Tonkin Liu Archiects
Anna Liu
London
The green roof above our head curves steadily away from the Georgian townhouse behind us.
We sit outside in a visually beautiful and logistically complex covered space. The garden is surrounded by buildings but enclosed in nature.
Peering up at the ceiling, contours move your eye toward skylights, where tufts of green from the roof slowly encroach on the glass. On one side of the garden, green leaves from a pond punch out from a gun metal backdrop and clever use of floor materials reflect light because of a thin layer of water sat on a dark surface.
We are here to meet Anna Liu, one-half of Tonkin Liu, a leading London architecture practice with a diverse portfolio of award-winning buildings, landscapes, and sculptures. Anna Liu and Mike Tonkin founded the practice in 2002 and have become known for their diversity and inventiveness of work.
We chat about the space where we sit and discuss the feelings it evokes. Anna said, “Creating space or place feel is about a whole sequence of events and journeys that are grounded in how you move through it.” Space is a luxury and Anna talks about creating some sense of drama, “We wouldn’t want you to just come into a big space and that be it. I think you should be taken through a journey of discovery of spaces.”
Every architectural brief is a desire for change, a move away, a move toward or an opportunity for change, Anna said, “Architecture has so much potential, if you get it right we believe it doesn’t just serve you, but it touches your heart, it lifts your spirit.” This belief is apparent in their diverse portfolio and could be attributed to the close connection with nature that shines through many of their projects. Anna smiled and said, “Often when we are looking for answers we turn to nature, some of our projects tell stories about the wind, some about the rain, or light, or water.”
Tonkin Liu have the ability to let nature and art influence their projects in such a way that taps into a primal satisfaction and an inherent connection to nature that humans feel. This focus on nature is key to the work and forms one of their three pillars; nature, people, and place. They work to the formula ‘nature x people = place’.
When Anna talked about nature, she explains it in a few different ways, “One way we think about it is to do with the ecology, the setting can really affect the spirit and the feel of the place. The second layer is the actual element, the movement of light for example. The third level is symbols, you may notice that the names of our project often evoke symbols in nature. And the last layer is a bit more technical, it’s more like biomimicry, learning from geometries in nature.”
As well as the formula, Tonkin Liu uses a methodology that follows four stages; asking, looking, playing, and making. The ‘playing’ section has a lovely feel about it, an informality that you may not expect from an architect. Some clients may not want their project and money ‘played’ with. But it is this approach that allows the studio to create such unique pieces of work.
In a sometimes homogenous industry, Tonkin Liu show that two places are never the same and that no place should have a design imposed on it. To capture the feel of a place you must understand what has it been, what it is now, what it could be, how people will use it and importantly how nature will play a part.
