Expanded Fields series #4: Fritha Powell

Fritha Powell is an Architectural Graduate at Warren and Mahoney with a developing interest in Sustainability and carbon Measurement in construction. To intertwine her art practice and further academic research into her career, she has recently completed her postgraduate exegesis in sculpture, titled “Nothing is Set in Concrete” at the Ilam School of Fine Arts. To facilitate this work, she changed to part-time working hours and created the integral space to have an art practice whilst still contributing to the architectural industry.

To get in touch with Fritha, you can reach out through her Instagram, @fritha.fritha.

During the exegesis, Fritha completed two exhibitions and produced a final written document which was framed theoretically by the process of casting concrete: batching, mixing, transporting, placing, compacting, and finally curing and finishing. Her final work was a site responsive installation relating to the brutalist architecture of the Ilam School of Fine Arts, as she explored material ecologies of architecture, the history of women in the industry and the action of archiving the built.

“The body of work exists in two parts, due to the shift in making from a paper-based method of working to a textile, concrete and steel practice. Responding to the site, foundational words such as softening, surface, scale, furnishings, material ecologies and tactility become imperative. Concerned primarily with the lack of interior furnishings the research eventually becomes embodied into a final work that reflects a feminine interjection into the hard [...] It questions the space here; the space between two practices, the space between materials, the space between soft and hard, the considered limited surface space of females in an architectural practice and the newly cemented space in my own practice.”

She gifted the building ‘a voice’, as a driver to write both academically and poetically.

A reflection post-completion of her exegesis drew a parallel to her architecture masters and possibly the way she thinks about space. Her practice inevitably starts as paper-based, drawing and mark-making on the page. The next development is always pushing beyond this surface and eventually ending in a three-dimensional built form (abstract as opposed to a building) which the literal—constructing a building—really is the essence of an architectural practice. This methodology of working always results in a three dimensional spatial drawing, whether a projection installation for her (MArchProf) or her final sculptured work, drawn lines and a softer textile fabric questioning the conditions of the existing building's surface.

The year of a dynamic working environment between art and architecture reminded Fritha the importance of creating the space for developing a creative practice. She is now trying again to find a balance between her architectural career and her artistic practice as she has been reminded of the value of obtaining both—she believes ultimately that there can be a richness in practice when you can bring the two fields together. She hopes one day to further her research and continue to develop her interdisciplinary career.

This is the fourth in a series highlighting the benefits of reduced hour working weeks, enabling Architecture in an Expanded Field. The architects and architectural graduates in this series have all consciously designed their working lives to benefit from their adjacent creative practices.