‘Somewhere between sandpits and Lego’ was roughly the ‘unhealthily early’ point at which Finn Williams fixed upon architecture as his future career. Since then, the Cedric Price disciple has come a long way; his diploma project won the 2007 New London Architecture Babylon: don prize and was shown in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall as part of the Global Cities exhibition. But Williams’s style - ‘stupidly over-logical and hopefully very obvious’ - which has garnered awards and recognition, developed as a direct result of his own earlier more abstract approach to his craft.
‘After I’d finished my second-last year, I realised I had spent nine months designing an imaginary building that had no real use outside school. For my final year, I wanted all that work to be relevant and useful beyond the end of term.’ His about-face into pragmatism, which saw him propose an alternative to ‘the ugly economic and political reality of large scale developments in the UK’ - specifically for an on-going housing project in the Thames Gateway - has landed him stints at Newbetter, MUF architects and with Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam.
Meanwhile, he gained further endorsement when the developers of the project invited him to work on the real masterplan. Nevertheless, Williams maintains that he is probably less sure now about his career choice than when he was in that sandpit many years ago.
Would most like to work with:
'I like the people I work with now – General Public Agency.'
INFORMATION
School
Royal College of Art, London
Graduated
2007
