grandchildren visiting them and telling their children who it was that built them. What more could a man want than a claim to the future? I have Richard to thank for that.

References:

The Website of Richard Murphy Architects:

http://www.richardmurphyarchitects.com

The Project at Inverleith Row:

http://www.richardmurphyarchitects.com/view_item.aspx?item_id=50782&list_id=list1-50161&list_index=0&add_cat=1991

Ivy Bank in Dirleton:

http://www.richardmurphyarchitects.com/view_item.aspx?item_id=50411&list_id=list1-50161&list_index=5&add_cat=1997

Previous publication, Richard Murphy Architects 10 Years Of Practice

http://www.rias.org.uk/bookshop/books/richard-murphy-architects-ten-years-of-practice/

My first blog was a poem to my big cousin. It's not been uncommon over the years to write these things. When there are feelings inside me, I sometimes sit and try to write them out.

I've never really known what to do with them once they are finished, just the cathartic action of writing it has usually been enough. But some of them lay about, I don't normally look at them because they are still real for the moment they came from. They aren't always sad or gloomy either even though these two carry sadness and gloom.

This one I wrote early in 2010. I was down in Liverpool looking after my dad, he had just been diagnosed with stomach cancer. He was 79 at the time and his prospects were very limited. He had lost weight, he was under 7 stone and because of his weakened condition there was no chemo or radio therapy for him because the doctors thought it would do more harm than good. So straight for the operation to cut it out, along with his stomach.

I really thought I was there to care for him while he died but he didn't. He came through the operation and he is still here to tell the tale today. While I was there and in between trying to do all the things I could to show him I loved him (apart from just saying that to him) I went for walks. My mother, his wife. had died 6 years before and there were no other siblings to share this time with.

These were the silly thoughts that went through my mind;

From a little family of three,

My mum my dad and me.

Hangs a broken little branch

From an ancient old tree,

Whose whispered little promise

From their mammies knee,

Sends a tiny little ripple

Across a ripple-less sea.

A wounded little face

Steps back from the race.

A frozen little smile,

Stands aside from the chase.

A breathless little pause,

A stinging little tear,

A desperate little prayer,

Saturday, December 31, 2011

slainthe

Monday, December 26, 2011

21 Years of Practice

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Resignation

Monday, November 14, 2011

Valentine

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Mossley Moods