Papers 2, a collection of writings by Sergison Bates Architects from 2002 to 2007, is something of a curiosity within British architectural culture - albeit a welcome one. For in contrast to our European counterparts, architects in Britain generally appear to regard ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’ as mutually exclusive activities. There are of course notable exceptions to this generalisation. Nonetheless, Jonathan Sergison and Stephen Bates place themselves amongst select company in seeking to posit ideas, as well as buildings, within our collective architectural consciousness. Moreover, they continue to do so, despite having evolved into an established office with a substantial workload since the preceding volume, Papers, was published in 2002.

Often it seems, the public articulation of an architect’s intellectual or reflective relationship with the subject recedes, as ‘real’ work arrives. For both Sergison and Bates however, an obvious enjoyment of the potential of language is honed by the understanding that words can offer a legitimate and critical contribution to thinking about and subsequently making architecture - as part of practice rather than as a counterpoint to it.

Words are certainly critical here. Indeed, those potential purchasers hoping to see extensive presentations and pictures of the practice’s latest built output will need to look elsewhere, for this book eschews the rather abused format of the ‘monograph’. Whilst projects are described and discussed, they are often not the primary focus of concern and many of them will, in any case, already be familiar to readers from Papers and other publications. Instead, work takes its place within a larger frame of reference: drawn from precedent and history; art as well as architecture practice; through which the authors define collective terms of reference for their ongoing engagement with the discipline. The resultant pieces are not lengthy, overly academic or intended to be conclusive. Instead they introduce deeper strands of thinking and intention, to be played out through building. In this regard, the absence of ‘work in progress’, the discussion of which has often been central to arguments set forth in previous publications, limits ones understanding of how these collected thoughts are being developed and translated in relation to the practice’s current thinking.

In Papers, the concerns of the practice were described as ‘being somewhere between ideas and places’. Mediation, between idea and artefact, continues to be a central theme of Papers 2. The beginning of the opening essay ‘On teaching’ states that “As architects we find ourselves consistently drawing upon our own experience as the basis for any building proposition.” The experiential nature of architecture and the recognition and elaboration of this experience, through actions of observation, making and inhabitation, becomes the precursor to many of the thoughts and studies which individual texts articulate. Collectively, the pieces tend towards critique rather than polemic. In some, things are simply brought into relation, leaving open questions for the reader to explore through reference to their own understanding.

This consistent grounding of potentially abstract ideas, through engagement with the directly perceived and understood is, in many ways, the strength of Sergison Bates conceptual position. The precision inherent in their observations of familiar, overlooked or disregarded conditions underscores the clarity, rigour and potential of their architecture and asks pertinent questions of a profession seemingly mesmerised by the surface sheen of architectural imagery.

However, their insistence upon the value of such intimate exploration ultimately reveals another, rather larger question, which they also choose to leave open. In the essay ‘Outlooks’ Sergison remarks tantalisingly that “Nearly all that we had built was no more than a two hour journey away, although this situation has begun to change with the recent invitation to build outside our native England.” Frustratingly the resulting, fundamental question of how distance and unfamiliarity might adjust, develop or transform the concerns and nuanced observations so eloquently expressed in Papers 2 is left unanswered. One suspects this is something with which the practice is currently grappling. Perhaps Papers 3 might offer some conclusions…