Jake Ireland Architects is a small East London based practice, formed in 2006, with the aim of producing socially engaged architecture that is informed by site, materiality and sustainability concerns and is affected by an interest in physics and the scientific method.

The first completed project, a contemporary remodeling of a Georgian terraced property in Islington, was completed in spring/summer 2007. It was included in Open House London in September2007, with around 400 visitors. It was shortlisted for the AJ Small Projects Award 2008, and was exhibited at New London Architecture, The Building Centre, London WC1, in March. The second completed project was a more modest residential extension in Camden, with high quality oak joinery and a careful attention to natural and artificial light and interior/exterior connections.

Driving all the work is a commitment to best practice, aiming to supply the client the best project possible, to budget and schedule, and with service of an attentive personal nature that small practices are best equipped to provide. We carry out survey and measured drawings, work through and discuss a number of feasibility arrangements before resolving a scheme for planning, produce highly detailed construction drawings and written Schedule of Works documentation for building control and contractors tender. We generally suggest a traditional form of contractual arrangement between client and contractor, bespoke but based on JCT Minor Works.

An underlying agenda stems from long standing scientific interests. We are belatedly starting to recognise the cataclysmic levels of stress put on the environment by the certainties of global capital. There is an increasingly urgent need for architects to understand and embrace the doubt and uncertainty inherent to science in general (and quantum mechanics in particular), as well as the logical, rational enquiry and mathematical truth at the base of the scientific method.

Combining artistic and scientific concerns, architecture has always been a discipline that bridges the ‘two cultures’. In our era of unprecedented and accelerating change driven by technology, the fundamental concerns of architecture remain unchanged. These involve the design of sculptured social space for improved quality of life, animated by light, of durable construction with appropriate use of technology, environmental responsibility and sensual materiality, with a connectedness to place, all combining to give an emotional charge. The best buildings are a backdrop to peoples lives, that still subtly engender a sense of wonder and delight (350 years of scientific investigation gives the same wonder at nature, when we look at the stars or a flower). However, to remain relevant, contemporary architecture, like all art, must also continually invent new forms that reflect the present and lead us into the future. In order to respond to the changes we will experience this century, this requires architecture to incorporate a working knowledge of the science and mathematics underpinning the new technology.