As a firm of architects with offices around the world, we’re well practised with large scale projects. But recently, Geoff Ward, partner at our Leeds office, has taken a whole different perspective to building design.
Geoff, who lives in North Yorkshire, has a long-standing connection to the Great Knaresborough Bed Race in the town where he lives. Part fancy dress pageant and part time trial race, the event brings the whole community together, and Geoff has won several Best Dressed Bed trophies for his creations over the years.
So, when the organisers of the forthcoming Christmas Tree festival at St John's Church Knaresborough asked him to create something extra special to act as a centerpiece for the festival display, he jumped at the challenge.
The model of the church, complete with festive decorations by the organisers, was unveiled at the Christmas Tree Festival last weekend. A recognizable, if not entirely accurate, representation of St John’s measuring just 2 metres long, it was well received by visitors and festival organisers alike.
Geoff had originally planned three weekends to build the model in time for the festival but surprise commitments, including a visit to his projects in the Middle East, put paid to that! In the end the model took just a weekend, a handful of evenings, a pile of MDF, even more sawdust, wood, glue and paint to put together.
Geoff commented that the result was an object lesson in the application of Pareto’s principle (also known as the 80–20 rule) which states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In this case 80% of the effect was achieved in 20% of the time - because there was only 20% of the time that there needed to be! Geoff added (with a wry grin) that it was in stark contrast to the projects he works on in his day job.
