Learning from the Local written by Piers Taylor situates itself within the pressing architectural discourse surrounding the tensions between globalisation and local identity. Taylor problematises the contemporary architectural condition by highlighting the growing difficulty of designing buildings that meaningfully engage with their specific geographic and cultural contexts. Once inherently local by necessity—due to reliance on site-specific materials, vernacular construction techniques, and cultural practices—architecture is now largely shaped by globalised supply chains, economic pressures, and aesthetic pluralism. This shift has rendered the articulation of place through building increasingly complex, if not paradoxical.

The book positions itself as a counterpoint to reductive architectural manifestos, advocating instead for an open-ended, exploratory approach that recognises architecture’s capacity to tell diverse stories, including those rooted in the particularities of place. Drawing from Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots and environmental psychology, Taylor argues that the human desire for rootedness—expressed through distinctive, place-specific environments—persists despite the homogenising forces of globalisation. This desire is not just romantic or nostalgic, but entwined with cultural identity, sustainability, and psychological well-being.

Learning from the Local further interrogates the challenges of material provenance and economic feasibility in locally expressive design. It underscores the carbon cost of imported materials and the opportunity, through inventive design, to leverage local resources—even waste materials—as demonstrated by initiatives such as Rural Studio and Hooke Park. This pragmatic sustainability foregrounds the necessity of reconciling ecological imperatives with cultural specificity.

The book adopts a case-study approach, with chapters organised thematically and featuring diverse global examples. Its central aim is not to prescribe stylistic formulas, but to illuminate how architecture can navigate and negotiate the global-local dichotomy in meaningful, context-responsive, and environmentally responsible ways. Ultimately,Learning from the Localoffers a critical framework for understanding how buildings can re-engage with the contingencies of place—cultural, material, and climatic—while avoiding parochialism and embracing a pluralistic, reflective practice.

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Peter Clegg’s Foreword:

Piers Taylor is a living example of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. He often makes reference to this seminal 1966 text by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, which changed the course of architectural theory, and in this book his focus is on the contradiction between the global and the local. Inevitably, he concludes that we need to accept and rejoice in the ‘both/and’ rather than the ‘either/or’.

Piers lives out this contradictory life. His practice – Invisible Studio – is one of the most visible of a new generation of globally renowned practices. His ‘local’ is rural Somerset, but also Corfu, with a huge debt to Australia where he is still very much in touch with his great mentor Glenn Murcutt. This book revels in the diversity of architectural experimentation around the globe, and, for this reason alone, it should become a well-thumbed sourcebook for students and a stimulant to academics looking at the key underlying issues of architecture – the social and environmental responsibilities that should shape every decision we make.

But, it goes much further. For Piers, and for most of the architects he is showcasing, the process of making buildings is fascinating and form-defining. It is both local materials and often local builders that are celebrated in this very personal global architectural anthology. His examples often form strange bedfellows; from the considered modernism of Utzon’s home at Can Lis to Assemble’s Folly for a Flyover, there are commentaries on 32 projects that are brought to life by a provocative dialogue and life stories that tell of the processes behind the designs, which are an all important aspect of this thesis.

This is the complex world that Piers inhabits. He exists in his own liminal space, on the edge of conventional practice, academia, TV and media, and the grounded work of real construction. From there, he can make his own significant contributions to the critical issues in architecture. One of those is obviously carbon emissions and their contribution to global warming. He rightly states that we have gone through the era where we struggled with occupational energy use. The debate and the focus have shifted to the embodied energy use within the construction process; using local materials and technology – particularly in a relatively raw state – is obviously a key interest in all of these projects. Many of them – such as the work of Alabama’s Rural Studio, and the astonishing recycled facade of the Ningbo museum – focus on recycled materials driving a circular economy, and show us exciting new opportunities.

The exemplars are all relevant to the localism debate but, as Piers himself suggests in his conclusion, there are plenty of questions left unanswered. He acknowledges there is room for the surprise of the non-local that breaks all the rules – maybe that deserves another book. There is certainly a second volume, where it would be worth exploring radical architecture which takes on mainstream at its own game. Some larger scale projects he references, such as Almere and Marmalade Lane, are already adding a new provocative strand of thinking around social and community issues that are central to Piers’ philosophy. It would benefit us all if he could scan the world for more examples of higher density urban design that are challenging conventions.

Peter Clegg OBE, 2025

“This book is a love letter to the particular. It asks what place-related architecture can be when it is not a relic of the past but an evolving, situated practice of production and making—a cultural and ecological act embedded in the rhythms, materials, and social dynamics of a place. It is an invitation to rediscover those specific dialects, the rough edges, and imperfections that make buildings truly meaningful in a globalised world.”