Piercy&Company, London: Free, Hands-on, Young.

Camden-based Piercy&Co is a practice which places its focus on making and materiality. Director Stuart Piercy, who has taught both at the Bartlett and the University of Westminster, sees the firm as an extension of architecture school. “Prototyping and making is key to the way we work,” he says. “But I wouldn’t say it is a traditional craft-based office at all. We are really quite digital.”

The practice is developing digital production and custom fabrication methods as a way for experimenting during the design process and working with traditional materials. Through its network of crafts-people, suppliers, fabricators and makers, it often collaborates with others to develop these ways of working.

At Grymsdyke Farm, a fabrication centre in the Buckinghamshire countryside, the staff from the practice will often prototype at 1:1 and it was here that the office developed its designs for the ceramic seed pods it installed in Keihl’s Regent Street window.

Alongside the practice’s collaborations with Grymsdyke Farm, it spends a lot of time visiting people making things. In the past, these have included visits to the ETH in Zurich, the Petersen brick factory in Denmark and a trip to look at churches in Finland. Last year the whole practice headed to Rochester Square in Camden for the day, where they learnt how to throw clay pots and glaze them. 

“Everybody here makes things – even the directors,” says Piercy. “The hardest thing is to find projects and clients that allow us to do this method of craft.” The practice does appear to have found it in Derwent London and many of its other private clients. “We have the skills in-house to allow us to do this kind of work. It means we can work out what is possible,” concludes Piercy.