A. Howard Sutcliffe cutting weathering steel for the roof of the Garden Pavilion. Photo by Shim-Sutcliffe
In November 2020, Brigitte Shim presented the work of Shim-Sutcliffe as part of the Angan Lecture Series at the School of Architecture and Design, Brac University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. The online lecture was followed by responses from Kenneth Frampton and Marina Tabassum. Here are some of Kenneth Frampton?s remarks.
Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe?s work is constantly expanding in its scope, although the same constants of climate, place and craft run through their work with ever-increasing intensity. One aspect of their work which is particularly striking is not only their respect for craft, but the way that craftsmanship is quite literally built into their practice. This is polemically driven home in the recent presentation of their work with a dramatic image of Howard Sutcliffe cutting steel with an oxy-acetylene torch! A similar emphasis on the nature of the raw materials out of which their work is made surfaces in the specific quality and treatment of the Danish brickwork used by the architects for a project they have recently designed in Russia. The Petersen brick company made hand-moulded bricks to Shim-Sutcliffe?s design to construct the body of a large villa on the outskirts of Moscow. The interest of the architects in the expressivity of materials is very evident in these bricks?in the way they are shaped, and the way they are treated? in some cases glazed, in...