︎

Works





Verified in
the Field



Contact us about your architectural, landscape, or graphic design project:


︎      240- 727 8327
︎      ben@field-works.org


Field Works are Homes, Shops, Furniture, Spatial Detective Work, Architectural Exorcisms, Historic Research, Poetics Of Space (& Inexorably, Time), Gardening, Landscape, Handiwork, Handyman Services, Graphics...

Buildings, Landscapes, Furnitures, Photos, Graphics, Illustrations, Models, Websites, Essays, Reports, Homes, Shops, Public Spaces, Design-build Of Digital Spaces, Artworks, Fieldnotes,


Spatial design defining place along The Spiral Of Time and when possible against The Churn Of Capital.


A Personal Art Practice masquerading as A Design Firm. A Design Firm masquerading as An Art Practice.


Currently, mostly, a collection of Fictional Buildings.


Musings sent every couple moons via Electronic Mail.

Shapes and materials assembled in a pleasing fashion, for money, to Make Your Life Better.

Ideas about how space and form impact our schemas and sense of self.

Fever dreams of A World Without Private Property.





◬

Field 




All things Built Environment



Field Works is a research and design-build practice that makes buildings, gardens, public spaces, furniture, plans, exhibitions, publications, and tools, backed by poetic research and an earnest and insatiable curiosity. We are artists for hire who excavate beauty from physical space.

Whatever the scale, from a piece of furniture to an urban plan, good design work begins and ends with observation and exploration outside the studio— in the field. We bring to our work this ethos; that there is no substitute for field measurements and observations in quality, informed design and construction.


What we do

Architectural design
Garden/landscape design-build
Furniture design-build
Urban design
Place-based research
Community engagement
Social practice art/ public art
Graphic design
Storytelling (through writing, photography, and film)


About the logo

Our logo is a symbol used on
USGS geodetic markers to signify a triangulation point: a specific location found by its relationship to others. It is a reminder to us that places are only knowable through collaboration, and that no point is truly fixed.

About the name

Fieldwork can of course mean the research undertaken in the environment, but it is also an outmoded term for a temporary fortification. Field Works sees architecture as made, for, and from within, its environment.


The Team

Ben Derlan
Field Agent

Ben Derlan is the founder and sole proprietor of Field Works. As a multidisciplinary artist and designer his work explores new models for collective ownership, ecological diversity, and ethical and sustainable construction methods in the built environment. Previously he has worked with the Neighborhood Design Center and The 6th Branch to increase access to healthy public space through neighborhood organizing and the greening and revitalization of vacant lots. He was manager of the Oliver Community Farm and supported the Duncan Street Miracle Garden in East Baltimore before pursuing his Masters in Architecture at Yale University, which he recieved in 2023.

He was named the recipient of the David M. Schwarz Architects Traveling Fellowship, which is supporting his ongoing documentary project, WATERWORKS.

Currently, he teaches architecture at Tulane University and art history at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

240 727 8327
ben@field-works.org
@bderlan