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- [00:00]
Finn Harper
I never had the opportunity to be a normal kid that was just not on the table for me. And so I've had to like, figure out a way to be the abnormal kid. The way I dress, the way I relate to people, projects I take on, they're all trying to kind of make sense of being a bit of an oddity to others, but make that a good thing rather than a negative thing. And I suddenly was like, oh God, architecture could be so much more than fancy houses and skyscrapers. It can really enrich community life, it can enrich society. I'm just always looking for opportunities where I can connect social issues with all my architectural knowledge and expertise and connections and do something useful. When I was feeling very, very low and like the flat was a complete mess, stuff everywhere, some of my neighbors who had a key came in and just tidied it up a bit while I was out. And that's very special. I remember that gesture for the rest of my life, I think.
- [01:00]
Matt Gibbard
Hello, welcome to Homing. I'm Matt Gibbard. Today's guest is the architecture critic and writer Finn Harper. Some of you will know Finn from the excellent films they make for the Modern House, of course. Finn lives on Vanbrugh park, which is a post War council estate in Greenwich designed by Chamberlain, Powell and Bonn, the architects behind the Barbican Estate. Finn's more connected to their community than almost anyone I've met, I think. Together with neighbours, they've transformed neglected corners of the estate into gardens and trained some vines up the old washing posts. Every March, they all come together for a celebration called Unlocking, where they plant a tree and share some of Finn's homemade rhubarb ice cream. In this conversation, Finn tells me what they learned from growing up on a generic new build estate, what it was like to feel like an outsider and why they've become so passionate about repair. They also reflect on the end of a long term relationship and how it transformed their understanding of what home really means. For Patreon subscribers, there's a tour of Finn's flat and and the wider Vanbrugh park estate, which I must say I found really inspiring. So do have a look at that if you fancy it. In the meantime, here is the podcast and I hope you enjoy it. Hi, Finn.
- [02:26]
Finn Harper
Hi.
- [02:27]
Matt Gibbard
Thanks so much for doing this and thanks for having us in your very beautiful flat.
- [02:31]
Finn Harper
You're very welcome.
- [02:32]
Matt Gibbard
Where did you grow up? First of all, I grew up in
- [02:34]
Finn Harper
the Midlands in a small village outside a small town. Town was called Banbury. It's like the most southern tip of the Midlands before you, you know, start heading up towards Birmingham.
- [02:46]
Matt Gibbard
Okay.
- [02:46]
Finn Harper
I'm not by birth a city boy, city guy, city person. I think there was a sheep field opposite the house where, where I spent the first part of my life. But then I moved to quite a horrible Taylor Wimpy new build estate as a sort of young teenager and spent my kind of like coming of age, formative years in that estate which was like on the edge of Warwick. One of these like very generic towns, new build estates you see all over England where just like some big volume house builder just like rolls out like roughly the same thing they did last time. All kind of two story, not particularly well built, boxy houses strangled by cars. And so I think kind of maybe the contrast between those two, like childhood homes was quite stark to me.
- [03:34]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah. So tell me a bit more about the first one then, the early one.
- [03:37]
Finn Harper
Well, the first one's like a really old stone building, like really thick walls, had like a decent garden. It was in a village, part of like a historic terrace where each of the like different houses in the terrace were like a different style, maybe build a different era. Next door neighbors was thatched, which is really interesting. And then there's like a bit of the village that's like more modern council estate. And there's a bit of the village that's like quite grand and has these sort of bigger houses. It's a lot of variety and you can walk everywhere, you know, you can walk and cycle everywhere. And I'd cycle into town or get the bus or something. And then moving to Warwick, which I thought was like, all right, we're, we're coming into the big city. This is a big town now. This is a proper place. I'm not stuck in my little backwater village anymore. But actually that estate that I was in, everything was kind of the same. Like all the, all the buildings look the same. Everyone had the same car. That's how it felt, you know, as a kind of whatever, 13, 14 year old. And I had so much less freedom as a, as a child just at that like young teenage age when you're like craving freedom and independence. Actually something about the. Not my house exactly, but like the estate that my house was part of was giving me the exact opposite. That like you were really dependent on people giving you lifts around because like it wasn't so hard to walk around and cycle around. And the bus connections into town were really expensive and infrequent and all this kind of stuff. So I think about that Estate a lot. And you know how I learned what not to do as a housing designer or as an architect. And also like what I look for when I'm thinking about moving. Like what kind of place do I want to live? What kind of place would I advise others to go and live in? And I'd say avoid those kind of Taylor Wimpy Barrett home, Persimmon, edge of town, new build States. Because they, they're quite draining to live in, I think. I'm sure some people like them.
- [05:38]
Matt Gibbard
Draining is an interesting word. So in what way are they draining? Why would you say that?
- [05:42]
Finn Harper
Well, as a kid like there was just nowhere to play. Like, you know, there's like this tiny little, you know, like the size of a small car playground.
- [05:54]
Matt Gibbard
Okay.
- [05:54]
Finn Harper
And that was kind of it. And everywhere is a road. There's. Whereas when I was in the village, like you could play in the churchyard, you could play in the field, you could play in the little forest bit, you could play at the quite substantial park next to the quite substantial primary school. And then moving into the new build estate, like all of that went away and you become much more reliant on parents with vehicles. And then as an older person, you know, once I was like 18, I was able to go drinking. There weren't any pubs either. Like there was no kind of adult social infrastructure either. So people would just, they'd have to kind of leave their neighborhood to see their friends or to experience culture or anything. Whereas even in that little village they know there was a pub, there was a shop, there was like a little social life to it. It was in a tiny place but like had somehow more going on than that estate on the edge of town in the, in, in Warwick in the Midlands.
- [06:51]
Matt Gibbard
So. Interesting.
- [06:52]
Finn Harper
Yeah.
- [06:53]
Matt Gibbard
So what precipitated the move from one to the other then?
- [06:56]
Finn Harper
I think it's partly that my parents wanted us all to have our own bedroom. I'm one of four kids and we were all getting to the age where like sharing a bedroom was a bit of a stretch and they had, they realized that they had the, they had enough money that if they moved to a new build estate with smaller rooms then everyone could have their own room. Because at that point my, one of my sisters was sleeping in a bathroom. Like they'd put a board over the bath, turned it into a bed and that was her bedroom. So she had like a toilet and a sink and a bath in her bedroom, which was kind of great for her because like she, she, she wanted her own room and it was better to Have a small weird room with a toilet in it than not no bedroom or like to share a bedroom. But I think that was. That was the main. That was a big part of the move anyway, was like, you know, give each of these four children their own little space rather than making one of them sleep on top of a bath.
- [07:56]
Matt Gibbard
I suppose it's fair enough.
- [07:57]
Finn Harper
It's a good. Also, like, you know, my dad was a secondary school teacher and to some extent you have to go where the teaching jobs are.
- [08:05]
Matt Gibbard
Okay.
- [08:05]
Finn Harper
You know, it wasn't that far. It's just like half an hour up the M40 or something.
- [08:08]
Matt Gibbard
So. Did you have your own room in the early house, though? Were you sharing?
- [08:12]
Finn Harper
Yeah, well, I'm the eldest of the four, so.
- [08:14]
Matt Gibbard
Okay.
- [08:14]
Finn Harper
I was. I was like, why do we have to move? I've got my own room. But yeah, my sisters were. I think increasingly they're the youngest of the four and they were feeling the pressure.
- [08:28]
Matt Gibbard
Okay, so is it. Is it two boys, two girls? Was it, or.
- [08:31]
Finn Harper
Well, I'm non binary.
- [08:32]
Matt Gibbard
Okay.
- [08:33]
Finn Harper
So I don't identify as a boy, but I did back then. So it was, yeah, two boys and two girls, and the girls are twins.
- [08:41]
Matt Gibbard
Oh, okay.
- [08:41]
Finn Harper
I've always been very effeminate and not very comfortable with gender categories like that. But my younger brother Joss had his own bedroom. And then my sisters were like, oh, gosh, we're gonna have to. One of us will have to sleep in a bath.
- [08:55]
Matt Gibbard
So when. When did you start thinking about gender in that way then? Quite a young age.
- [09:00]
Finn Harper
Yeah, really young age. Like, my parents, very flawed in many ways, but also kind of amazing in many ways. Like a lot of people's parents and they always allowed me to play with any kind of toy. So I had Barbies and Cindy's and Polly Pockets. Loved Polly Pockets. These, like, little worlds where you've got like, Polly moves around and it's like it folds up into a kind of the shape of a clam or something. Some parents would be very uncomfortable with their, like, new baby son enjoying the color pink or enjoying playing with these, like, girl coded toys. But my parents were totally fine with that. And so I think that was part of it. And, you know, gradually you get more indoctrinated into gender as you get older and you become influenced by society and friends and marketing and all of this stuff. And I probably moved from Polly Pockets to Mighty Maxes, which is like the boy version. Polly Pocket. Um, but I think it probably started then that, like, I've. I've always seen genders like kind of fluid and like a little bit silly and like an opportunity to have some fun and express yourself in a way that feels, you know, more true to you than what society thinks people with your type of body should do, say, and look like.
- [10:25]
Matt Gibbard
Looking back on it, how do you think that your home either supported or constrained that feeling that you were having?
- [10:35]
Finn Harper
These two childhood homes, I guess they were different. They were positive in some ways and they're both negative in some ways. The village house had like weird nooks and corners. There was like, I think something. There was a bit that used to be maybe like a bread oven or something that was just kind of used as a cupboard. But when I was really little, I could get in it. Like I could climb through this little hole in the big stone wall. And it also had a fairly generous garden, 200 square meters or something. And I was able to inhabit different corners of the garden at different times, different ways. And so there was lots of like, places to escape to and hide and make little worlds. And then the new build house in Warwick didn't have any of that tiny garden kind of nowhere to hide. But I had my own room. And maybe because it was a new build and my parents like, were kind of, kind of compensating for the fact that we'd. We suddenly had much smaller bedrooms, they let me paint my own wall and so I got friends around and we like turned it into this like kind of a crazy elaborate mural with like different paintings by different people that was actually quite successful. It sounds like it's going to be terrible to let a teenager do that, but I think I had enough like artistically thoughtful friends that we came up with something quite beautiful. And so I guess that was a way to. I don't know, like, I had a huge multicolored butterfly that my friend Verity had painted on the, on the wall above my bed. Which is not a sort of typical thing for like teenage boy to have painted on their wall. You know, I wasn't having like football posters or Page Three girls that was like, yeah, multicolored butterflies. But that was, I guess the house made that possible in the sense that like, my parents were unprecious enough about it that they were like, yeah, Finn, you can paint this however you like. We're not gonna like, dictate how you relate to the, like the fabric of the, the building in that way.
- [12:44]
Matt Gibbard
That's fantastic. Isn't it good for them? Tell me about your mum then.
- [12:50]
Finn Harper
Mum is from Stockport. She's from a long line of sort of farming community in the north. And she trained as a teacher, which is how she met my dad. And then she's now like, does lots of things. She's a therapist, she's been a librarian, she's published some children's fiction, taught drama, she taught English. She home educated the four of us. I was home educated until I was 15. I think my siblings all started school when they were about 13. And she, you know, my parents shared out before they divorced, but she did the, I think the lion's share of that, of that labor. Yeah, she's a very impressive, interesting person. I think, you know, parents are complicated and we have complicated relationships with them as we get older. But like, she's definitely impressive.
- [13:42]
Matt Gibbard
So homeschooling is quite a. Quite a big thing, isn't it? All the way up to that age as well. That's, that's very formative. So what, what did you. How do you look back on that? What did you take from it and what was the downside?
- [13:53]
Finn Harper
Maybe, yeah, homeschooling is an incredible thing. Lots of people end up homeschooled because they, they go to school and they get bullied so hard that they have to leave. And that's a lot of people's route into home ed. But we were home educated from the start. I think that's because my parents were both quite socially conscious teachers. They're both trained as teachers and they could see the changes coming in, the like, rise of standardized testing, the rise of like the national curriculum. And they were a bit skeptical about all of that stuff. And so when they had kids, they clearly had a conversation like, you know, we're teachers, maybe we could, maybe we could teach these people ourselves. There was hugely formative. It's hard to compare to what normal people experience because for me it was normal. You know, like, it's all I knew for a long time. The downsides that people assume are like, well, how do you make friends? But actually there's loads of homemade people dotted around, so you can make friends with local home ed families and you also join youth groups. You join like the local on a cricket team or something. But I joined Woodcraft Folk, which is a long standing sort of socialist alternative to Scouts and Guides. Has groups all over the country, including in the Midlands. And so I'd make a lot of friends with that, but also through like Sunday school and just in the village, like friends in the village. So the downsides I started to experience and the reason I went to school were more to do. Like, I'd like to Have a go on a band saw. I'd like to like use these facilities that I don't have at home. I'd like to learn drama, you know, I want to put on little plays with people and do those kind of activities that it's harder to do in a, you know, in a living room or in a kitchen. But actually socialization, I think, I think that's very, a real positive side of home ed. Me, all sorts of weirdos, like so many different kinds of people end up in home ed and you relate to them in a, in a much more open, uninhibited way. Whereas when I did go to school I was really struck by how like narrow the kind of framework for social opportunities became.
- [16:15]
Matt Gibbard
That's interesting. So actually the, the fact that you were homeschooled, it sounds like, and had what sounds like pretty open minded, liberal minded parents allowed you to be whoever you wanted to be in a way that maybe you couldn't have been at school. Do you think? Is that fair?
- [16:33]
Finn Harper
Well, it's hard to know, isn't it? Because, you know, on the one hand my parents were like kind of radicals. On the other hand they were like deeply Christian and very strict. So there was a sort of odd contradiction going on there at times. But I think they were, you know, for all of their strictness, they were also interested in individuality as a, like a value, valuable tool. They liked that we weren't getting dressed up in uniforms and they liked that we would like, were able to be more creative and do more adventurous things than we would have been able to do if we were in school. So they don't teach. My parents didn't teach in by subject, they preferred to teach by theme. And so you do a whole project on the Tudors and within that you do costume and making clothes, but you also cookery and you just do music and just a bit of architecture. And then you'd go and look at some museums and through the, the frame of the Tudors you would explore all of these different subjects. Whereas schools are much more interested in. Now you're doing maths, now you're doing English, now you're doing religious education. And everything gets kind of segmented into these compartments.
- [17:44]
Matt Gibbard
So you mentioned that your parents got divorced.
- [17:46]
Finn Harper
Yeah.
- [17:47]
Matt Gibbard
What, how old were you then?
- [17:48]
Finn Harper
Yeah, I feel like home educating four children probably is enough to push anyone over the edge of divorce. No, they got divorced when I was like 18. I guess it was just as I was going to university. I studied architecture in Cardiff and it was around then and they're still in touch. They still meet up, like, once a year and play a board game. And it's definitely one of those divorces that you're like, yeah, in retrospect, that was the right call. Good for them.
- [18:17]
Matt Gibbard
Okay, so how did you experience it? Sort of just around the home, because obviously, this being the theme of the home, those kind of things, they can, you know, they can obviously set the atmosphere of a place. So how did you feel it, as it were?
- [18:31]
Finn Harper
Yeah, well, it was. I mean, this feels like we're moving into, like, therapy territory, which is possibly a good thing. But there was quite a lot of stress at home. They were very quick to stress out about small things going wrong. You know, mum's forgotten her glasses, so how are we going to get to church on time or all that? A tiny. A tiny thing that other parents would have, like, oh, you know, brushed under the rug. Although I wouldn't have panicked about. Became, like, big dramas in my household. And I still feel that now as an adult that, like, I hate small things going wrong. It really. Like, I really feel it in a way that I'm aware peers and friends don't. And I think that's because I've, like, learned that behavior and I'm psychoanalyzing a little bit, but I sort of wonder if to some extent that behavior was because they didn't have such a deep physical connection. Like, they often slept in separate beds or went to bed at various different times. And I just thought that was normal, you know, how. How would you know otherwise? But really, what I think, in retrospect, you learn is, like, they're just not. They were, like, they loved each other in many ways, and they were like, a great team in many ways, but I don't think they had that, like, depth of physical intimacy and connection that lays the foundations for weathering the stress of small things going wrong. Like, someone can't find their glasses on time to go to church. And now that they're separated and my mum has a, you know, great Quaker boyfriend, like, she's so much kind of calmer and more easygoing. And I'm like, oh, I wonder. Yeah, I sort of see where this comes from now.
- [20:17]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah.
- [20:18]
Finn Harper
And so the lesson for, well, all of it, all of us, is to, like, identify the behaviors that we struggle with as adults, figure out how they are rooted in things that we've learned from our parents, and then figure out whether we want to continue those behaviors or change them, I guess.
- [20:36]
Matt Gibbard
So have you quite consciously tried to move away from those or. Why do you say that?
- [20:41]
Finn Harper
Yeah, I try really hard now to. I was living with an ex and she just wouldn't get stressed when bad, small, small things go wrong. She was like, oh, well, never mind, that is annoying. But like, we'll figure it out. And so I've tried to like adopt that more into my life and it's hard. I feel that, you know, if I was to knock over a plant pot and spill earth all over the floor in the past, if I was still like operating with my parent brain, I'd be like, oh no, what a disaster this is. I'm gonna be late for my date or whatever. And I'd sort of shout and stress and. But now I try to be like, oh well, I'll sweep it up, put it in the bin and get on with my day. Like, it's really not the end of the world, but I have to try to do that. That doesn't come naturally to me.
- [21:38]
Matt Gibbard
There's a quote, I think it's Charles Bukowski maybe. There's a quote which is, life is a series of small tragedies which I really like. And I think it's so true though in that when it comes to the home. Well, actually they also. Wrong on Chatterjee calls them micro stress doses.
- [21:55]
Finn Harper
Right.
- [21:55]
Matt Gibbard
But we have these micro stresses from the moment we wake up, which is, I don't know, like you haven't replaced the loo roll on the loo roll holder. You realize that the light bulbs burned out, the door handle is a bit wobbly, and so on and so forth. We all have these tiny things that just disrupt our flow as we go through the day and they do accumulate. And I think if you're someone that feels them because you've been brought up in that environment. Yeah, it's interesting now. I think they do, they do have an effect for sure.
- [22:21]
Finn Harper
Yeah. We do this thing that I think was a. My parents were quite interested in discipline and quite interested in like rewards and incentives. And every day at the end of the day we would have up to six sweeties, like six skittles or, or whatever. And they would deduct sweeties based on things we'd done wrong earlier in the day. So in their head, this was like a nice incentive to behave well. But we experienced it as like every single day ends with a kind of accounting for every tiny thing that went wrong during that 12 hour period and then being punished for it then like at the end of the day and it would be, you know, tiny things like, oh, well, you know, you Slammed a door this morning. So we're going to take a sweetie away for that. And then you used a swear word like around lunchtime. So we'll take two sweeties away from that and it may. Yeah, it made us all, I think over. Focus on small things going wrong rather than. There was no where we. There was no way to earn more sweeties. Like it wasn't like you were rewarded for the good things you did in the day. You were like retrospectively punished for the bad things that had happened. Which if anyone's listening to has young children don't use that system. It messes people up. Reward good behavior.
- [23:43]
Matt Gibbard
Has it made you a perfectionist then, do you think?
- [23:47]
Finn Harper
No, not at all. Because like there is no reward for good things. But it definitely makes me very alarmed by mistakes and getting things wrong. Like I hold myself to high standards and I always have and that, that comes from my parents. Like I did my maths A levels five years early, sort of wow, insane thing to do because you're home educated, you can like move at a faster speed than school kids can. But I don't think I'm a perfectionist, but I am a bit pushy sometimes with myself.
- [24:20]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, I always think it's interesting to dwell on someone's childhood because obviously it tells us so much about who they've become. I mean you've talked about the divorce there and thanks for sharing that. It's really fascinating, I think. Was there anything else in your childhood that you sort of some form of adversity you had to deal with or something you look back on now and think, God, that was so formative that we haven't talked about yet?
- [24:44]
Finn Harper
Well, I don't know about adversity. I mean it was, I was obviously like the weirdo from a young age because I, I didn't go to school and so like that marked me out among certainly like peers in the village or in, in Warwick. And then because I was like racing through the maths curriculum and to some extent other sciences, when I was going into school it was to sit exams in an exam hall. But I'd be like 11 surrounded by 16 year olds and that would mark me out as an even, even more of a weirdo. So like, even when I was going into school, the people who were my age saw me as like this odd. Oddball who was like taking some lessons with the, the sick formers and the sick formers would see me as this oddball because I, I was a child compared to them and yet I was somehow in their like further maths, mechanics class or something. So it's not really a diversity, but it having to. I never had the opportunity to be a normal kid that was just like not on the table for me, mostly because of the decisions my parents made. And so I've had to like, figure out a way to be the abnormal kid and make that, and make that a good quality, like. And I think that bleeds through into a lot of what I do. The way I dress, the way I relate to people, the kind of work that I take on, the projects I take on. They're all trying to kind of make sense of being like a bit of an oddity to others but. But make that a good thing rather than a, a negative thing.
- [26:22]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, that makes so much sense, actually. Did that. How did that manifest itself, that, that feeling? I mean, did people make you feel like that or what? Do you think that was just something you felt internally? Did you, did you struggle with bullies or anything like that?
- [26:36]
Finn Harper
Yeah, yeah, like bullying wasn't, wasn't great.
- [26:42]
Matt Gibbard
But how are you coming across those people if you weren't at school? Or do you mean when?
- [26:45]
Finn Harper
Well, you'd meet them in the village, like, you know, they knew where we lived. If you went to the park or the skate park or whatever, they could find you. And my brother, I think he's a bit younger than me, he clearly realized early on that he wanted to be more normal. He's a very impressive and interesting guy in many ways, but from a young age he was like, I'm not going to do what Finn's doing. I'm going to learn how to skateboard. I'm going to dress like everyone else dresses and I'll be cool within the framework of how normal people experience. Cool. Cool. Rather than Finn trying to like be cool in some totally bizarre, non normative manner. And I was always a bit jealous in some ways that he could like chill with. The kids that I could not chill with because if I was to like be part of that social scene, they, they just like, they reject me or they'd bully me. But I was able to find other oddballs. You know, like I made friends with the, the weirdos and the freaks and the geeks and he made friends with like the skaters and the townies and the, the jocks and that's fine. You know, different people are different. I guess when we did all end up at school, we were all at different schools and I remember some like dad of a teenage girlfriend be like, why are you all at different schools? I was like, well, we're all different people.
- [28:11]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, yeah.
- [28:13]
Finn Harper
That really took the wind out of his sails. I think he was trying to be like a bit prickly. I was like, no, you're the moron. You're sending all your, your three completely different daughters to the same school. But I think that just reflects how we, like the four of us kind of pushed ourselves in different directions based on what we perceived each other to be struggling with in our various lanes.
- [28:37]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, yeah. I really like what you said about making your point of difference into a strength. And you really stand out, I think, in the architecture community from that standpoint because it is some, in some ways quite a traditionally minded place, you know, and then suddenly you've got Finn wearing a skirt, you know, like challenging all of our preconceptions about that industry, I feel in a really fantastic way.
- [29:12]
Finn Harper
Thank you.
- [29:13]
Matt Gibbard
How did you get into architecture? Because obviously, you know, you've described growing up on a very standard, not well designed estate. How did that sort of spur you on into architecture?
- [29:26]
Finn Harper
I went to live in Nigeria for a little bit when I was 18. I got a sort of place on this program that the British Council was running where you worked with a group of people from another group of young people from another country, first in your own country and then in their country. So I was partnered with a group of Nigerians and we went and worked in the Rhonda Valley in South Wales, and then we went and worked in Kano in the north of Nigeria. And this is like big year long project. And while I was in Kano, in the British Council library, I found a copy of the Architectural Review, which is this, you know, quite established international architecture magazine. And I'd always thought architecture was like skyscrapers and posh houses. That's sort of my dumb childlike conception of what architecture was. And then I was reading this issue of the ar, which happened to be a special issue on the Aga Khan Awards, which are awards specifically for architecture in the Muslim world, and have always had a really deep interest in socially purposeful architecture. So there would be like a refurbishment of a historic marketplace in Marrakesh, or there'd be a small mosque somewhere in Bangladesh that's just like very beautiful or something. Or like, I don't know, toilet infrastructure upgrade in like a incarnate, maybe like a sort of a big city. And I suddenly was like, oh, God, architecture can be so much more than fancy houses and skyscrapers. It can, like really enrich community life, it can enrich society. It can, like be environmentally responsible and Socially purposeful. And so I then went and studied architecture at Cardiff University, which had a particularly good reputation at the time for ecological design. But it was like, yeah, it was like, I've already been interested in design, interested in architecture. I was particularly interested in product design, I think originally. And then reading this issue of the AR really like transformed my perspective on what architecture could be.
- [31:49]
Matt Gibbard
Well, let's talk about this flat. So we're on the Vanbrugh Park Estate in SE3.
- [31:54]
Finn Harper
Yeah.
- [31:55]
Matt Gibbard
Designed by Chamberlain, Powell and Bond. So the same architects who designed the Barbican Estate and the Golden Lane estate in the City of London. This is much more modest than that. Built as council housing. I'd just love to know from your standpoint, why do you think that this place that you live in is an engaging, valuable place to be? Like, how would you in some ways put the case for someone listening who might think, well, it just looks like a, looks like a council block, any old council block.
- [32:27]
Finn Harper
How would I make the case? Well, okay, so like, I think good, good, well funded, well maintained public housing is an inherent good. It is inherently good that people of all backgrounds can afford to live in places where they can work and send their kids to school and put down roots and form connections and. But obviously there's a spectrum within public housing from less well designed to more well designed. And I feel very lucky to live somewhere that I think is very well designed. And the thing that is well designed about it is the way that it fosters a community. So there's lots of little pockets of green space and open space around the estate where neighbors can meet and children can play. There's two pedestrian routes that go through it. There's 11 pedestrian ways in to it. The flats, like my flat, have like little spaces out front where you bump into your immediate next door neighbors. And it has just been designed around an idea of social life. There used to be a little laundrette, there used to be two laundry areas. The laundry areas are still there. You can still dry clothes outside. The laundrette sadly closed by the GLC back in the day. But that generosity of having enough space to meet and hang out with neighbors means that you can do things like have an Easter party or the summer party. You know, we'll have a summer party on the 21st and there'll be like a tombola. People will bring food out, there'll be like some music, we're gonna put up a maypole. You can't do any of that stuff if you don't have space. To do it like you need the space first in order to enable any of that community life to, to kind of flourish. And so what I'd say about this estate is like, it's not really about, you know, how it looks from the outside, it's like how it works from the inside. Both like how the flat works, how individual homes relate to the outdoors and relate to their neighbors, but also how the kind of estate as a mini community works and the opportunities that it gives you as a resident to do things with your neighbors is, is a really key part of why this is better than that new build estate that I grew up in in the Midlands, which had, you know, almost no community space or community facilities at all.
- [35:05]
Matt Gibbard
Excuse the quick interruption. Firstly, I wanted to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who listens to this podcast. The response to Homing has been far beyond anything I've expected. I've really, really appreciated all the messages of support, support I've had and the many people who've taken the time to tell me how much they connect with the show. A special thank you of course to everyone who signed up on Patreon. Those memberships genuinely do help keep the lights on and make it possible for me to continue creating the podcast and filming the house tours. Secondly, as the audience continues to grow, I'm beginning to look for a small number of partners for the show. If you're involved with the, the brand that shares Homing's interests in design, nature, well being and the way we live, I would really love to hear from you. You'll find my contact details in the show notes. Thank you very much. And back to the conversation. Yeah, so interesting. We talk a lot on the podcast about this idea of belonging and how do we find that sense of rootedness. And from so many conversations I've had now, it really does come down to that social connection aspect. Just what, what have you learned about the idea of home and belonging from living here and interacting with your neighbors, would you say?
- [36:25]
Finn Harper
It's a very challenging question, isn't it? Because I, I moved here with an ex and for a long time, for several years, the project of living here was about like us as a family. And that, or at least it wasn't my head that like every, every decision we were making was kind of about our relationship and about each other, including how we got involved with the community and the residents association and an interior design choices. And since she's left, I've had to find a completely new definition of what it means to belong in this flat. Because it used to be that the reason I like the flat is kind of because my partner lives there and I love my partner. And now it has to be about something else. It has to be about I love my flat because I love the interior or I love all the plants or I love my neighbors. And so it has been a bit of a gear shift, I'd say. All those things were already there even when I was in that relationship. But I've had to make to kind of redesign the flat to be more of an expression of me and my own values, interests, passions, hobbies, and less be about a relationship that no longer exists. And that the. One of the weird upsides of a breakup like that is it does make you closer to some of your flat, your friends, right, your platonic friends, because you need to rely on them more. Like, it's just really simple things. Like, previously, if you're with a partner and you're like, cooking and you don't have an ingredient, they might say, oh, don't worry, I'll pop to the shop, you keep cooking, I'll go get some milk or eggs or whatever. Whereas now I'm on my own, I have to rely much more on my neighbors for that sort of thing. And I find myself texting WhatsApp group be like, can I borrow some flour? But that is. That is sort of positive. And it's a real, real kind of privilege to live amongst a community of people where you can have that kind of connection and you can rely on each other and they can rely on you for stuff in return. And you can feed each other's cats and kind of go all go to the pub together and. But it's definitely changed my sense of, like, what it means to belong in
- [38:41]
Matt Gibbard
a place that's so interesting. I find that fascinating. So you're describing something that was quite inward and it was about a unit, and now you've had to actually deliberately, slightly look outwards in order to feel that same sense of belonging because that individual is not with you anymore.
- [39:00]
Finn Harper
Yeah, I mean, we were always quite an outgoing couple and we'd, like, invite people round and, um, I credit that relationship with instigating the gardening club and instigating, like, some of the connections that are, like, continuing to flourish on the estate. But in the past, if you were at a loose end, you could just always just hang out with your partner and watch telly or something. Whereas now I have to be more, like, have to go out into the world more or I have to bring people to me. So I Host far more dinners than I used to and I'll like bring together random assortment of friends and have a dinner in this. In this sort of living room, dining room. But I'm doing more emotional labor on behalf of the. The wider. My wider community than I used to. In a way.
- [39:46]
Matt Gibbard
This is a slightly challenging question in a way, but do you think this flat contributed to the breakdown in the relationship somehow? Like how. How did. I suppose you've described the way that the emotional temperature of your childhood at home changed when your parents weren't getting on and got divorced. I wonder how did it, you know, how did the structure of this place sort of play into that relationship, do you think?
- [40:10]
Finn Harper
Yeah, I actually think the opposite, weirdly, that like, I don't think my ex would mind me saying that the reason she left is cause she's attracted to women. I'm a woman. So, you know, there's a very sort of sensible, practical reason for the breakup actually. You know, no one did anything wrong with. Still really liked each other at the time. But, you know, I'm not a woman and she is attracted to women. And in a way my regret about that relationship is like, why did we stay together for four, four nearly five years? Like, what were we. You know, surely we could have seen this coming earlier. But I think the house, the flats and the community was so nice. It was so nice living together. We were such like brilliant flatmates to each other that we sort of forgot to notice that, you know, we weren't having any sex. There was a fundamental misunderstanding about what the relationship was or like miscommunication or like delusion or something. So perhaps the, the. The richness of our, of our domestic life and including our neighbors within that, when I say that actually enabled us to stay together much longer than we like would have done if we were in crappy rented accommodation in some block where no one knows each other. And, you know, perhaps we'd have clocked it earlier if that was the case.
- [41:39]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah, yeah, I understand. I was reading some of your writing and you've talked about something called unlocking. So on the subject of neighbors, you sometimes come together to celebrate unlocking. So tell us about what that means and what you do.
- [41:53]
Finn Harper
Yeah. Unlocking is an idea from the American science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut. He writes this piece. First it appears in Krat's Cradle, which is one of his books, and then he talks about it again in a speech where he argues that really for our climate, our microclimate, we should have six seasons, not four. And we should match the language of those six seasons more closely to our actual experience of the weather across the. Those. Those. Those months. And if we did this, maybe we'd be a bit less depressed because he thinks we. We have sort of false expectations. We call spring. We call March and April spring. March and April are often horrible. They're like, cold and wet and gray. And they're not that springy, actually. And they're even less springy if you're, like, slightly further north in the hemisphere. And similarly, like we call September October and November autumn. Well, you know, November's actually, like, really quite grim. So he suggests let's have six seasons. And you have locking, which is November, and December, which is like, it's really cold, it's dark, but it's not quite as crunchy and warm as autumn was. But it's not yet deep winter either. And then deep winter is just January and February, really cold, really icy, really dark. And then you have March and April become unlocking, which is like. It's not quite spring. Don't get too excited, but you can see the daffodils coming up. It's not quite as grim as it was during February. And so I have started, I think, for, like, five, six years. Every March, I will have an unlocking party where might be big, might be small. But we will mark the arrival of unlocking by planting something because it's a good time of year to plant a lot of things and eating rhubarb, which is a sort of seasonal, kind of late February, early March fruit. So I'll make, like big batch of rhubarb ice cream. We'll have this little ceremony. We plant a tree or plant something.
- [44:00]
Matt Gibbard
And.
- [44:01]
Finn Harper
And often they like quite big parties. And we've done a few on the estate where we've had, like, 200 people around, and we all plant a tree together and read out this little bit of Vonnegut. And I guess I feel like we're losing cultural rituals in modern British life. Like, people aren't getting married as much, and that's fine. I respect that. But also, like, those weddings did play a key role in, like, giving a kind of joyful ritual structure to our years. And we don't go to church or to mosque as much as, like, people used to. And. And so you lose all of the sort of ceremony and ritual that comes with that. And so finding new secular traditions that can have a ritual attached to them or at least give you an excuse to, like, get some friends around and have a big dinner, I think is really important. I really like Burns Night, for example. It's not an English festival, it's a Scottish festival. But I'll always note it and celebrate it because it feels like a good, relatively new invention that has a kind of cultural value that I appreciate.
- [45:08]
Matt Gibbard
You just want to wear a kilt.
- [45:09]
Finn Harper
I do like wearing kilts, but I also like eating haggis and dancing Ceilies and like, you know, Burns Night was only invented after Burns died. It was like his friends suggested that they do it to like commemorate him. And it's become this like, national thing in Scotland. But even like down, down here, people will, will celebrate Bernstein. And I think that's great. I think more people should be inventing traditions like that.
- [45:36]
Matt Gibbard
I totally agree. I love rituals. That is such a great idea. I really like it. When I spoke to Catherine May, she talked about, you know, if you're an introvert or you're neurodivergent in some way, you perhaps don't love being in big groups of people. You know, maybe New Year's Eve isn't kind of your thing.
- [45:53]
Finn Harper
Yeah.
- [45:54]
Matt Gibbard
So she celebrates the solstice and she does it in quite a low key way because it's somehow more in rhythm with the, with nature rather than with anything else. And I love that idea of, you know, your rhubarb thing, celebrating rhubarb during the unlocking. It's really lovely. You also have, you were showing me earlier. There's, there's areas where you've got together with the locals and you've planted stuff. You've taken up the paving stones that exist between the various blocks here.
- [46:24]
Finn Harper
Yeah.
- [46:24]
Matt Gibbard
And you've turned them into flower beds.
- [46:26]
Finn Harper
Yeah.
- [46:27]
Matt Gibbard
Tell us about that process. How did that come about?
- [46:31]
Finn Harper
Well, it starts off with a fight because I live in Greenwich and Greenwich Council are the freeholder of the estate. And one day they decided they wanted us to get rid of all the small front gardens from these raised flats. There's three blocks of these raised flats. And they just came along and they sent a bunch of men who literally started trying to take people's benches and plant pots away from these little kind of nooks that we all have outside of our homes. And this was very scary. Like, you know, I love my flat, but so much of what I love about it is to do with this little threshold into the public realm and that being a space where I can have some plants, dry my laundry, talk to my neighbors. I feel like if that was to go, it would massively kind of dissolve the qualities of what I Like about living on this row. And so we fought them really hard. Also, they had no basis at all for this. There was nothing in the building regulations. No fire engineer or no one could find a good reason to justify why they were taking away these plant pots. They just decided one day that it was a fire risk without any evidence or professional expertise. And we're, like, pursuing that course of action. And so we fought them in the media. We got multiple Grenfell Tower fire expert witnesses to come and look at the situation. We got the fire brigade to look at the situation. Started a petition that got like 40,000 signatures. And, you know, I end up on BBC telly and various radio shows talking about this, and we kind of win. Like the council, eventually, they never formally apologize, but they stopped pursuing the.
- [48:13]
Matt Gibbard
The men stopped coming around.
- [48:14]
Finn Harper
The men stopped coming to take the plant pots, and they haven't come back. And then they started repaving the estate. And I think that was to get us to calm down. They'd been really spooked by this community who'd suddenly, like, fought back with more vigour than they'd encountered before. And they were thinking of something that they could just, like, do to make the neighbors happy and get us to kind of appreciate them more after this big fight. So he started repaving the estate or, like, relaying the existing paving st. And so we just said to them, hey, you know, given that you're taking up all the paving stones and laying them again, please can you put in a bunch more flower beds? We've already done the community consultation with all the neighbors to know where these new flower beds should be. Here's a set of architectural drawings. Please do this. And they did sort of miraculously, they. So they did the work of not planting the flower beds, but taking up the paving stones for us. And then we planted all of those flower beds, or the gardening club planted all those. Those flower beds. So somehow this, like, effort, local authority effort to make the estate less green actually has turned into the exact opposite, where there's way more flowers and there's way more planting going on now than there was when I started.
- [49:29]
Matt Gibbard
Just fantastic. And you were showing me there's these huge posts where people would hang, supposedly hang their laundry out, but sort of don't get used like that. So you decided to plant vines up them instead?
- [49:43]
Finn Harper
Yeah, there's two laundry areas, one of which, neither of which are used very much for laundry. A lot of people dry their laundry at home these days. One of them gets used a lot by children playing they, like, drive their scooters around or play football, but the other one was just sort of sitting there. People would sometimes wash their cars, but it was like a bit of dead space. And it had this. These big wooden posts with big metal rings attached to them. So it looks quite striking. And so I thought, what if we grew a vineyard on these posts? So we've, like, grown these little vines. They're not so little anymore. They're, you know, as tall as the posts are. And we've only done eight of the 16 posts so far. I'm sort of hoping we'll get more neighbors on board in the future. We can have a few more, but eventually that is going to be a green tunnel. We had maybe sort of 100 grapes last year. This year we might have several hundred. We can even make wine, perhaps. Yeah, we've specified Vitis Regent, which is a type of grape that you can make wine from or you can just eat off the vine.
- [50:50]
Matt Gibbard
Okay.
- [50:51]
Finn Harper
So we have. Our options are. We have various options.
- [50:54]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah.
- [50:55]
Finn Harper
But I really like it as an example of a community taking a bit of underused infrastructure and improving it, you know, and hopefully, you know, vines are quite slow growing, but in a few years time, that would be like a really magical sort of tunnel where you could have, like a big dinner or you could imagine kind of children playing and running through the tunnel or something like that.
- [51:17]
Matt Gibbard
It's fantastic. And it brings me back to that word belonging again, because I think we all have a sort of collective responsibility to generate that kind of feeling. Right. I think that's what you've successfully done here. So I really admire it. I'd love to just quickly pivot to this idea of repair, because I know this is another thing that you're interested in. I mean, I'm looking at this. This lamp across from us here that looks like it's been repaired in some way. But just tell me about repair in this flat, first of all.
- [51:44]
Finn Harper
Yeah, so I. It's part of my, like, I guess theoretical architectural advocacy is I've been writing and thinking much more about repair over the years. We're very bad at repairing things in Britain. We tend to just throw stuff away quite easily. But we've. We've got better. We've got better. You know, we're less of a disposable culture than we used to be. And we now have examples of, like, high street shops like Toast or Patagonia offering repair services for their. Their garments. And the EU is going to make it so technology companies have to offer repair Services for phones and washing machines and stuff. So, like, there's some improvements. Like, we. We know that repair is better for the planet, and we are gradually moving in that direction. But when it comes to architecture and buildings and housing in particular, we're terrible at repair. So there's so many examples of housing estates that have just been left to kind of rotate and then eventually get knocked down and gentrified or, you know, some sort of crap thing comes and replaces them. My own sister's estate in Elephant and Castle, the council's been knocking that down for decades, really. Like, her block is still there, but, like, many of her neighbor's blocks have gone. And so we really need to figure out a way to better appreciate, celebrate, and to do repair. And so in my practice, my sort of art practice, my writing practice, I've been trying to explore expressive repair. So, you know, one of the things that makes repair hard is this idea that it has to look exactly like it looked before it got broken. And I'm a bit skeptical of that idea. Like, maybe something breaking is an opportunity to make it look a bit different, maybe improve how it looks, which is a, you know, something that is very common in, like, Japan, where people will use kintsugi to repair a broken pot with a precious metal, and then sort of the repair is expressed and actually looks really cool. And I think there's. We could apply that same thinking to buildings, to towns, to housing. And so the lamp over there is a paper lamp. It's an Gucci lamp, but it was, like, pretty torn apart by a cat. The whole top had come off. And so I repaired it with colorful mulberry paper to try and make a virtue out of the break. Like, rather than just throwing away and buying a new one. I was like, okay, how can we turn this into. It's not going to look the same, but it's still going to look cool and it's still going to express something about me and my attitude. And then I've just been trying to do that to lots of different things. So, like, the table that was here earlier was repaired in a sort of expressive way. I've got various tools that have been expressed and repaired in an expressive way. But it's like I'm trying to move away from thinking as something getting broken as a disaster. Like this sort of micro crisis that you were talking about earlier to thinking of it as an opportunity. That's an opportunity to do something cool, to do something expressive, to do to make it better in some way.
- [55:02]
Matt Gibbard
That's very cool. And On a. On a. On a wider level, you've talked about how the idea of repair can be almost celebrated by the architecture itself. So you gave the example of the Great Mosque in Jenna, in Mali.
- [55:17]
Finn Harper
Yeah, yeah.
- [55:18]
Matt Gibbard
So tell it, tell us about that building. Because it. I mean, I'm sure some people would be familiar with it.
- [55:22]
Finn Harper
Yeah. So in other building traditions, not necessarily in the west, but in other parts of the world, repair already is quite a rich part of construction culture that has expressive and ritual value as well as being practically useful to just extend the lifespan of your building. And in Mali, there's a particular style of earth construction where you have sort of big sandy earth clay walls that are quite thick, and then they are kind of punctured with chunky bundles of rods that are thick enough that you can stand on them. And so if you look at these buildings, they look kind of like prickly, like a kind of porcupine or something. And they have this very strong aesthetic. It's often used on, like, mosques or like, grand buildings, palaces perhaps. But those rods that you can stand on, though, all over the walls, are actually sort of built in scaffolding. So it becomes quite easy for the community or local workers to climb all over these buildings and repair the mud render every year, which you need to every now and then if you're, you know, you've got heavy rains sometimes in the year, and then it's very dry other times in the year. And so it's a way of, like, not seeing repair as, like, bad or regrettable, but like part of the life of the building and part of the life of the community is like, you build the infrastructure to do the repair into the architecture and you make it part of its aesthetic. And then when you need to do the repair, it's all there, and it's really easy to climb all over this thing and. And fix it. There's a lot of architects and property developers could learn from that, that kind of culture.
- [57:22]
Matt Gibbard
Definitely. So while we're on materials, finna, if I'm gonna put you on the spot here, but let's imagine that you were building your own house today. Okay. What materials would you use?
- [57:36]
Finn Harper
Well, I probably wouldn't build a house from scratch. You know, I thought you were going to say that.
- [57:41]
Matt Gibbard
That's why I asked it.
- [57:42]
Finn Harper
I would try and work with some sort of existing derelict building, which there are a lot of. Right. We have, especially in, like, I don't know, coastal towns that have been sort of neglected over the years. We have so many vacant buildings, like old Chapels in Wales that are falling apart, that could have a second life or could really need some kind love and care. I'm a Trustee of the 20th Century Society and every single year we find ourselves fighting against the demolition of not even that old buildings. And frequently they've just not been looked after for long enough that it seems easier to knock them down and start again than to just like work with them or repair them. So my first thought on what the materials of my dream house would be would be like there'd be something already there. And actually even this estate, they used reclaimed bricks from the villas that were here before that had been bombed damaged. So this is not a new idea to like work with what you find and but then if I was bringing in new materials, I think I'd be thinking about plant based materials. So you know, timber, straw, hemp, and maybe earth. Earth is just like incredibly abundant, incredibly low carbon and quite good, it's quite good insulator, sort of sticks to itself.
- [59:09]
Matt Gibbard
So why aren't we all building with earth?
- [59:12]
Finn Harper
It's a, it's a very interesting question because we used to like, you know, back in the day most buildings would have been made out of plants like or from earth. And it's only relatively recently that we've started building with like highly processed high carbon materials like steel and concrete and even brick, like fired brick is a relatively modern technology. I think it's partly to do with having a growth based economy that sees processing as valuable. Like we like to pro we have highly processed foods. People might have read Ultra Processed People, which is this book about the rise of ultra processed foods, like you know, ready meals and things like that. And it's not necessarily because it's cheaper, although sometimes that's the driver. It's almost like we've become reliant on someone else doing the processing somewhere far farther up the supply chain. And so we as consumers of food are not doing that ourselves. We're just like shoving something in the microwave or shoving something in the oven rather than cooking with raw ingredients that take a bit more time in the kitchen to work with. But increasingly we seem to be becoming aware that like this is really bad for us. This is like driving all sorts of disease and ill health is this reliance on ultra processed food is a large part of our diet and they don't satisfy us, they don't make us feel full, they don't make us feel good. They have addictive qualities at times. And I think there is a parallel you can draw to construction materials. We rely on highly Processed construction materials, often prefabricated window components that come as this complex buildup of silicons and membranes and polymers with inert gases in and then we just plug them into a building or clip them into a building. We're not really working with raw materials in the same way so much. And I think it's a problem, it's a problem for climate because these highly processed materials are much higher impact in terms of the, the carbon they produce. Like Cement alone is 7% of global greenhouse emissions. Steel used in buildings is 8% of global carbon emissions. Like these are, these are big, they're making a big contribution to, to climate breakdown. And if we could ease our way out of those and explore more plant based construction practices instead, that would, that would buy us a lot of time on fighting climate change. But yeah, I think it's, yeah, it's a mix of economics and reliance on ultra processing I think driving it. But the good news is there's loads of alternatives available still. We still have the craftsmanship just about to build with straw or Thatcher roof. So for if people are interested in building their own home or home extension or something, there are people out there who are doing amazing work and are worth tracking down.
- [62:33]
Matt Gibbard
So I'd love to sort of finish by bringing it back to this, this flat. We've talked about rituals in a community sense and your rituals of unlocking and so on, but do you have any kind of personal rituals or routines that you go through in this place at all that kind of give structure to your, your day?
- [62:55]
Finn Harper
What an interesting question. I used to make my ex coffee every morning. I'd get up first and I'd make her. She'd have coffee with oat milk and I'd have, have it black. And that was like when she left, not having that ritual was like weirdly destabilizing. Like it's such a small thing but just like, like who am I meant to make coffee for? Now me? That doesn't seem very sensible. And so I feel like I lost a lot of rituals in the breakup. But also a breakup isn't like an opportunity to make new rituals. Perhaps got a new, well secondhand but like got a new LP player, got like different light fittings re hung. All the art started like using the space to hang more of my kinetic sculpture. Like all these mobiles. Like I was still making mobiles before but like they just weren't as present in, in the space. So I guess the ritual, the ongoing ritual is like tinkering with the flat to make it more and more me commissioned a new kitchen recently by the architect Farrakh Aman. And that's also a, a way to like reconfigure my home to be more centered on what I'm, what I'm like rather than what I was like in that couple. And then I think gardening is a great ritual. I totally neglected those pot plants for a while because I was so sort of grief stricken. But now I've like got back into the zone. I've started planting wildflowers out there. I try and water them every day, like in the evening. That brings me a lot of, a lot of joy. So like finding a new rhythm.
- [64:45]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah.
- [64:46]
Finn Harper
With, with the new set of rituals. And then I host dinners. I don't succeed in this, but I try to have one big dinner a month where most people at the dinner don't know each other already. And so you're always meeting new people. And then I'll cook a big meal, I'll make some ice cream and I'll make a cocktail. And I guess that that is a way of. It is a kind of ritual that uses my space that I'm very lucky to have in a way that I think brings joy and connections to other people.
- [65:18]
Matt Gibbard
That's fantastic. And you mentioned your mobiles. So they're hanging all around us. But what's the genesis of this? Why did you start making mobiles?
- [65:27]
Finn Harper
It was originally in a project, a project to sort of commemorate a dead cat, like a pet cat who died. And I hung, I hung a little broken dead tree. Well, it was a living tree that got broken that I'd planted to commemorate the cat. I hung it in the flat and eventually all the leaves fell off it and, you know, it died. But it was really nice having that kind of bit of tree, that little leafy bit of tree hanging in the space. And so when I took the tree down, I thought, I wonder if I can recreate that somehow through an art project. I originally thought, I'll buy a mobile. And then I thought maybe I'll make a mobile. And then I've just sort of got carried away. So I've now made, I think over 300. I've done some huge commissions for, you know, there's one hanging in the lse. I had one in the Royal Academy. Lots of like smaller private commissions as well. And it's. Yeah, it's ballooned into, you know, a full on art practice which is, you know, I feel enormously lucky to be able to make art as part of how I make a living.
- [66:32]
Matt Gibbard
It's really lovely. And I love the tools of your trade that are in the flat here. You know, there's lots and lots of implements.
- [66:38]
Finn Harper
And, yeah, I should have a studio or at least use my spare room, but I just find I make them here. Like, I make them in this space, in this living room, and that, like, bashes the floor up a little bit. But there's something very joyful about making art in your own home and then hanging it in your own home and that being part of the practice, you know, even when I make a piece for someone else, it will have hung in my space for a while before it goes to them. Hopefully that adds some layer to what I'm doing.
- [67:09]
Matt Gibbard
Given everything we talked about today, this word home, which is so multifaceted, how would you define it? Would you think that word.
- [67:17]
Finn Harper
I think I'm still trying to define it, to be honest. I had a very stimulating and interesting childhood, but home was never like, a space of comfort or retreat, partly because it was also where I was being taught. It was like it was my school as well as my home. And my parents were quite stressful to live with at times. So I don't have the, like, super warm, cozy associations with home that some people do. But when I lived with that ex, I think probably for the first time in my life, it felt like I was living in a home that was always calm and nourishing to be in. And even though that relationship was, like, not the right one and ended, I feel very warmly about that period of coming home. From being a chief executive at Stressful Charity during the pandemic, and, like, being at ease in my home for, like, the first time in my life, really now as a single person, I'm, like, trying to figure out what. How I find that again through. In a different way. But, yeah, I don't. I don't really think home is a. A fixed thing. I think it's something that we create, and I'm still in the process of creating it, but it's a very stimulating journey.
- [68:42]
Matt Gibbard
Yeah. Such an interesting answer. And it put me in mind of Rosa park, the editor of Serial magazine. She was the very first guest on the podcast all those years ago. Wow. But she said to me, I find home in other people. So she was saying, no building ever feels like home to me. No country, no particular geographical location. But when I find my person, that's what home feels like. And I'm just wondering, obviously, with the breakup of your relationship, you're kind of saying that you found a lot of home in her, it sounds like. And with that now, moving into a new chapter is such an interesting challenge for you, isn't it? To try and find home either within yourself or within the community that you're in here, as you've described today. But finding it in quite a different way, I think is such an interesting challenge for you.
- [69:39]
Finn Harper
Definitely. It's like when you lose a partner, you have lots of different types of grief. There's like the grief for the, like the unborn child that you might have had together. There's the grief for like, you know, the parties that you could have held together or something like the growing old together. But for me, a big part of it was just losing that like, really nice flatmate that I had and the domestic life that we'd created together. It's also why like being good friends with your neighbors is so good because they're like really present. And if you can build good connections with them, that is a positive that will just keep giving. And giving because you just meet them also means if they let you down for some reason. And I had a bit of a fallout with a neighbor recently. Hopefully we'll get through it, but like, it really hurts much more than if another friend who's more distant geographically had, you know, done something annoying because they, because they're part of your home, because they are part of your, your like, immediate world. And you feel like quite an intense grief about that. I think when a neighbor like pisses you off.
- [70:53]
Matt Gibbard
Well, that's so true. And that can actually even cause you to change your patterns, can't it? You know, you might come and go at a different time of day so you don't bump into them or you might take a different route or.
- [71:02]
Finn Harper
Exactly. And then that can spiral and that can be like, that can become like a really sour, long lasting animosity. And I, you know, I'm pretty confident that me and my, my neighbor will like get through it. Come on, neighbor, we'll make friends again. But yeah, you can see how things that would not deteriorate into long term conflict with other friends or colleagues can do in the context of a community because you're just like continuously confronted with each other. And you can respond to that in many ways. But one, one response is to like sort of tense up. But like, the flip side of that, it's still worth being friends with them because the flip side of that is if you're on good terms with your neighbors, like every day is reassurance, every day is community, every day is like kindness and affection. And, and, and when, you know, when I was like very feeling very, very low and like the flat was a complete mess, stuff everywhere, some of my neighbors who had a key came in and just tidied it up a bit while I was out and I came home and I was like, oh, that's weird. Like I can walk to the kitchen without like clambering over stuff. And it's because they just spontaneously like helped me out a little bit. And that's very special. That's not something that I think most people get to experience from their neighborhoods. But that, that's, yeah, that's. I will remember that gesture only. Probably only took a lot, half an hour. But like I remember that gesture for the rest of my life.
- [72:41]
Matt Gibbard
I think that's amazing. What a nice place to finish on. Yeah. God, I've really enjoyed it, Finn. Thank you so much. And I, I mean, I haven't said, but the films that you make for the Modern House are fantastic and people should watch those on the Modern House Instagram account. But you basically go into interesting buildings and you give your personal take on them and they're really fascinating, I think. But I've just really enjoyed hearing more about your story. I mean, I think your, you know, where you've come from, you know, describing growing up on a really kind of bog standard estate is sort of fascinating. I always love that. And then, and then kind of where you've got to and this feeling of like, you know, you didn't quite feel like you fitted in somehow, but you've really turned that around and made it into a virtue. So I really admire it. So, yeah, thank you very much.
- [73:29]
Finn Harper
Thanks, Matt, Appreciate that.
- [73:35]
Matt Gibbard
Thank you so much to Finn for welcoming us into their home. I really, really enjoyed that. As I mentioned before, Finn makes really great films about architecture for the modern house. So do have a look at those on The Modern Houses YouTube channel. The video version of this podcast is available to watch on the homing YouTube channel alongside of course, our back catalogue of podcasts from the last year or so. If you'd like to support Homing, our Patreon subscribers get access to behind the scenes house tours, including of course, a tour of, of Finn's home. So to join up there, head to patreon.com homingwithmat this episode was produced by Pod Shop with music by Simeon Walker. Thanks again for being here, really appreciate it and talk to you all on the next one. Bye for now.