Michael Lewis sets up valid relationships between architecture, the space, and the humans within it in an expression of human physicality
Michael Lewis
Architect, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studio
It was the presence of the human that appealed to the judges with architect Michael Lewis’ representations – based on both a student housing project carried out while at FCBS and the way Lewis’ own home transformed during the Covid-19 lockdown. Despite a standard orthographic representation of the latter, the layering of potential usage in all its forms, like a Neufert data manual on steroids, lent a complexity that raised the drawing from the prosaic to the philosophical.
While Shaikh enjoyed the graphic play – ‘his ethos is to show the life in space anchored through orthographic representation’ – he wondered if it could have been pushed further, adding: ‘If he had done something more prescient I think it would have had more power.’ But Fernie enjoyed the expression of human physicality embodied in the architect ‘holding’ his own work, returning to the idea of the body-centred design, noting ‘I appreciate the valid relationships he sets up between architecture, the space and the humans within it."