May Members: Meet EBBA, Helena Francis, John Wray IV and Mara Lookabaugh
This month, we welcome our newest members joining us from New York, Washington DC and London. This group of architect-makers demonstrate an incredibly diverse range of disciplines from furniture and prints to woodworking and ceramics. We’re excited to introduce these multi-talented and multi-faceted designers, and we’ve asked them share a few words on their initiative to explore other hobbies and interests.
All projects shown here will also be exhibited at Gubns Architect-Maker Pop-up during the London Festival of Architecture next month. Don’t miss the chance to see these works in-person for a limited time!
First up, EBBA, the London-based collective of architects and designers interested in exploring ideas about materiality, construction, proportions, light and form.
Their work is defined by functional and elegantly crafted responses that employ inventive solutions to complex situations and contexts. EBBA have delivered projects ranging from buildings and pavilions to interiors and furniture. With Gubns, EBBA brings us the Tri-Stool—executing on the notion of high functionality. Made from five pieces interlocking through notches in the seat, the stool’s simple semi-circular shape meets a straight edge creating an elegant form and allowing two pieces to be placed together.
Q. What prompted the studio’s interest into furniture design?
As architects we are interested in finding ways of using materials in interesting ways. We also appreciate how things come together, whether that’s in the design of a building or a piece of furniture. We want to make objects that can represent a way of making and that which celebrates assembly, yet also be able to put out a design into the world that could become a staple piece in someone’s home.
We like the idea of an element of performance in the way things are assembled. For instance, the decision to develop the simple joints allows the stool to be delivered as a flat pack, which gives agency to the user and a sense of playfulness. Not to mention the reduction in transport costs and overall embodied energy.
Q. Why have you decided to join Gubns?
Tri-Stool was originally created for the "Architectural Futures" exhibition at The Royal Academy of Arts in London and has recently been produced as a Limited Edition. This will be the first time we showcase the piece by itself, and we believe Gubns will be a good opportunity to connect with other architects and professionals in a different environment while introducing our first furniture piece.
Up next, Helena Francis is another London-based designer whose practice explores the spatial opportunities presented at the intersection of organic and machine bodies. Her interests lie in the fields of digital technologies and environmental and social politics, with a particular focus on machine learning and the politics of non-human knowledge production.
Her current ongoing project, Cyborg Taxonomy, is an ongoing project that works to resist the ‘human’ representation of traditional plant taxonomies.
Q. Can you tell us about your prints and foray into making?
I am a part-time maker alongside my architectural career. My prints listed on Gubns are my first, and current ongoing project, which came about during my Master’s at the Royal College of Art.
I was in a studio that focussed on post-human institutions and my specific project proposed storing data in the DNA of living plants (it is possible!). This project prompted this experimentation into the representation of plants and a critique of traditional plant taxonomies.
Q. What prompted you to join Gubns?
I joined Gubns because I was excited about a platform for architects and makers to showcase their extracurricular work outside of buildings!
Q. What prompted you to join Gubns?
I joined Gubns because I was excited about a platform for architects and makers to showcase their extracurricular work outside of buildings!
Across the pond in the US, we have John Wray IV based in the nation’s capital. Born originally in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, John was educated as landscape architect and urban designer from Harvard's Graduate School of Design and West Virginia University between 2011 and 2017. Presently, John is a practicing designer, educator and craftsman.
Pulling from a family history of building and making things ranging from custom hand tools to barns, John began amassing his own fully functioning modular wood and metal shop on his rooftop apartment after moving to DC in 2018. It is here that all of the assorted objects he makes, including Eroded Vessels, are created by hand using many of the heirloom tools inherited from the rest of the John W. Wray lineage and family.
Q. Are you a full-time or part-time maker?
I’m a part-time Maker, full-time Landscape Architect and Urban Designer at Oehme van Sweden, and full-time Lecturer at the University of Maryland.
Q. What was your first project?
I've been making things my entire life for my own use and for gifts, but the first piece I created with the intent of it being sold and transitioned me from a hobbyist to a "maker" was my first cavernous vessel, auctioned off via the Design Yardsale, in the summer of 2020.
Q. Why Gubns?
I was drawn to the idea that architects, landscape architects and others in the AEC industry have a platform to display and sell their passion projects. Design and construction projects in traditional practice often take years and therefore one can feel detached sitting in an office at the computer. The objects realized through my woodshop and art studio supplement the work I do as a landscape architect by providing an outlet to create and distribute tangible objects in a way that's satisfactory and often much closer to the end user.
Also in the states, Mara Lookabaugh joins us from New York, focusing on residential renovation work within the city and ground-up projects outside of the city. Her work aims to blur the line between architecture and object, between utilitarian and playful.
Mara began working with clay while studying architecture at Pratt and continues to explore the medium as a liberal counterweight to the rigour of the architectural profession. Her sculptural ceramic Candle Holders are made by hand and the fired clay is left raw and unglazed, celebrating the natural colour and texture of the clay body.
Q. Are you a full-time or part-time maker?
Part-time, in the extra hours around full-time architectural work. I wish there were more hours!
Q. What was your first project?
I started working with clay in my third year of Architecture school at Pratt. The medium offered a much-needed reprieve from the more strict and rigorous world of Architecture. My first project was a series of sculptural vessels.
Q. What prompted you to join Gubns?
I’m glad to join a community of makers! Most architects I meet have a ‘multihyphinate’ nature. I think the profession is such that people tend to need an escape and I’m so interested to hear how other architects are finding theirs.
All projects shown here will be displayed at Gubns Architect-Maker Pop-up as part of the London Festival of Architect next month, from June 24-30th.
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