MICROHOME #10 competition Kingspan Compliments winner - Sam Alexander Selencky

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce the Kingspan Compliments winner of MICROHOME #10 competition – Sam Alexander Selencky from United Kingdom!

Sam Alexander Selencky with team

Please tell us about your company (when it was founded, where it is based, how many employees, etc) Alternatively, if you do not have a company, please give us some insights on your own professional/academia background.

Selencky Parsons was founded eleven years ago by directors, Sam Selencky and David Parsons. Selencky Parsons is a small practice of 8 people. Based in SE London, we work extensively in the locality, as well as across Greater London, throughout the UK and occasionally abroad.

Brief information about the projects that you/your company have been involved with. For instance, what scale have you focused on/preferred, any significant projects where the company/ individuals have been Involved?

Although Selencky Parsons are best known for their private residential work our projects span across a diverse range of sectors, scales, and settings. We enjoy the close client relationships that residential work brings, whilst also relishing the challenges of larger scale projects in other sectors. Our role is to draw out the unique properties of each project, regardless of scale, and create a tailormade design solution that brings it to life. Some examples of our work that have been widely published include The Coach House, The River House, The Weathered House, Bulls Barn, Bravura House.

What does architecture mean to you and what is the role of an architect in your society?

 Our projects aim to tell a story and are underpinned with a distinct narrative. Our work is often playful but everything we do is underpinned by serious, exacting, functional architecture. Strong concepts are at the heart of our process, and rigorous detailing ensures the ultimate success of our buildings. We recognise the necessity to work responsibly, to create beautiful, thoughtful buildings that are sustainable. The practice is organised in a way that allows us to build on each other’s ideas in an open forum. This enables us to get the best from our team’s diversity and experience through creative collaboration. This approach allowed us to develop a fresh conceptual response to the current housing crisis in this competition that could potentially change the way in which society inhabits cities.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

Architecture competitions are a great opportunity to push the limits of our creativity and work in an unrestricted and speculative way which can establish an interesting narrative and really push it to its limits - which can be hard to achieve in day-to-day practice. In the case of the Microhome 10 Competition, our experience of residential architecture in London has highlighted the housing crisis that we are in. The Competition gave us the opportunity to develop on an innovative design solution to this crisis.

What advice would you give to individuals who struggle to decide whether it would be beneficial for them to participate in architecture competitions?

It is challenging to find resource for speculative design competition, but this can be a great boost for staff morale and help to hone your teams’ creative skills.