Sergison Bates architects is an architectural practice with an office in London and Zürich. It was founded by Jonathan Sergison (born 1964) and Stephen Bates (born 1964) in 1996 in London. In addition to the two founding partners, their long-standing collaborator Mark Tuff has been a partner of the practice (since 2006).[1] Sergison Bates architects are best known for their residential buildings but have also realised public and institutional projects in the UK, continental Europe and China. In addition to their work as practising architects both Jonathan Sergison and Stephen Bates have taught architecture at various universities.[2] Jonathan Sergison is a professor at the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio (since 2008),[3] whilst Stephen Bates is Professor and joint head of the Department for Urban Planning and Housing (Lehrstuhl für Städtebau und Wohnungswesen) at the Technical University of Munich together with Bruno Krucker (since 2009).[4] Both architects have written and lectured on a wide range of topics related to architectural design. In 2006 they were awarded the prestigious Heinrich Tessenow Gold Medal and Erich Schelling Medal for their contribution to architecture.
Buildings
Jonathan Sergison and Stephen Bates met in London in the early 1990s and were part of a group of architects, theorists and artists who met regularly between 1994 and 1995.[5] The group (informally called Papers on architecture) had a common interest in the urban character of London and the work of Alison and Peter Smithson.[6] Among the earliest realised projects by Sergison Bates architects are the public house (pub) in Walsall and the semi-detached house in Stevenage, both of which use motifs of informal architecture.[7] A number of other small scale projects, primarily in London, followed, which also displayed an interest in creating a robust architectural expression through the use of lightweight low-tech construction methods (i.e. thin brick-slip façade panels on the Studio house in Bethnal Green and cement boards as cladding for a timber panel structure in the self-build housing project in Tilbury). This preoccupation with breathing layered wall constructions culminated in the exhibition project and book “Brick-work: thinking and making”.[8] The unrealised competition design for a museum on the Danish island Bornholm (included in “Brick-work”) indicated a shift towards a more heavy and monolithic construction form and spatial expression.[9] Two examples of this change in direction are the Urban housing project in Finsbury Park built with a loadbearing wall of brickwork and precast concrete, and the Centre for the applied arts in Ruthin that adopted structure and pigmented façade elements made of concrete cast in situ. From 2010, Sergison Bates architects were awarded commissions through design competitions for projects in Flanders (Belgium), Switzerland and Austria. In 2016 the firm completed their most prestigious building to date, the Welcome centre and offices for the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Shanghai (China).
Writing
In addition to their built work, Sergison Bates have produced a significant output of texts, either co-written or authored independently. These were developed from lectures notes or articles for architectural magazines. So far Jonathan Sergison and Stephen Bates have published three collections of essays: Papers (2002), Papers 2 (2007) and Papers 3 (2016) comprising 54 essays in total.[10] The texts can be described as phenomenological observations of the built environment.[11] The architects consider the process of writing an integral part of the reflective work of architectural design.[12] In the introduction to a lecture given at the Harvard School of Design, Iñaki Abalos described Sergison Bates’ work and approach to architecture as follows: "In my opinion there is a serious understanding of the meaning of the notion of material cultural in their work, combined with a radical sense of provocation. Radical in the etymological sense, because it goes to the roots, to the radice, the origins and sense of our historical, typological and material patrimonies, understood as the main references an architect has to deal with if he or she pretends to have a sense of time of the city as a collective cultural construction."[13]
Approach and influences
In the Essay “Tectonic presence” Irina Davidovici describes the work of Sergison Bates architects as oscillating between the complementary aspects of the “formal” and the “tectonic” where “the use of images has always been sustained by constructional research”.[7] In the preface to the catalogue of selected works published in 2006, the renowned architectural historian Ákos Morávanszky states that the architecture of Sergison Bates is concerned with “precision” interpreted as an “expression that unveils the significance of nuance”.[14] In addition to their identity-defining interest in the work of the Smithsons (both their buildings and writings)[15] – as well as “images of ordinary typologies”,[7] the work of Sergison Bates is inspired by English classicism, as exemplified in their fascination with Hardwick Hall.[16] Finally, Sergison Bates have also stated that the work and ideas of Heinrich Tessenow resonate with their approach to architecture.[17]
^AA School of Architecture (2001-2002), ETH Zürich (2003-2005), ESARQ Barcelona (2006), EPFL Lausanne (2006-2007), Oslo School of Architecture and Design (2013), Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2014)
^Essays with titles include “Working with appearances” and “Learning from looking at buildings” (J. Sergison), “Feeling at Home” and “Ten Rooms” (Stephen Bates) from Papers 2.
^Sergison Bates architects, „Preface“ in Papers 2, GG: Barcelona, 2007
^Ákos Moravánszky, in: Sergison Bates architects, Catalogue 1996-2006, London 2006
^Jonathan Sergison, “Lessons learnt from Alison and Peter Smithson”, in L’architecture d’aujourd’hui, (344) 2003 – see also Sergison Bates, Papers 2, GG: Barcelona, 2007
