The place

A series of three new buildings on a long, narrow urban site designed by 6a architects for photographer and artist, Juergen Teller. The studio, offices, an archive, a kitchen, a library and other rooms all look out onto three partly-covered courtyard gardens, which are often used as settings for photographic shoots.

The brief

We created gardens that respond to a theme of abandoned industrialism. The buildings stand on the site of a former factory, and feature large, open spaces lit from above by daylight and framed by expanses of exposed concrete.

The design

Dominated by deciduous trees and ferns sprouting between broken concrete slabs, with climbers scaling high brick walls, the gardens reference the urban plots that are colonised naturally in derelict and untouched corners of the city. Rainwater is fed into each garden by industrial metal drainpipes, which supply steel tanks in two of the outdoor spaces.

Despite its constrained and semi-industrial plot in west London, the Photography Studio for Juergen Teller is an oasis in which the architects and landscape designer Dan Pearson have created a seemingly modest yet sublime light-filled studio and garden. Every single detail created by this exceptionally talented architect is precise and highly considered. The building is sublime and the whole team should be highly commended.

2017 RIBA Stirling Prize Jury Statement

Back downstairs, we now move into the first courtyard – you must go outside in order to pass through the building, which can only be traversed at ground level. These outdoor spaces have been planted by garden designer Dan Pearson with the kind of flora that erupted from the ruins of London after the Blitz, and, in another stagey touch, the ground is of shattered concrete, cast here and then broken up with a pneumatic drill to make spaces for plants. One wall retains a piece of the structure that previously occupied the site, a concrete pillar and beam, creating a ruin-chic trellis. Adding to the Ballard theme-park feel, an inflatable dinosaur is lodged among the branches of a tree.

Tom Wilkinson | Architects’ Journal