Our Influences | In pursuit of the Primitive

Over the weekend I watched the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. Set against the backdrop of Cold War anxiety and rapid post-war modernisation, it reminded me how folk music emerged not just as cultural expression, but as a kind of resistance—raw, real, and rooted in something ancient. It felt eerily parallel to the moment we’re living in now.

Today, the world is in the throes of another transformation—AI, hyper-connectivity, and digital immersion shaping not only how we work and communicate, but how we think, relate, and even imagine. It’s exciting, yes. But it also feels precarious. Disembodied. In response, I’ve noticed a shift—not just in myself, but among peers and clients too—toward something quieter, slower, and more elemental.

In our studio, we’ve been thinking about what it means to pursue a “primitive” architecture. Not primitive as in undeveloped or regressive, but in the sense of the essential: forms and materials that speak to permanence, legibility, and human instinct. A kind of architecture that resists noise. That feels analogue—not digital. Solid and earthen—not elusive.

In many ways, it’s a return to fundamentals: heavy materials, clear structure, courtyards, thresholds, walls that frame rather than dissolve. There’s a renewed appreciation for things that age and weather, that hold heat or give shade. Our recent work increasingly centres around these archetypal moves—simple geometries, grounded floor plans, spaces defined not by novelty but by necessity.

This isn’t nostalgia and it’s not anti-technology. We use digital tools every day. But we’re asking: where’s the counterweight? If the world is rushing toward lightness, fluidity, and frictionlessness, can architecture do the opposite? Should it? Can it offer resistance in the form of slowness, stillness, and solidity?

We’ve found inspiration not in novelty, but in permanence. Ancient buildings that remain legible centuries later. Rural constructions built without drawings, only instinct. Rooms where sound echoes in just the right way. Light that enters once a day with purpose.

In some ways, the most radical thing we can do now is to make something calm. Something that doesn't move. Something that gives weight to your day and allows for ritual and consideration.

Architecture, at its best, is a cultural record—an echo of its time. But it can also be a correction. A reminder that in a rapidly dematerialising world, the most meaningful spaces might be those that are the most grounded. The ones made not of code or cloud, but of timber, brick, earth, and shadow. The ones you can feel.

So we continue, not with grand gestures or new theories, but with quiet convictions. A well-proportioned opening. A shaded courtyard. A wall that does what it’s meant to do. In pursuit not of innovation for its own sake, but of the primitive—simple, enduring, and deeply human.