Nimi Attanayake and Tim O’Callaghan of nimtim architects see their home office/playroom as a space that reflects the challenge of juggling raising children and running a practice.
We have two young children and the pandemic was a particularly challenging time to be running an architecture practice. We wanted our photo to capture the way the boundary between these two parts of our lives have blurred during the pandemic and ever since.
In the photo, we are in our home office/playroom and you can see the juxtaposition of toys, architecture books, children’s drawings and financial records. This is representative of this space but also our lives in general where we juggle running a practice and raising children together.
One positive from COVID was that everyone become much more accepting of how personal and work life overlaps. It was welcome when a child/pet popped up on a Zoom call and helped contextualise people who you might have only met via a video screen.
The various pandemic lockdowns were a bitter/sweet time for us and the practice. We were having to home school and care full-time for our children but it was also a period of significant growth and opportunity for our practice: nimtim. There were a lot of late nights working on bids & competitions catching up from the day followed by early mornings featuring ‘PE with Joe’.
The composition and our postures borrow heavily from Hockney’s ‘Mr & Mrs Clark’. Rather than the cool apathy of that painting, we were trying to capture the new informality of our work environments. We’ve swapped out the indifferent ‘Percy’ for the devoted ‘Corbi’: the beloved office dog.
Our practice has always had a very personal narrative. We started it after Nimi had been diagnosed and treated for Ovarian cancer and a lot of the initial motivation was about having a bit more control over our lives. As the practice has grown this has become more of a challenge and we aim to balance the need to be a financially healthy and successful business with supporting our and our team’s need to have healthy and fulfilling personal lives.
We were very aware that the pandemic wasn’t only hard for people with young children but had different challenges for everyone whatever their circumstances. We’re happy to see the way attitudes have shifted within the profession towards greater understanding of the need to balance personal and work life.
Nimi Attanayake
London SE22
Source: Architecture Today
