Space for Making

I meet Sam Potts, co-founder of RARA (Redundant Architects Recreational Association). At the organisation’s warehouse on an industrial estate in East London. The unit is filled with the sound of making, of projects in progress.

RARA is a design facility for creatives set up by Sam following redundancy. The project is one of the latest ventures by ELDB (East London Design Bureau), the practice started with friends Joe Swift and Dan Nation after graduating from university. RARA grew out of frustrations with office based design processes and a desire to be proactive about and actively engaged in making.

Prior to being made redundant he had worked at Levitt Bernstein for two years. He had also spent his year out there before embarking on a Barcelona based masters in International Cooperation in Architecture.

As specialists in housing and regeneration his employers were ‘hit hard, making several waves of redundancy’. This meant that by the time it cam to Sam ‘the signs had been on the horizon for a long time’.

The shock of leaving work was therefore mitigated slightly; there had been some time to think. In fact within about three days his mind was ‘spinning with opportunity’. The direction he took followed on from a project for the London Festival of Architecture, which had been undertaken by ELDB. So when he left work he had‘already been doing stuff outside the office for a while’. Redundancy created the space to explore this further.

The project for the festival had been designing and building furniture for an installation called ‘Bop to Architecture’. It was enabled partly because Levitt Bernstein sponsored ELDB’s contribution; allowing them to use the company’s workshop for free. The experience of this project, the opportunity to not only design but build a had made the restrictions of trying to create things without dedicated workshop space acutely apparent. Whilst one can run a desktop business from home, making things presents challenges; ‘obviously you can’t do this in your living room’.

The this experience of working on ‘Bop to Architecture’ was to be the impetus for renting the unit that would become eventually become home to RARA. ‘We found some cheap industrial space and built a mini workshop’. Though the shared facility did not emerge immediately. ‘Initially it began with making things based on a few sketches I had that I wanted to materialise’. However they soon saw the a potential project. ‘After a while we realised that if we stuck our necks out a little bit we could probably rent out the whole of the space and if we were able to manage it, this would create a place that people with the same ambitions or frustrations as us could use as well’.

Thanks to this moment of vision there now exists a fabulous little facility in East London, which is affordable and flexible it what it offers. It is places like this that allow the fertilisation characteristic of recessionary periods to occur. It offers the opportunity to continue developing their way of working. ‘My friends and I were very interested in making things, getting away from the computer, not just for the sake of it; we found there was a lot to be learned from making’. This is why they ‘rented 180sq ft of air’, put some partitions up and gradually created RARA.

We had a feeling in our bones that it was a good idea, we imagined it would run on a non-profit model, a bit like a social enterprise’.

We do a tour of the warehouse, which is ‘low cost and modelled on an architecture school studio’. Indeed it does the have the feel of somewhere that offers the same sort of opportunity; there are desks, spaces and machines for making stuff, drawing, exhibiting; the things a young studio might need to get started.

'...this is a time where ideas are built’

The process of creating RARA and it’s evolution have been illuminating for ELDB, ‘we are attempting to create a sort of club or an association’. The process itself has taken them beyond the typical architect's function. ‘It’s a project which mixes designing a space with being a Landlord and making a manifesto or a direction for a practice'. This Manifesto he says is ‘about grabbing hold of the fact that we are in a recession and that this is a time where ideas are built’. The intention was to ‘create a place where people can do that and maybe bump into others with whom they can create future practices of their own’.

I wonder how he thinks the experience of doing this will affect his future practice as an architect? He thinks he'll be a lot more hands on and have more input from the start of projects, maybe making them happen. Something he feels should be more common. 'Architects should start off a lot earlier in the process, identifying the need and then finding finance for it and building it’. These ideas come in part out of the Masters Sam did in Barcelona. Its philosophy was to 'go into situations that were developing, in the broadest sense, so maybe a post conflict or regeneration situation' and engage in the process from the early stages. 'We studied on some large estates in Barcelona, we travelled to Sarajevo and I did my thesis in Uganda, in a refugee camp’. This proactive energy to effect change in the urban context seems exciting to me, however, though it may be possible in developing countries to identify a need and build quickly in response, what about a place like London where legal structures and frameworks mean that architectural production happens in a very restricted way? He thinks it is ‘up to the architect to change that', to initiate potential projects in response to particular contexts and 'work with local authorities’ to achieve the desired outcome. 'It’s up to the architect to, dare I say it, to become a bit of a developer'.

For Sam Recession has allowed him not only to think about but test, in microcosm, entrepreneurial models and ways of practicing. Hopefully this will also be the beginning of an exciting hub which will foster the creativity of others.