Wright & Wright: ‘You’ve only got one life, so build buildings that you believe in’

Walking around the soon-to-open Museum of the Home (formerly the Geffrye Museum) in London, Wright & Wright’s four partners, even socially distanced and masked up, exude a good-humoured ease as they talk with zest about its design.

It seems indicative of a practice whose office culture Naila Yousuf, the most recently appointed partner, describes as ‘very social … a bit like a weird and wonderful family.’ Naila, who led the final stages of the Museum’s transformation, became a partner in 2020, joining Stephen Smith (a partner since 2011) and the two founders, Clare and Sandy Wright, at the helm of the practice they formed in 1994.

The practice numbers just 22, surprisingly small, given their current and recent workload. The Museum of the Home’s imminent completion – a project which has doubled its floor area and massively improved access and circulation – comes hot on the heels of that of Lambeth Palace Library, the new-build archive for the Church of England.

Other ongoing projects include the Corpus Christi college masterplan in Oxford, a new collections centre at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester and a reworking of the British Academy’s London HQ.

The practice’s size is deliberate: ‘We follow the same principle as Arup,’ says Sandy Wright, ‘that people work best in teams of around six. It means each person gets the chance to contribute.’

‘Everyone’s voice is really valued and the role of partners is to know when to stand back or give guidance,’ adds Naila. Indeed, the practice culture seems more like an atelier: ‘It was one of the strongest things I noticed when I joined, this sense of continued learning and research. It’s like being back in a studio,’ she says.

This openness of the company structure extends to other aspects of the business: ‘We operate a profit share and all financial info is shared: it’s really important for everyone to know what’s coming in and how their work fits into it,’ says Clare. As such it seems to be a practice run on the basis of a sense of sharing, rather than on narrow silos of work.

It has been a successful formula, and the practice has consistently punched above its weight over the years, building up an impressive portfolio of high-profile institutional clients and projects in the cultural and higher education sectors and an expertise in archive design in particular.

This specialism dates back to the first two projects the practice won in the 1990s, the RCA Library and the Women’s Library (now part of London Met), and has continued with projects such as the V&A and RIBA joint Collections archive and Corpus Christi Cambridge library in the noughties and the National Gallery Lower Galleries and Magdalen College Oxford Library more recently.

Along the way, the practice has pioneered passive design using natural sources of heating, cooling and ventilation for public buildings, with one of the first passive archives in the Women’s Library and one of the first passive theatres in the design for Hull Truck Theatre. Both projects were highly innovative for the early noughties and the latter has been credited by Haworth Tompkins as an inspiration for its theatre work.

The culture of the practice and its approach to design is something Clare and Sandy credit in turn to their own education and the experience they gained in the practices they worked for before setting up together. They met at the Mac in Glasgow in the 1970s, studying under Isi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan, whom they cite as formative influences – alongside the school environment itself.

‘The Mackintosh Library can only really have had a benign effect on the architects who studied there,’ says Sandy of the now-lost masterpiece, casting it almost as some kind of ur-library sitting in the background to their work.

Sandy went on to work for Metzstein and MacMillan at Gillespie Kidd & Coia, working on the Robinson College Library in Cambridge, and cites the influence of their ‘expertise in design, detailing and understanding of how buildings are put together’. One aspect of the practice was not to be recommended though: ‘You certainly wouldn’t want to emulate them commercially – they were a fucking disaster!’

Clare worked first for RMJM in Edinburgh as a Part 1, then, after she completed her studies, they moved together to London, both working for Rock Townsend: ‘Then Isi introduced us to Richard MacCormac at one of Theo Crosby’s parties,’ recalls Sandy. ‘Richard and I just hit it off. So I went on to work for MacCormac Jamieson Pritchard (MJP). They had just won the Sainsbury Building at Worcester College, Oxford, and it was the era of what (Architectural Review editor) Peter Davey called “romantic pragmatism”.’

Clare went on to work for Howell Killick Partridge & Amis, another classic post-war modernist practice, its founders the designers of the Alton West Estate when they were previously at London County Council. She says: ‘They were a firm with preoccupations similar to mine: legibility of buildings, coherent use of heavyweight materials and construction that stands the test of time.’

After a break to have children, she both taught and worked as a sole practitioner, before getting a job as design manager for housing association Circle 33 from 1990 to 1994, an experience which honed her understanding of development, long-term planning and sustainability. ‘For every scheme in development you had to put forward its costs over 30 years – not just capital but running and maintenance, too. The houses were for low-income families, so I suggested they look at the extra capital cost to design energy-efficient houses versus subsequent savings in running costs. It was cost-effective, with 95 per cent of CO2 saved.’

After more than a decade at MJP, where he had become a partner, ‘doing a lot of university buildings’, Sandy had a bit of a mid-career crisis. ‘I left rather abruptly,’ he recalls.

‘He was 40 and had this reflective moment, concluding he wasn’t really happy there,’ says Clare. They decided to set up Wright & Wright together. ‘Sandy had an endowment policy of £25,000, which we decided to gamble and gave it six months. Circle 33 very kindly said I could go back if it didn’t work out.

‘We didn’t have any jobs and it was just in time for a recession. We thought we’d get housing work through contacts. But I had had a lot of management training at Circle 33, so went to see this guy in the city about a business plan. He asked when we’d get our first jobs and how much for, so I just made the figures up: April: £1 million and September: £5 million. But that was almost exactly the size and timings of the RCA and Women’s Library jobs we won. Maybe, at an unconscious level, you need to make a plan to fit reality when it comes along!’

But behind the almost happenstance way they set up the practice, there was a resolve to make good buildings. Clare recalls: ‘A housing client asked us to do something once and Sandy said: “I’d rather stack shelves in Sainsbury’s”. It made me think, you’ve only got one life, so you’ve got to be doing something – and building buildings – that you believe in.’

This focus on quality was apparent from the off. Both the RCA and Women’s Library were impressively resolved buildings for a practice so new and so small, exhibiting a sensitivity to context combined with uncompromising modernist forms that has remained a distinctive aspect of their work.

‘It’s what attracted me to work for Wright & Wright,’ recalls Smith, who came on board as a Part 1 student. ‘Their work was both embedded into its context but forward-thinking at the same time,’ he says. They also seem to grasp the strategic overview and take a pragmatic approach to budgets, almost putting themselves in the clients’ shoes, which gives them a fresh take on projects and winning work.

‘While we were a gamble on those two first projects, in both cases the very different approach we took was why we won,’ says Clare. ‘At the RCA Library, our scheme was much more delicate than the others, which proposed pulling down half the campus – strategically a nightmare for the college. We tried to work with what was there. Our scheme preserved two big plane trees in the courtyard and was a lightweight structure like a kit-of-parts. When it was finished, Paolozzi apparently looked down from his studio and likened it to a [sculpture] casting.’

At the Women’s Library, the brief was more complex: a library, archival store, lecture theatre, exhibition space, café and offices. Clare’s experience at Circle 33 came in useful: ‘I knew there was a derelict washhouse on a site adjacent to the one proposed that the council saw as a liability and was looking to have taken off its hands, so I proposed that we put the Women’s Library there, rather than siting it within the Law Library. By retaining the washhouse façade, the project gained a distinct identity, while acting as a rich reminder of the work some women did in the past.’

Clare thinks her role as a female lead partner in the practice was a factor, too. ‘It helped that I was a woman principal. There were none in any of the other shortlisted practices,’ she says.

These two projects gave the practice a reputation as the go-to archive architects. ‘We didn’t set out to just do libraries. Don’t get me wrong, we like libraries: they are a good thing to be typecast for! But we wanted to have a stream of work with a social element, too.’

The practice’s portfolio also includes two schools for children with behavioural difficulties and a series of early specialist housing schemes, including a pioneering one for those living with HIV and others for people with disabilities and the elderly, the latter building on research into lifetime homes the practice did for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. These were schemes Clare sees as providing invaluable cross-fertilisation to the rest of their practice. ‘When you design for special groups, it’s very powerful. Take housing for the elderly; the important things to focus on are orientation, legibility of buildings and having places that are sunny and relate to the outside. Then you realise these things apply to everybody. It influences the rest of your work in a very positive way.’

This interest in designing buildings to support community and social sustainability has parallels in the practice’s long-held interest in their buildings’ material and operational sustainability. Drawing on Clare’s research at Circle 33 this was driven not just by a concern to create buildings built to last but by economics, too.

‘At the end of the 1990s the cost of MEP was soaring,’ says Sandy. ‘For archives, it had got out of hand: everything had to be air-conditioned – 65 per cent of build costs went on it. And it was all moving parts, stuff that would break in 10 years. This drove our interest in the passive side – there are no moving parts there. We thought: this is perfect, we can take the money saved and spend it on the architecture.’

Such thinking led them to propose the Women’s Library be a passive archive: ‘We were working with Arup, who said it wasn’t possible. We said “we think it is” and pushed them. When we did Hull Truck Theatre, we were working with Max Fordham. Again, they said we couldn’t do a passive theatre. We said “let’s try” and managed it. It has been a thread that we’ve had from the beginning. Clients are always struggling for money, so anything you can do to reduce a building’s running costs – maximising daylight, insulating properly – just makes sense.’

Asked about the focus now on embodied energy, Clare says. ‘Well, we have a tendency to look at heavyweight natural materials. Stone has low embodied energy because it lasts such a long time. Although we got into the historic sector by accident, we liked how the clients had to be careful. It was at a time when everyone was moving into Design and Build and knocking things up fast. As George Peabody once said: “You can only look forward for as long as you look back.” If you’re working for a college that needs to last hundreds of years, that’s implicitly sustainable.’

Good clients have been key to the practice’s success. ‘We have been lucky to have found clients who are passionate about their and our buildings as we were, says Sandy. ‘Chris Frayling at the RCA, Deian Hopkin at the Women’s Library or the college bursars and masters have all been passionate about doing something good. That’s critical: not just being in it for the money. We’ve avoided commercial ventures. We have a lot of good friends who work in big commercial practices and make a lot of money, but some of the horror stories are quite brutal – jobs that are just about money and cheapness.’

It’s an attitude that seems to have paid off for Wright & Wright, which boasts a string of projects that are the envy of larger practices. Stephen recalls joining in 2005 to encounter ‘just these waves of projects. The Hull Truck Theatre had got planning and at the same time the RCA Sculpture School, National Gallery and Corpus Christi Library in Cambridge were on site. At the moment, too, we have just such an incredible range of things to work on.’

‘I remember at my interview being told that, if I got the job, I’d either get to work on the Museum of the Home or on Lambeth Palace Library,’ says Naila, ‘which was amazing!’ Unlike Stephen, who started working for Wright & Wright straight from college, Naila had worked for a number of practices, including at CZWG. She credits Piers Gough with giving her ‘a valuable sense of perspective on practice’. It’s one she has found at Wright & Wright since. ‘What’s nice is that we are all quite different,’ she says. It’s a mix all recognise as important.

‘We’ve always had good gender balance: it isn’t positive discrimination, we just look as wide as possible,’ says Clare. ‘We always advertise for, and look at, personality and attitude, not just skill set. We’re lucky: when you build up a reputation, you attract some incredibly talented people, so we’ve been able to become fussy about the people we employ.’

It’s a reputation that the Museum of the Home looks set to burnish further, as does the slew of projects in the pipeline, including Wright & Wright’s first international project. This is to restore and redevelop Nelahozeves Castle, near Prague, as a cultural and musical heritage centre.

This is a practice for which, though hackneyed, the term ‘slow architecture’ might have been invented, one whose work is infused with a sense of time: slow-cooked designs and research resulting in projects built to last. ‘We never set out to be rich. Building is hard work and takes a long time,’ says Clare, ‘so you might as well do buildings you feel are worthwhile.’