More summer. Soon, a Sydney spring for the @murcuttfoundation symposium in September then a Greek autumn for a Friday Matters talk in Athens on 10th October loosely based on themes raised in my book @learning_from_the_local - info soon. It event in Athens being organised by @k_studio_gr

#Repost @murcuttfoundation ・・・ UK architect, academic, and broadcaster Piers Taylor will keynote the inaugural Murcutt Symposium in Sydney, 13 September 2025. Having seen Glenn Murcutt up close at the renowned Murcutt Masterclass in 2001, Piers’ journey in architecture led to founding @invisible_studio, and to the remarkable @studiointhewoods_official - an ongoing education and research project to test ideas in architecture at 1:1 scale. His most recent book @learning_from_the_local explores the pressing discourse in architecture surrounding the tensions between globalisation and local identity. To Piers, architecture is a potent vehicle for change in the most marginalised communities. Glenn Murcutt says he shares with Piers a restless search for an architecture generated by a responsibility to the land and a meaningful connection to place and its culture. Tickets still available for the inaugural Murcutt Symposium 12-13 September at @statelibrarynsw. Link is in the bio. #glennmurcutt #murcuttsymposium #murcuttfoundation #Australianarchitecture #touchtheearthlightly #Architect #architecturesymposium #sydneydesign #pierstaylor #learningfromthelocal

Summer . So far…

Ahead of my talk at the inaugural @murcuttfoundation symposium I chatted to @luciaamies from @architecture_au - link in bio “The most interesting project I’ve worked on in the last 10 years was a big cultural centre for a small, marginalised community on the coast [at @eastquaywatchet Quay in West Somerset], which was initiated by four women with a simple premise: How can we make this place better? How can we use architecture to bring together a very divided, socially conservative, young, super liberal set of communities? And why that was interesting, was that it wasn’t what they call “plop-ism” – it was a building that knitted into its place and brought together a community. This type of work is now quite common. It asks how architecture can bring about some kind of change, and how it can be accessible to many people rather than just a select few. That is what’s happening in the UK right now – there are a lot of motivated younger practices who are very engaged with that question.”

8pm this evening / 8am this morning. The first photo is the bounty I bought from a stall on the way back from a swim this afternoon. She also@has aubergines which I’ll get another time, and olive oil (which we’re good for. Also in pic - a very relaxed Poppy who knows how to make herself at home. The second pic shows the morning light, and how from this point on the main space is primarily in shade at this time of year. Plus - the gutter (was talking about gutters at lunchtime with friends / colleagues locally, and how great people here are with folding metal.) People also forget how much it rains here, although not at this time of year.

“Even if the family occasionally finds evidence that mountain goats have been in the kitchen, being so connected to the land is worth it. “The intensity of the light, the smells of the plants, the noise of the cicadas — it’s like everything is turned up to 11,” he said. “There’s something completely cathartic about being there.” . . Thanks Tim Mckeough and @officedavesharp for this piece up on @nytimes today. Link in bio. Pics by @clickclickjim

A couple of site snaps… There’s something satisfying about the slow reveal of a building — where each bolt, joint and texture tells a story of decisions made by instinct and conversation, by accident and intent. . . #workinprogress

Again: this is what a community building looks like. This is a building that materialises a method. Rather than proceeding from a conventional brief with fixed spatial and functional parameters, East Quay emerged through years of open-ended community dialogue and strategic experimentation. Its origins lie not in top-down visioning but in grassroots, iterative co-creation. The Onion Collective’s process—conversations rather than consultations, synthesis rather than extraction—foregrounded local values, aspirations, and capabilities. The Onion Collective worked not with solutions but questions, using models, sketches, and site strategies to scaffold an evolving collective imagination. In this way, the architecture of East Quay is not the product of a design for a community, but a design with and through one. The architecture itself became the medium of co-production. East Quay is practice-based research made manifest: the building is both the artefact and the method. The process of its design and construction constitutes a live research inquiry into participatory authorship, spatial justice, and emergent vernaculars. In its rejection of fixed typologies and hierarchical expertise, the project contributes to growing discourses around situated knowledge, feminist design ethics, and relational spatial production. It offers a counter-model to development logics in which aesthetics, economy, and functionality are too often isolated from context, culture, and care.