London-based architecture practice Feilden Fowles approaches the discipline with a social and environmental conscience. “Technically accomplished but also humane,” its projects – ranging across the fields of education, heritage and arts, and culture – are conceived with people at the forefront and in April 2018, the practice was selected for the Mayor of London’s Architecture and Urbanism panel. A successful project for Feilden Fowles is one that improves the lives of communities and the individuals within them. Their own studio is a case in point.
Completed in September 2016, the timber structure is located on what was originally a neglected plot of land, a stone’s throw south of Westminster Bridge. Oasis Academy, who runs several schools in the local area, approached Feilden Fowles with the idea to transform the land into an outdoor learning space encompassing themes of farming, agriculture and botany. In exchange for a plot to build its studio, Feilden Fowles offered its continued support of the project. In the moment that Waterloo City Farm was born, so too was Feilden Fowles’s new office space.
This film reflects on the process of creating the urban oasis, which won the practice a RIBA London award in May 2017. From the “grim, wet, cold and short” January days in the early stages of the build, to idyllic studio lunches in the walled courtyard – a regular occurrence now the project is complete.