While we may only see the finished building, architectural photographer Timothy Soar sees the designers behind them, their personalities and their aspirations for the future of the profession.
In his current exhibition, Reinventing Practice, on display at the Building Centre in London throughout this month, Soar brings together portraits of 40 of these architects at the forefront of Britain's building industry, delving into the people and practices working to change the built environment.
"In making the series I hadn't really turned away from photographing architecture. I was trying to extend its photographic language to include the people responsible for making it," said Soar.
According to the photographer, Reinventing Practice has roots in a project that began in 2004. That year, Soar bought his first digital camera, a Canon 1Ds, and paired it with a Canon tilt-shift lens.
Having previously worked with large-format 4×5-inch transparency film, but facing “enormous difficulty” making photographs that included people, the photographer explained how he now had a “powerful and fast way” to capture interiors with people in them.
Armed with his new DSLR, in partnership with Architects' Journal (AJ) editor Isabel Allen, Soar set out to photograph architects within their own workspaces, hoping to shed light on this profession.
Subsequently, the project developed into AJ's 2005 edition of 40 Under 40, a now-defunct celebration of emerging architects in the UK. “The series went on to become the most popular feature in the magazine and provoked some splendid, occasionally heated, conversations in the letters pages,” said Soar.
Instead of imposing standard corporate portraits, Soar explained how he works with his subjects to create images that reveal their personalities, working environments and professional values. “I begin by looking for a composition that makes sense of all this, then work out how the person might naturally inhabit it,” he said.
Like Rupert and Socrates, from MCM Architecture, whom Soar photographed perched on enormous bags of compost, chatting like old friends catching up. “I'm looking for something that feels entirely characteristic of the person, rather than an image of how an architect is supposed to look,” the photographer added.
Timothy Soar's gear and settings
Soar shot the series for Reinventing Practice using a Fujifilm GFX 100 and a Canon TS-E 50mm f/2.8L tilt-shift lens. According to Soar, using one camera and lens across the portraits gave the series a consistent visual language. His settings were typically ISO 100 and around f/11, and sometimes he used shutter speeds of 1/4 sec or 1/2 sec.
While Soar's subjects challenge the traditional corporate image of a professional in their field, according to the photographer, they're also bringing new ways of working to the industry. “They [the architects] are at the leading edge of responding to a world undergoing rapid change as a consequence of global warming.”
According to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), climate change is the “biggest threat” to the built environment sector, and the industry will have to adapt practices to account for increasing heat, flooding and the pressures of migration, a reality Soar says his exhibition reflects.
“I think what I've learnt is how optimistic, engaged and positive these architects are, how much they have to contribute to the debate, and the extraordinary range and imagination of the solutions they're developing,” he said. “I've found their optimism rather moving.”
Soar hopes that exhibition visitors will see beyond the beautiful buildings that so often epitomize architecture to the optimism, drive and values held by what he calls “an extraordinary group of people” changing the way the industry works.
Timothy Soar: Reinventing Practice is now on display until October 30 as part of Regenerative Design 2026, a month-long program at the Building Centre, London, exploring how architecture and design are responding to environmental and social change.
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