Rosamund Diamond
Practice: Diamond Architects Limited
Established: 1995
City: London
Country: United Kingdom
www.diamondarchitects.co.uk
[email protected]
Ros Diamond founded her practice Diamond Architects in 1995. Its work has been published and exhibited in London. Issues which recur in the studio concern tolerance and authenticity. Ros also teaches and writes.. She studied at the Bartlett School, UCL, where she teaches part-time on a Masters programme. She has taught at Oxford, Bath and the Architectural Association. She has been a visiting critic at schools including the GSD Harvard and the Cooper Union in the USA and ETH and EPFL in Switzerland. She has contributed to magazines including werk, bauen + wohnen, Architecture Today and Building Design. She has edited several books including From City to Detail: Diener & Diener with Wilfried Wang, with whom she is editor of the journal 9H.
The work of Diamond Architects is often clamped in its execution between practical circumstances and the theoretical frameworks provided by publications and critiques.
Diamond Architects Limited
Twilly Springs House, Oxford
The construction of a large new predominantly timber house, incorporating a pair of seventeenth-century cottages with emphasis on fine craftmanship of the whole. This involved the dismantling and off-site restoration of a three-storey elm frame, construction of a new green oak and seasoned oak stair hall and other extensions, to form a coherent family home with generous living spaces that has captured the history of the building development within the new design.
| Do you think our profession is diverse enough? | Architecture and the construction industry, like many other professions and crafts, should be more diverse. This depends on political, social and economic issues, which relate to major national problems in the deskilling of our population, (exacerbated over the past fifty years), and the disenablement generated by a system in which technical skills have been demoted and detached from education. |
| Who are your role models who inspire you? | They are independent thinkers and creators of whatever gender or sex including: Eileen Gray, the architect and designer, for her individual humane approach to modern design and her technical skill in execution; Helena Kennedy for her consistent integrity in pursuing issues of democracy and equality; and Wangari Maathai for her massive advancement of improved environmental circumstances through the enablement generated by the Green Belt Movement. |
| If you could change one thing in our profession, what would it be? | One thing is insufficient, and the changes need to go beyond the profession. As a population, we need a better understanding of the influence of design and the ability to see what is good. I would restore a culture of craftsmanship and I would pursue the active development of mentoring - if you want a more diverse profession it has to be encouraged through a more equitable society. |