James Solly

James is a director at Format Engineers and a tutor on the AA’s Design + Make programme at Hooke Park, Dorset. Format is a studio of engineering designers with backgrounds in structures, coding, mathematics and architecture. We believe in the day-to-day exploitation of digital technology as a creative tool for the production of designs that are appropriate, lean and beautiful. The Design + Make programme explores architectural design at the point of physical production. The programme develops design methodologies at the intersection of craft knowledge, innovative technologies and natural materials. James started his career in practice at Ramboll UK then BuroHappold Engineering, delivering projects with RSHP, Herzog & de Meuron and Zaha Hadid Architects among others. He then moved into research, working at ITKE, University of Stuttgart where he was a tutor and lecturer on the ITECH programme as well as a research associate within the Horizon-Funded Innochain Network working on the novel use of wound composites for construction. On his return to the UK to join Format he also became a Senior Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, teaching on the MEng “Engineering and Architectural Design” and MArch “Design for Manufacture” programmes before moving to his current teaching role in 2023. James’s interests lie in the use of current computational engineering techniques to support architectural design, reduce the use of excess material and to enable human craft to remain part of modern construction.