FREAKS FREEARCHITECTS
EST PARIS 2007
GUILLAUME AUBRY
‘I felt it was important to have something distinctive
and unusual as a kind of standard to raise in the
battleground landscape of British architecture.
It was about not wanting to be perceived as a
typical architecture practice. In this way the name/
logo was a means to sabotage any preconceived
expectations that people may have had about
me being an architect, of working against the
conventions of what an architect is, and to put the
emphasis a bit more on being an ideas and not a
service provider.
‘The name was conceived together with a
“shadow label” logo, which together help set up a
certain ambience that aims to be suggestive and
slightly mysterious. Of course it has connotations
of rebellion, subversive practice, irreverence.
Many people nd it mildly amusing, which is good
because it means that the name is more likely to
be memorable.
‘I didn’t want the “surname and surname”
partnership names, or the head honcho “ rst
name/surname architects” that are the standard
issue way of naming architecture practices. Also
I wanted to avoid the abstract corporate sounding
names that are usually a set of initials, or the names
that are trying too hard to be trendy – most of these
fail to convey anything about the personality of the
practice and what it is about.’
20
STUFF OCTOBER 2014
“
THE NAME NUNSWITHGUNS
WAS CONCEIVED TOGETHER
WITH A ‘SHADOW LABEL’
LOGO, WHICH TOGETHER
HELP SET UP A CERTAIN
AMBIENCE THAT AIMS
TO BE SUGGESTIVE AND
SLIGHTLY MYSTERIOUS...
Above: NUNSWITHGUNS, (l-r)
Huw Williams, Huw Williams
and Huw Williams
Right: FREAKS freearchitects,
(l-r) Guillaume Aubry, Cyril
Gauthier and Yves Pasquet
“
NUNSWITHGUNSDESIGN
EST LONDON, 2009
HUW WILLIAMS, FOUNDER
‘The name FREAKS came as most of
the good ideas we have do, in a bar,
late in the evening, after a couple of
drinks. It stands for Fire, Rain and Earth
Are Kids of the Sun. No, it actually has
no meaning, but it was something like
a statement against a trend at that time
when architecture companies were named
by acronyms based on the initials of their
partners. What we found tricky in the way
it crystallised around determined people
while we were conceiving FREAKS as an
open group – a group of young and free
architects working together.
‘FREAKS refers to monsters, which
comes from the Latin verb monstrare,
to show or reveal. FREAKS is then
something meant to be shown, showing
what we have integrated in our practice,
since we always carefully work on how to
document and show whatever the project
is, depending on the media, the support,
the viewer. But FREAKS mainly works
as a way of thinking. We use it as an
adjective.
‘We were mostly surrounded by non
exciting office names... And it was certain
that FREAKS had a great potential for
our office to feel a bit unique among the
others.’