Piers Taylor is an award winning architect, broadcaster and academic. He has dual Australian/British Citizenship, and studied Architecture in Sydney under Pritzker Prize winner Glenn Murcutt and in London at the Architectural Association.
He has been called ‘One of the brightest architects in the profession’ and has designed a number of seminal buildings, including the RIBA Award Winning ‘Room 13’ and the house ‘Moonshine’ which won the AJ Small Project Award. His built work has been published extensively and internationally, and typically pushes boundaries in terms of cost, technique and process. He is known for his resourceful ‘thinking outside of the box’ and his challenging of mainstream convention in architecture and in education.
His work has a particular focus on the role of ‘Making’ in architecture, and has developed and built a number of buildings in a collaborative way, often using exceptionally local materials. He has a particular interest in the use of home grown timber in construction, and has worked on a number of prototypical and experimental timber projects including those at Hooke Park in Dorset.
He is currently working on a new big span timber structure for Westonbirt Arboretum and a new studio for his practice using material only grown in his own woodland.
Piers is also known for his passion and enthusiasm for architecture. He co-presents the BBC2 Series ‘The House that £100k Built’ with Kieran Long, which demonstrates to self-builders how to do more, with less. The inaugural episode drew close to 3 million viewers – a first for an architectural TV series.
He has founded two renowned architectural practices – Mitchell Taylor Workshop and Invisible Studio. He is a former Design Fellow at the University of Cambridge, and a Studio Master at London’s Architectural Association. He has also founded a number of educational programs including the annual Studio in the Woods.
Piers is widely engaged in a number of topical architectural issues, and contributes regularly to many architectural journals including the Architects’ Journal. He has also written for Blueprint, Building Design and the Architectural Review. Piers is married with four children and lives in a self built house in a woodland near Bath.
The Lecture will be delivered to an audience of leading figures in design, commissioning and construction at the Headland Hotel, Newquay on 14th November 2014.