Really pleased Peter Clegg @fcbstudios has written the foreword to Learning from the Local. This is a small extract: “This book revels in the diversity of architectural experimentation around the globe, and, for this reason alone, it should become a well-thumbed sourcebook for students and a stimulant to academics looking at the key underlying issues of architecture – the social and environmental responsibilities that should shape every decision we make.”
INTRODUCTION
Here, I read from the Introduction of my forthcoming book, being published by the RIBA in October 2025
Architecture’s struggles with the ‘local’.
As the move towards globalisation falters, the question of how a building might relate to its place in a meaningful manner has never been more pressing.
The sourcing and use of local materials has increasingly become an expectation in contemporary architecture. But what does local mean in this context? Should we use Cotswold stone in the Cotswolds forever – even if this necessitates using imitation stone? In rural areas, must we design traditional barns or farms with pitched roofs regardless of their sustainability?
Learning from the Local explodes the myth that vernacular style and national identity are the only design routes for place-specific architecture. The book is not a plea to return to pre-industrial times, but an attempt to understand the origins of the local in a global culture. Through a myriad of global case studies, it explores how geology, geography, material experimentation, waste, ecology, social issues, self-build and community engagement are heralding a new age. This sets the stage for a rich and evolving era of locally responsive architecture that is both low carbon and a true reflection of the circumstances of its production.
Features:
- Over 30 case studies illustrated with full-colour photography, drawings and plans.
- Architecture from across the world, spanning Spain, Greece, Australia, Costa Rica, China, Burkina Faso, Pakistan, Japan, USA, UK, Chile, Beirut, Netherlands, India and Italy.
- Work from renowned architects, including Clancy Moore, Frank Gehry, Gianni Botsford, Glenn Murcutt, Jørn Utzon, Kéré Architecture, Lacol, Lina Ghotmeh, Mole Architects, Sarah Wigglesworth, Terunobu Fujimori and Yasmeen Lari.
#book written by #pierstaylor
“This book revels in the diversity of architectural experimentation around the globe, and, for this reason alone, it should become a well-thumbed sourcebook for students and a stimulant to academics looking at the key underlying issues of architecture – the social and environmental responsibilities that should shape every decision we make.” Here, @assembleofficial ‘s Folly for a Flyover in @learning_from_the_local , with commentary by Peter Clegg @fcbstudios
A little extract from @learning_from_the_local on FGs Santa Monica House - which is still a fantastic example of a seemingly effortless engagement with a local context that results in an architecture of circumstance and specificity. Uniquely Californian, simultaneously high and low architecture, Santa Monica House is unquestionably Gehry’s most interesting project. If early postmodernists were rooted in rhetoric that was effectively little different from the self-serving end of much modernist thinking, Gehry blew that apart suggesting that architecture could be easy, breezy and fun. Although considered a key deconstructivist building, the title is lazy: the house is interesting not because of any theory that it engages with (or not) but because it suggested architecture didn’t need theory to engage with the everyday and that the everyday was as interesting as theory.
Whilst various elements clearly challenge the orthodoxy and the tyranny of the ‘ordered’ nature of most (capital A) architecture through informal geometry and seemingly random placement of elements, Gehry’s house looks absolutely at home in its context. It is usually only architects that obsess over the formal ordering of elements – most others over time have extended in the manner of Gehry and accumulated windows, extensions, porches, garden rooms – whatever – as circumstances dictate and money allows. This is precisely what Gehry has done – and again, it is usually only architects who find Gehry’s house strange or challenging.
Gehry’s house invites the presumption that the house can continue to evolve indefinitely, without any need to ‘fix’ the improvised arrangements. Often vernacular buildings are inscrutable in the best sense, and belie architects’ desire for reductive purity. This desire for reductive purity is what diminishes most architecture that – while often different configurations of material and space, ultimately conform to the same restrictive conventions. Gehry’s house counters this, and with this, suggest a way out of the cul de sac that these conventions reinforce, which is that architecture can and will evolve without any diminishment of any original idea
In this month’s @arch_today an extract from @learning_from_the_local “This book is not a nostalgic plea to return to pre-industrial simplicity. Nor is it a celebration of vernacular mimicry. Local architecture is not about reproducing the visual tropes of an idealised past — the thatch, the stone, the pitch of a roof. The point is not to fix forms forever, but to rediscover processes — ways of making, governing, and building that are responsive, situated, and relational.
So the question shifts: not “How should buildings reflect their surroundings?” but “How might they co-evolve with them?”
Super interesting to be back at Hooke Park today for the Future Forest Symposium. I haven’t been to Hooke for a few years, and have written about some of the projects I was involved with in the book – notably the Caretaker’s House, but also this – the Big Shed/Assembly Workshop – which was the first to come out of the newly established Design & Make programme – the building was designed up to planning by the AA Design & Make / Diploma Students, and then taken on by my office to develop for construction – which my friend Charley Brentnall led. In my PhD I was critical of the building in terms of its process – why were we so conventional…? Ie – the process of development was a conventional one, and the contractual relationship equivalently so, and I’m not convinced we really designed through making, and there is still too much steel in it (when compared with ABK/Frei Otto’s workshop adjacent) and it was crazily expensive compared to a shed . The Assembly Workshop used thinnings screwed together with a large ‘Heco’ screw (adapted from conventional housebuilding technology minimising the use of more conventional steel plates) meaning students with limited construction experience could work on the project. The complex geometry is partly the product of a self-conscious design agenda, but suits the use of small sections built up into large trusses, and sets out a manifesto for making experimental design-led buildings using hyper local materials, which included not just the trusses but also the cladding which was grown and milled on site. The problem of upscaling or wider applicability remains – which is that a steel portal framed shed would been ¼ of the cost. However – I still love the Big Shed, and it was such a formative time to be working at Hooke. Read the chapter in the book for more details and also about other projects there…
The A is for Architecture Podcast’s latest episode is a discussion with @piers_taylor_ , architect and founder/ director of @invisible_studio , writer, Professor of Knowledge Exchange in Architecture at @uwebristol and broadcaster.
It is Piers’ second time on the show, but rather than his practice, this time we discuss his freshly minted book, Learning from the Local: Designing responsively for people, climate and culture, published by @riba Publishing last month.
In Learning from the Local (@learning_from_the_local ) Piers presents global examples of low-carbon, context-responsive architecture. In arguing for a post-global design practice, examining geology, waste, ecology, self-build and community engagement, the book proposes a sort-of vernacular.
We talk this, Oz, practice, good practice and a very elegant proposal for what Piers calls restless innovation.
Quieten down why don’t you and have a solid listen.
Link in bio and on all good podcast type platforms.
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Image credits: 1/ The Rural Stusio (Haybale House) by Timothy Hursley. 2/ Atcost by Sue Barr. 3/ piers Taylor by Sue Phillips.
#pierstaylor #learningfromthelocal #invisiblestudio #DesignWithPlace #SustainableArchitecture #BuildingWithNature #ContextualDesign #ArchitecturalThinking #DesignForPeopleAndPlace #architecturepodcast
Out now - as @designboom says: “LEARNING FROM THE LOCAL: ARCHITECT PIERS TAYLOR’S NEW BOOK
An exploration of context-specific, locally sourced, and sustainable architecture, Learning From the Local is the new book by British architect and broadcaster Piers Taylor. As the world questions the sustainability of globalised design, a new architectural movement is gaining momentum—one that seeks not to replicate tradition but to reimagine the ‘local’ in radically contemporary ways.
Learning from the Local: Designing responsively for people, climate and culture, a new publication written by celebrated architect and broadcaster Dr Piers Taylor, and published by RIBA Publishing, brings together over 30 of the world’s most compelling architectural case studies to investigate this powerful shift. Far from nostalgic calls to restore lost traditions or imitate the vernacular, Learning from the Local explodes the myth that identity in architecture must be rooted in style. Instead, it focuses on how geography, geology, waste, ecology, community engagement and local making processes are shaping a new era of low-carbon, place-responsive design. These case studies, which span countries as diverse as Burkina Faso, Japan, Greece, Pakistan and Australia, represent some of the most innovative and best-resolved architectural responses to context and culture from across the globe. Featured architects include globally-recognised figures such as Frank Gehry, Glenn Murcutt, Kéré Architecture and Lina Ghotmeh, alongside a host of rising talents whose work champions new definitions of localism.”
