The pile on the table.

Around month three of a project the studio table starts to gather a small pile. A piece of brick, a chunk of oak block, a sample of the stone we’re thinking about for the worktop, a square of wood-wool board to keep the building warm. There are usually four or five things and they sit there for a long time.

This is the early architecture of the house. We look at them in different light. We pick them up. We move them around. We bring them home for a weekend and look at them next to the materials of the existing house. Slowly, three of them survive and the rest are quietly removed.

The surviving materials are the ones that work with each other in every light. Some materials are beautiful at noon and dead at four; some are quiet at noon and remarkable at dusk. The pile shows you that, slowly.

By the time the planning drawings go in, the materials have been on the table for sixteen weeks. By the time the builder is on site they have been there for a year. The conversations about materials are mostly conversations we have already had. The site decisions are detail decisions.

You can do this digitally. We have tried. It does not work. The pile is the thing.