Colin Rice
Partner
After nearly 40 years as an architect, it’s still the excitement of making things that gets Colin out of bed in the morning. ‘For me architecture is the art of beautiful building. I love buildings that age and weather well.’
Colin believes passionately in Ted Cullinan’s dictum, ‘Architecture is the celebration of the necessary:’ true sustainability comes from creating places and buildings that endure because they are loved and treasured.
Colin has a wealth of experience about how buildings are put together, which he shares with our teams in his technical support role. He continually explores ideas with his self-build projects, always curious about smart and economical ways of doing things. Whether it’s bread, beer or jazz he’s made ‘well-made’ an obsession.
Project Experience
The Holy module
The Divinity Faculty for the University of Cambridge, is the most rigorous building I have ever designed. A strict 300mm module runs vertically through the building on which everything hangs: externally - sun-shading, water-shedding aluminium louvres; internally, skirtings, window sills, soffits. As a result, views out and light into the building work, whether working at a desk or walking around. As respected engineer Sam Price said after reviewing it for its RIBA Award, ‘everything is meant.’
From the cave-like lecture rooms in the basement to the wonderfully light and airy circular library crowning the building, there is a real sense of a journey here; a metaphor not lost on the divines.
Places to study, places to learn
Louis Kahn said, ‘A man with a book goes to the light. A library begins that way.’ The library at St John’s College, Cambridge celebrates this fact, but also that different users have their own preferences for where to perch.
The design for St John’s is based on its wide range of places for people to study: comfortable corner reading bays looking out over the court and over the garden, over the entrance and over the rooftops. As the Master said, it’s ‘a cage of light and learning.’
Green Tiles Annexe Happisburgh
I’ve been self-building a low budget experimental house beside the coast in Norfolk since 2016. As well as beautifully lit and cosy bolt-hole, it celebrates the first task of the building envelope: to shed water and keep the inside dry.
Windows are simple plywood boxes with a stepped edge double glazed unit screwed to the outside, with thicker insulation above so that water drips straight off to the ground – no danger of decay here. Timber shutters for ventilation work in the same way. Deep window reveals give a wonderful sense of being inside. Materials are organic and breathable and arranged so that there is no danger of condensation moisture accumulating within the fabric. The sweet smell of sea-grass matting evokes memories of beach holidays.