Darren Price: “A well-designed building should be timeless and versatile”

Darren Price is a director at ADAM Architecture, a practice with offices in London and Winchester that specialises in Classical and traditional architecture and contextual urban design. Growing up, Price wanted to be an archaeologist and believes this may have contributed to his passion for working with heritage buildings, revealing layers of history through painstaking restoration. He now works on projects ranging from modernising traditional country houses to overseeing complex interior refurbishments. Here, he tells Q-P about the importance of designing for legacy and offers some advice for anyone thinking of restoring a historic property.

‍

I’m fascinated with atmosphere and the sensory experience of buildings. Historical buildings just seem to have an ability to stir up emotions in people. I’ve become aware that the work we do as architects working on existing and historic buildings is just a chapter in the story. Therefore, it’s important to understand the narrative of the past to be able to design for the future.

-

We’re currently working with some very dynamic commercial clients who are purchasing older properties and converting them for different uses. For example, we’ve worked on transforming a medieval manor house in the Cotswolds into a quiet retreat and a Palladian country house in Oxfordshire into a hotel. There’s an intriguing conversation to be had around the future of the country house. These buildings were always designed to function like a hotel, with lots of guest accommodation and layouts that include public front-of-house spaces and more functional back-of-house areas. This makes these buildings well suited to current day hospitality uses.

-

When we’re working with historical buildings, we often want it to feel as if the architect was never there. It’s about celebrating the history and being able to read the layers of time, while ensuring that it functions like a contemporary building. I try to step back from the idea of architectural authorship and be more democratic, bringing together the client and the project team so everyone is on board with the overarching vision. And it’s not only about learning from the past, it’s about being true to it and making sure we acknowledge the story to prepare a future chapter.

-

For me, good design is good design, whether it’s classical, Georgian, modernist or whatever. A lot of the best contemporary architects reference classical and historical buildings through their application of proportions and symmetry. A well-designed building should be enduring and versatile so it can adapt to multiple uses over time. If you design a building properly, you allow space and time to flow through the physical form. With a family home, which might be a legacy investment that will be passed down through several generations, it’s important to have a light touch so the house becomes as flexible as possible. That allows for changes in how people live and interact with spaces, perhaps allowing the kitchen to be moved or walls to be repositioned as lifestyles change.

‍

‍

When we’re designing new buildings, we aim for an enduring aesthetic that will never go out of fashion. It’s not about making something look old. Rather, you can borrow some of the aesthetic language or materiality from the past and play around with it. Sometimes we’ll design a building with a monolithic external frame and try to eliminate the internal structure so the spaces can be adapted in the future. We try to work with heavier weight materials like stone or brickwork so that, a century from now, a part of the façade could be replaced locally if needed.

-

We often have conversations about designing the heritage of the future, which means something that’s integrated into the streetscape and relates to the buildings around it without drawing too much attention to itself. It also comes down to material selection and craftsmanship and how these respond to the surroundings. In an increasingly fast paced world, architects must start to slow time down for our work to have integrity. I worry that if my work represents a new trend, then surely it risks falling out of trend. We need to design and construct buildings which get better with time. I often question how will it be judged? Is what we do now robust enough to be considered heritage in the future, or the generator of future memories and important moments in time?

-

Whether you’re a traditional or a contemporary architect, understanding these subtleties of the design and execution can help to slow the pace of change in architecture and ensure we are creating buildings that will endure. My advice for anyone opting to buy and renovate a historic property is to get the best possible team in place and have them work together from the outset. As an architect I find it so valuable to have an ongoing dialogue with interior designers, landscape architects and contractors to make sure we’re all working towards the same goal.

-

I compare the process of restoration to watchmaking because you must be very precise about how you incorporate all of the services you need while achieving the desired look and feel. You don’t need to completely transform an old building when you’re renovating. There are reasons why you buy a property, so focus on retaining those features that attracted you in the first place, whether that’s the style, or the atmosphere within certain rooms, or the relationship with the surroundings.

-

The best clients are the ones who understand the idea of legacy and are conscious of creating something that can be used by future generations. We’re just a blip in time when you consider all the historical styles to which we’ve been exposed. We shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously because everything we’re doing is part of an ongoing process spanning years if not generations. I hope that this sense of humility is evident in my work.