My Second Home: Will Hunter
Founder / Director, London School of Architecture
The London School of Architecture is a new school for a new century, designed for students with independent minds not independent means. Their mission is to explore the full potential of architecture in today’s changing world. Small, yet connected, they unite academia and practice and use the city as their campus. Currently based in Second Home, we met its Founder, Will Hunter, to find out more about their unique spin on postgraduate education.
What is the best bit about working for the LSA?
Getting to explore the future of architecture and the city with some of the most creative students, architects and thinkers in the capital.
How is the LSA disrupting your industry?
Financially and culturally. We’ve undercut the establishment with the first ‘cost-neutral’ architecture school in the country. Our two-year postgraduate programme is one-third cheaper than most universities, plus our students earn their fees back in an integrated work placement. Culturally, the school unites academia and practice, and abandons the lone genius model of architectural education to place a greater emphasis on collaboration and how to make proper urban fabric.
“We’ve undercut the establishment with the first ‘cost-neutral’ architecture school in the country. Our two-year postgraduate programme is one-third cheaper than most universities, plus our students earn their fees back in an integrated work placement.”
What recent project are you the most proud of and why?
Our school organises all students and practices into Design Think Tanks, which explore the spatial consequence of how the world is changing. Last year one group formed SWARM, a platform to connect people, places and professionals to proactively plan cities. Another became ED/GY, Ethical Dwellings for Generation Y, and designed new urban housing typologies for Millennials. Both groups caught on to the entrepreneurial way architects can contribute to shaping our built environment.
What do you want your school to achieve within the next year?
We opened in October 2015. We are poised to take our second cohort, and the school will double in size to 60 students, which is hugely exciting. I want our first graduates in June 2017 to fulfil their potential and produce innovative design proposals that address the challenges and opportunities of our times.
What advice would you give somebody thinking about starting their own company?
Be intrepid and surround yourself with the smartest people you can find.
What person has inspired you the most?
Peter Buchanan, one of our lecturers, for seeking to redefine humanity so that we can live within the Earth’s resources.
How has being at Second Home helped your work?
We’ve used Second Home as our school base for our first year. The spaces are phenomenal. But I’d say the greatest benefit has been the cultural ecology for which the architecture provides a sinuous armature.
I recall, for instance, a garrulous lunch with the Rory Sutherland, the Spectator’s WikiMan, and picking up snippets like ‘the only true measure of innovation is behaviour change’ and ‘once a metric become a target, it loses its value as a metric’.
Thoughts like these have lodged with me, and it these insights into other perspectives that have so enriched my time here. They get you out of the confines of your own discipline and open your mind to other ways of thinking.
What is your favourite design feature about Second Home?
Second Home evolved from a macro-analysis of small business trends and the shortcomings of existing offices in the market. Sam and Rohan distilled this into a brief and charged one of the world’s most exciting architects, SelgasCano, to give it form. The result is gorgeous, and shifts between all these different spatial experiences: compression and expansion, quiet and animated, bright or crepuscular. It’s very porous, so while you can work privately, you can still see through layers of the building. Finally — on a more transient note — I really love whoever does the flowers; they are always so beautiful.
“Second Home is gorgeous. It shifts between all these different spatial experiences: compression and expansion, quiet and animated, bright or crepuscular. It’s very porous, so while you can work privately, you can still see through layers of the building.”
What company at Second Home fascinates you the most?
Visualise, the virtual reality production studio, which produces 360 video and full computer generated VR experiences. It was amazing to put their headset on and look down and be flying across New York. I think there are huge opportunities for this technology to be used in architectural education and practice.
Outside of work, what place in London stimulates your imagination the most and why?
My favourite interior in London was Odin’s restaurant in Marylebone. David Hockney was said to pay for dinners with drawings, and it had this amazing collection of art, with a Royal Academy hang. It was that rare and wondrous thing: a restaurant with a carpet! With net curtains, the acoustic and light quality was so soft and golden; it was like a restaurant at the bottom of the ocean. All the staff had been there forever, and brought over your favourite drink without asking.
Then — “under new management” — they refurbished it; lost the art collection and the staff. I was devastated when it shut down soon afterwards. It was a real lesson that culture can take decades to establish, and only moments to destroy.
We ask everyone to select a book that will become part of Libreria’s permanent collection. Which book would you choose and why?
The Function of Style, the latest in a trilogy on function by Farshid Moussavi, a must-have for any architecture student offering an unrivalled analysis of contemporary buildings.
Second Home is a creative workspace and cultural venue, bringing together diverse industries, disciplines and social businesses. Find out more about joining us here: secondhome.io
