Guan Lee, Founding Director of Grymsdyke Farm, and Stuart Piercy, founder of Piercy&Company Architects, have long been interested in the relationship between digital technologies and traditional craftsmanship. Their collaboration dates to their time teaching together at the University of Westminster, where they developed a shared interest in how emerging technologies can inform architectural practice without replacing the hand made.

This research came to life in a project at Grymsdyke Farm, where Lee and Piercy designed and built a structure in the open field, combining digital modelling with on-site craftsmanship. The project known as Code Bothy aimed to test how digital simulations such as virtual reality and parametric modelling can guide the design and construction of physical structures using bricks and traditional building methods.

Rather than outsourcing fabrication to machines, the structure was built by hand, but its form was generated through complex digital calculations. In this way, the project offers a compelling example of how the digital and the manual can coexist, resulting in a built work that reflects both precision and human presence.

Code Bothy is part of a wider research inquiry into new ways of thinking about labour, materiality and technology in architecture, core themes in the ongoing work at Grymsdyke Farm.

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Photos by Studio Naaro

Bricks by Petersen Tegl