Meet the Architects: SUPRBLK Studio, The Chapel in London

In our video series #Meet the Architects, architects present current projects from their offices. Sara L'Espérance and Michael Putman from SUPRBLK Studio explain their design The Chapel. The project is a vacation home for an American retired couple in a partially converted church in London. How the unusual environment influences the design of the living space is documented in detail in Detail 1/2.2022.

SUPRBLK Studio
Sara L’Espérance and Michael Putman are both ARB/RIBA registered architects and the co-directors of SUPRBLK Studio – a creative design-lead architectural studio. Prior to setting up SUPRBLK, they both worked in London as project architects for the award-winning practices Fletcher Priest Architects & Haworth Tompkins Architects. They both completed their post-professional diploma in architectural practice & management at The Bartlett, UCL.
Their practice work stems out of their interest in the in-between, playful leftover spaces and historical scars found in urban environments, in accidental material collisions and in storytelling. They advocate for a sustainable practice which is fundamentally rooted in a strong belief of reusing, reworking and rethinking existing spaces where possible. Their architectural process and practice work carries forward these themes and embraces chance and quirky found conditions as something to be celebrated rather than problems to be covered up or ignored. This layering of new and old narratives in their work has created rich, bold, yet subtle architectural responses as seen in projects like “The Biscuit Factory” which was shortlisted for the Dezeen Awards in 2019. They both take this passion into teaching at Dalhousie University where Michael works as a practice-based professor and Sara works as a studio instructor and guest critic.