AJ Climate Champions podcast: Chipperfield’s MC Piccinelli on how retrofit can enhance creativity

Piccinelli, associate director at Chipperfield’s and project lead on the LSE’s Firoz Lalji Global Hub, describes circularity as ‘a mind shift’ – it’s no longer the architect giving top-down direction

‘It’s almost like the existing building sits at the table as an interested party with the client and consultants,’ she says in this episode. The design emerges from a forum of many different actors. Understanding the building in granular detail is the starting point.

After deconstruction at the Firoz Lalji Global Hub, up to 70 per cent of bricks were broken or crushed powder. Each building element requires one-to-one conversations to determine the best reuse, and the contractor must be on the same journey, she explains.

Piccinelli argues that a new design aesthetic, a hyperlocal vernacular, can emerge from the specificity of the building, its materials and its location. She cautions against the standard default response of using timber, insisting that all materials should be explored.

At the LSE project, elements are being reused primarily as finishes rather than structure, reducing the risk and complexity of warranties. However, stocking and storage remain ‘a very sore point’, according to Piccinelli, due to the complexity of determining precise quantities of material reuse and timing.

In terms of programme, the project does not necessarily take longer overall. However, circularity means the design process overlaps and continues into RIBA stage 5 (manufacturing and construction). Piccinelli is optimistic that circularity networks across the industry are evolving rapidly and anticipates significant change in the next couple of years.

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About Maria-Chiara Piccinelli

Maria-Chiara Piccinelli joined David Chipperfield Architects in 2022 as project lead for the LSE’s Firoz Lalji Global Hub. She describes herself as equally interested in the technical craft and the spatial qualities of architecture.

A veteran of numerous high-profile global projects, she worked in Tokyo, Edinburgh and Paris for Kengo Kuma & Associates where she was responsible for delivering the V&A Dundee, in Rotterdam for OMA and for Amanda Levete Architects on the Galleries Lafayette in Paris. She also runs her own small practice, PiM.studio Architects.

Piccinelli has been a design tutor and think tank leader at the London School of Architecture since 2018. Originally from Como, she trained at the Politecnico di Milano with an Erasmus year at the Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa.