INTERVIEW AOC Architecture
Architecture and agency at play
Photo: Emily Graham
AOC Architecture is a London-based practice known for their collaborative design method. Each project takes shape as an evolving conversation, with ideas tested through workshops, dialogue and hands-on prototyping. Central to the studio’s identity is a willingness to rethink the familiar. This adds whimsy to their design for the Young V&A, a museum for children and their grown-up guests, where imagination and joy have informed every spatial decision.
YOUNG V&A, BETHNAL GREEN, UNITED KINGDOM PHOTO: HUFTON AND CROW
A building waiting to be reimagined
The Young V&A was originally designed and constructed by engineers in 1856, and stood on the grounds of its parent institution, the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington. Next to the lavish architecture of the V&A that developed over the next two decades, the no-nonsense, Liverpool-designed shed full of art felt painfully out of tune. In 1872, in an effort to uplift East London’s impoverished population with a dash of culture, its entire structure and contents were moved to the current location in Bethnal Green, on the crossroads of a busy thoroughfare and a pocket park. For years, it was known as the V&A Museum of Childhood: a fairly dark and dusty lineup of historic toys, presented in a monotonous grid of glass vitrines. A rocking horse here, some optical toys there; it appealed more to parents’ nostalgia than to children’s delight.
A museum for children
Now, things are different. Reopened in 2023, the museum underwent a three-year revamp courtesy of AOC Architecture in collaboration with De Matos Ryan. Its new name - Young V&A - reflects the shift in approach found within its walls: instead of being a museum about children, it has become a museum for children. Once a monotonous presentation, the museum now takes visitors on a proper journey. The heart of the building, a spectacularly vast multifunctional space, gives centre stage to an original black and white tiled floor. The floor is lined by a continuous bench, used by visitors at their own accord to sit, play, eat or relax. At the far end, there’s an inviting spiral staircase that leads up to the galleries, topped out by a circular mirror.
YOUNG V&A, BETHNAL GREEN, UNITED KINGDOM PHOTOS: LUKE HAYES
'The bench is used by visitors at their own accord to sit, play, eat or relax'
Interplay between architecture and objects
The four galleries are marked by life-sized letters squeezed between the building’s cast ironcolumns. Cartoonishly, they indicate each gallery’s character: DESIGN, PLAY, EXHIBITION and IMAGINE. Behind the puffed-up letters, each gallery has its own theme, with interactive installations sprinkled throughout. There’s a tangible interplay between the building’s architectural design and the objects on show. In the PLAY section for instance, surrounding a play area for toddlers, objects are arranged by colour and first letter (the case for the letter R is shaped like a robot). Elsewhere, glass cases presenting historic doll’s houses have been upgraded with disco lights and sounds that speed up and slow down with the twist of a wheel.
Extensive co-creation process
As Gill Lambert and Geoff Shearcroft - two of AOC Architecture’s partners - show me around, Lambert gets increasingly giddy. She speeds towards objects, indicates which buttons to push, where to stand to participate in an optical illusion and how to listen to a conversation between two furniture pieces. I can’t blame her for her childlike enthusiasm: the overall experience in this building is joyful, colourful and generous. The success lies in an extensive co-creation process. AOC started a 10 month residency period in the museum, which took shape as a test lab for the public exploration of proposals. The goal was to create the most joyful museum in the world. It is easy to see why it has become a neighbourhood favourite, judging by the Monday afternoon bustle. The café is packed, children are running about, parents in tow, and prams are lined up in the back of the central hall.
Involving people to make better buildings
Before visiting the Young V&A together, I sat down with Shearcroft and Lambert for a chat at their office nearby. The studio was founded in 2005 and is led by three directors: Gill, Geoff and their colleague Tom Coward. AOC’s work has always been community-focused and playfully optimistic. It dates back to Tom and Geoff’s university days, when they both had a hunch that involving people in the process might make for better buildings. They decided to start a practice together, and Gill joined them early on.
What started the collaboration?
Lambert: Before I joined AOC, I'd been running a charity called Voluntary Design and Build. I constructed projects together with communities and new graduates of architecture courses - very engaged and hands-on.
Shearcroft: By then, Tom and I had talked about involving people in the building process, but Gill had direct experience in doing it. Since then, over the last 20 years, the three of us have been working out how to involve people in briefs and design through co-creation processes. We see our role as a designer, facilitator and enabler altogether.
Could you give an example of an early project you took on?
Shearcroft: An important project for us was The Lift, a demountable theatre for the London International Theatre Festival. For this project, we worked with 10 community groups dotted around several Olympic boroughs. We met them in different spaces, encouraging participants to envision a day in the life of the new building. For instance, we took over a theatre in Stratford and talked to participants about how such a space would work for them to meet and perform in. We played around with stuff like plastic sheeting, a garden shed and a tent in the space. And we noticed some particular things: people happily stepped into a circle marked by a hanging plastic sheet, but seemed nervous about entering the garden shed, because it felt too ‘hard’. Another finding: people consistently mentioned that the theatre should be a black box performance space, but at the same time, it had to allow for daylight to enter for daytime gatherings.
THE LIFT, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM PHOTO: TIM MITCHELL
SHAPE NEWHAM, NEWHAM, UNITED KINGDOM PHOTO: LUKE O'DONOVAN
This process led to a surprising result. The Lift is a demountable, tent-like structure covered by a flexible membrane. When its large, main shutter is down, sunlight enters the space for meetings and daytime activities. Once it’s up, the structure evolves into a darkened theatre. The flexible form allows for structures to be introduced within, making the theatre adaptable to any function that users might want. The design process - using physical objects as a sort of prototype - was an eye-opener for the architects.
Lambert: It introduced us to the idea that community meetings are a helpful form of prototyping; a spatial consultation as a crucial stepping stone between the client’s brief and the spatial design.
What qualities do you need as an architect to work in such co-creation processes?
Lambert: Being open to conversation. We always start from scratch, as in, we don’t have a fixed set of tools that we deploy, or a spatial aesthetic in mind. Of course we speak with the decision makers, but we also involve the people that are running the day-to-day; the stakeholders that will use the building.
Shearcroft: A commitment to listening is really important. Our office is called AOC - Agents of Change. That refers to the idea that you're not just creating a static object; you're changing an existing situation. It is crucial to take people seriously. We believe that everyone can have an intelligent conversation about architecture, if you give them the right tools and the right opportunities to talk about it. The prototyping phase is helpful; physical things make the conversation easier.
'We spend a lot of time thinking about how simple surfaces can be communicative'
In your project Shape Newham, a series of interventions in public space, this collaborative approach is very clear.
Shearcroft: Newham is a diverse local borough of about 350,000 people. Instead of large projects, the mayor decided to make smaller improvements dotted around the borough, and to use the process to get people talking about what they want in their area. Hardwired into the program was the idea of having citizens assemblies, in which people could decide how the money should be spent. We led the process with a team of other architects and local artists. The citizen assemblies resulted in a brief, and we established design committees that would go on to be the design critics. In this way, citizens kept on being involved.
The project resulted in a series of pocket-sized interventions that brighten up the public space. On one busy street, the team replaced an existing, black guardrail with pastel coloured bollards, created by an artist to resemble the tempting Indian sweets sold in a nearby shop - a small intervention that made a huge impact.
Shearcroft: I recently showed a group around. When we turned the corner, every single person smiled upon seeing them. People laid their hands on them, sat on them. There was a palpable change in mood. It was interesting to see that something relatively, physically small could create such a visible change.
Your work is colourful and recognisable. Do you feel like you have a signature style?
Shearcroft: From the start, we didn't want to have a singular style. But what has become clear after 20 years work, is that there are certain things that we like. We spend a lot of time thinking about how simple surfaces can be communicative, whether it's through colour or pattern. And there is a certain figurative quality to the forms we use. We try to create sensory architecture that has an emotional connection with people to lift the mood.
WELLCOME READING ROOM, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM PHOTO: TIM SOAR
Lambert: We design across scales. Occasionally a house, but mostly community centres, theatres and museums. But on all scales, we design a visitor experience that takes you on a journey. We enjoy the juxtapositions of different moods and experiences, going from very quiet to very loud, or from a very bright space to a very dark one. Also, we tend to get complex briefs that include hybrid programming, and therefore we design for many different uses of a space.
Do you have an example of this hybrid programming?
Lambert: In a strange way, seating is very important to us. We like to put people at ease. We have included hybrid seating areas in a lot of our projects. In the centre of the Young V&A, the seating goes all around the edge of the space. At the café area, people sit down with sandwiches and coffee, and in other spots, people change nappies, have a picnic, and kids play games on it. You can accommodate that just by making a bench deeper than normal, more robust, and with softer edges so it doesn't hurt if you fall off.
Shearcroft: In our design for the Wellcome Reading Room, there’s a stairway that leads to a restricted area. We covered it in carpet and topped it with large cushions, in a pattern taken from the museum’s collection. People sit there, they lounge there, they fall asleep - there’s always someone napping! If you can make someone that comfortable...
Lambert: A stairway is about circulation, about moving someone from A to B. But we have overlayed that with different programmatic potentials.
It reminds me of the playfulness of children: they can turn any object into a boat, car, or horse to play with.
Shearcroft: We have all retained a childlike curiosity. We talk about creative misuse a lot, as in when you design something that is used for something it's not allowed for. For example, you know that kids are going to do somersaults on a handrail in a school, even though the teachers will not like it. Then we think: how do we design those, so they can do that safely?”
Do you notice a shift in the new generation of architects?
Shearcroft: Architecture under Modernism has been about control: having a big idea, designing it and controlling everything. In our process, we let go of that control by giving agency to others. It’s the idea of the architect as a surfer, using your skills to navigate the context, keeping flexibility to respond to whatever comes up. You can’t control the waves, but the more you practice, the better you can learn how to navigate them.
THE LIFT, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM PHOTO: TIM MITCHELL
SHAPE NEWHAM, NEWHAM, UNITED KINGDOM PHOTO: LUKE O'DONOVAN