Simon Conder: Small Works

Simon Conder: Small Works is the chronological, pictorial story of Simon Conder's architecture over the last twenty years. Conder trained in London at both the Architectural Association School of Architecture and the Industrial Design Department of the Royal College of Art. Prior to that, he designed and made furniture, and has worked closely with skilled craftspeople to create buildings, generally at a small scale, ever since. Before working in the public sector in England for six years on large housing and community projects, Simon worked in small studios in London and Copenhagen. There he particularly identified with the friendliness and commitment of a small team, the variety and fast pace of the work and the importance of detail. In 1984 he won four out of six competitions and was able to start his own studio with offices in London and Suffolk. Since then, he has won some large competitions. His work is about many things, but paramount is the desire to make things well, and to respond genuinely to the particular requirements of the client, the site and the budget. Many of his best projects have been created on very low budgets. Although always a very small studio, averaging three to four people, Simon Conder Associates has already won 40 architecture and design awards, including two RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prizes for the best building costing less than GBP1 million in Britain, and has twice been shortlisted for the biennial Mies van der Rohe Award for the best building in Europe. When he was at school, Simon had the rather pretentious ambition to be an `intellectual', but a devastatingly bad entrance interview for Cambridge University taught him that words were never going to be his best way of communicating ideas. Hence he hopes that in this word-free book every picture will tell the story.