Suzanna Nour
Labours of Love with Suzanna Nour, Architect
28th November 2020 at 4pm UK time (GMT+1)
Watch Suzanna’s Talk on YouTube
Welcoming architect Suzanna Nour, the fifth of our speakers in this series on Labours of Love. “We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.” ~ Oscar Wilde
This statement by Oscar Wilde has fascinated Suzanna since her teenage years. She continues a few decades later, as Chartered RIBA architect, to engage in the arguments it has evoked for her turning this quote on its head. Through all of her life experiences she continues to explore that key issue of transcending utility of dwelling space through applying age old principles of proportionality for the wellbeing of the people living in those spaces. A building may provide all the basic needs of shelter, but a work of architecture allows for the nobler potential in mankind to flourish.
One of the joys for Suzanna is breathing new life into old buildings, finding new uses for them and creating the backdrop space for living. Suzanna worked in the 1980’s on the skyscrapers that went up in the City of London and wonders how potentially these may now be reinvented post-Covid. She’s also very keen to find new ways of approaching affordable development particularly in rural areas, applying that same principle of proportionality for wellbeing. Suzanna also explores the creative process through other mediums of writing, and acting work within theatre and television. This has led to wildly diverse adventures from spending six weeks for a Channel Four documentary following Colonel Gaddafi around Libya to being flown to Copenhagen to play an Afghani Doctor in the Danish tv series Borgen.
Suzanna: “ The Affordable Housing issue is a highly charged political topic and has brought me sharply face to face with my most important core value: Evolving accepted conventions. Very importantly, that same core value also drove me to help my son overcome the limitations of a diagnosis of autism to become a confident and independent young man enjoying every aspect of life. To work towards a change no matter how slow and painful that process might be and no matter what adversity it might include.”
Suzanna's website: www.4sitedesignltd.com
