José Esteves De Matos names his practice's go-to contacts, including textile and graphic designers, a natural stone masonry company and two advocates for co-design for creative education
Sam Price and Andy Toohey, Price & Myers
Sam Price and Andy Toohey of Price & Myers are the structural partners we go to. Whenever we’ve tried to push the boundaries of what can be achieved, they never give us a ‘no, you can’t do that’ or ‘the grid needs to be regular’. They are pragmatic but have a strong belief in engineering being a creative profession rather than simply a technical one. Together we have always tried to find simplicity out of complexity and to make the ‘impossible’ possible in the most sustainable manner.
We’ve worked with them on nearly all our projects – more than 400. Angus Morrogh-Ryan and I first met Sam at Cambridge University when he came to the Faculty of Architecture and History of Art to teach us about structural design. His son was also in our year, studying engineering, and we had mutual friends. In the practice’s early years, Sam was like a father figure. Not only was he the engineer, he was a voice of reason and was incredibly supportive because he believed in young designers and having a collaborative relationship. In time, when he retired as a partner (he’s now a consultant), he passed the baton on to Andy, who we’d worked with on nearly all our projects together.
We worked with him on the new kaleidoscope staircase at Young V&A, which could take no support from the existing building. This was a labour of love with Andy that involved a very rewarding co-design process with local primary school children. We worked through many iterations to deliver the vision. At one point the budget for the staircase had to be cut in half but Andy didn’t give up. He’d never say, ‘Just put a column here and life will be easier’. He’s recently worked with us engineering the new pavilion at Cowley Manor, which has a loadbearing natural Cotswold stone external enclosure protecting an internal solid timber structural frame by Timber Workshop, another of our regular collaborators.
Frances and John Sorrell are amazing individuals who have been like mentors to me. They are inspirational advocates for the value of co-design, engaging with young adults and community partners. Their Sorrell Foundation clearly demonstrates the power of creativity and design as a force for good.
Today, this approach is quite prevalent and recognised as part of successful practice but it wasn’t at the time they founded Joinedupdesignforschools. This empowered young people to be clients and co-designers, to unleash their creative confidence. It was a response to the Building Schools for the Future programme, which wasn’t engaging with young people in the design development process.
As part of the programme, we refurbished the refectory of Hockerill Anglo European College refectory. This, as well as the work we were already doing for Wearhead Primary School with the Best Bird Box of Great Britain project and subsequently York Theatre Royal, established a collaborative way of working. We have subsequently implemented this on a larger and more ambitious scale – at the Young V&A in London and at Tullie House Museum in Carlisle, where we’ve been working directly with communities. We have also been working with Camden People’s Theatre on a co-working charitable space after co-designing a new front-of-house and auditorium. We are also co-designing a new permanent gallery at Tullie House Museum, working with the local community in Carlisle.
All this goes back to Frances and John and their belief in the value of creativity and collaboration to improve lives, and in particular how the voice of young people can be so insightful and instrumental in the design process. They are real champions of good design and we really need people like them.
Sally Hemphill and Sharmil Govindia are really talented textile designers and specifiers, who set up in business in the same year as us: 1999. We knew Sharmil and Sally socially and collaborated with them on our Cowley Manor project, which created a forward-thinking country hotel in a Grade-II-listed house in Gloucestershire. Govindia Hemphill designed all the rugs, curtains, upholstery and interior textiles with us and our client.
Since then, we’ve collaborated on numerous projects. They’ve designed carpets and upholstery with us at Sadler’s Wells, York Theatre Royal and the British Library, where we designed the new Members Rooms. Here, as you can’t touch much of the Grade-I-listed building, we decided the floor plane should be the iconic, more edgy element. We collaborated with them on an incredible carpet across two levels, inspired by the bindings of books in the King’s Library, which are visible throughout. The striped design is used in different variations and colourways in various spaces.
Because we’ve worked with them for so long, we have an understanding as well as a shared vision and approach. The co-design process we have with our clients and user groups permeates through into how we work with our consultants and it’s a very collaborative process. We discuss what we think is important and what we want the visitor experience to be. It is a dynamic and fulfilling way of working, and they are very creative with an incredible design aesthetic.
We’ve recently completed the second phase of the refurbishment of front-of-house spaces at the BFI on London’s Southbank. We are now working with them on numerous private houses, where they’ve designed tapestries and bespoke fabrics. They’re incredibly versatile and very inspiring individuals.
Farmington is a British natural stone masonry company that can not only supply beautiful stone from its quarry but can fabricate and install. We’ve recently worked with the company on the new pavilion at Cowley Manor, which is a modern reinterpretation of the arched rhythm of the original manor house in a load-bearing stone skin. The new-build spa we’d previously designed there used cast stone similar to the real stone of the main house. For cost reasons, we initially took that approach for the new pavilion, but the conservation officer insisted on stone. I’m glad they did as it reduced the carbon footprint and delivers a similar longevity to the original stone building.
We knew of Farmington as a stone – the quarry is only three miles away from Cowley – and we worked with the company very well. They are traditional craftsmen working in a modern way, prototyping before they CNCd all the stone and installed it as a load-bearing box to the interior timber structure. They built it carefully and it looks great. We’re now working with them on a private residential project.
We first collaborated with graphic designer Lucienne Roberts and her team at LR+ on Wonderlab: The Bramall gallery, a new interactive gallery at the Science Museum’s National Railway Museum in York. They were responsible for all the 2D design and integration on the project and it marked the beginning of a really fruitful collaboration with our practice.
They are rigorous designers as well as ethical and compassionate people, and our work together has been collaborative in its truest sense. They are curious and inquiring, specialising in the cultural and social sectors. What makes them unique is not only their brilliant creativity and passion for their craft but their level of engagement with content and narrative, and their experience in employing graphic design to transform user engagement and understanding.
Their work is modern, thoughtful and simple but not reductive. At Wonderlab, 2D and 3D design combined holistically to form a single creative whole. We are currently collaborating with LR+ on the new Carlisle Gallery, a permanent exhibition at Tullie House Museum, due to open at the beginning of next year. We are adopting an interesting use of patterns to represent some of the rich iconography of this great city.
José Esteves De Matos is co-founder of De Matos Ryan
As told to Pamela Buxton