Set around the historic house, The Platanes, and a landscaped courtyard with balancing pond, King’s College London’s new BREEAM-Outstanding student residential development in Champion Hill, South London, provides 740 sustainable bedrooms which were occupied by students in the autumn term last year. The new buildings are varied in their architectural detailing and are set out […]
What do you do with an unused slaughterhouse? One of the most unusual historic buildings in Shanghai is 1933 Old Millfun, the former Shanghai Industry Bureau Slaughter House, constructed in 1933 and in its day one of the largest slaughter house in China. This reinforced-concrete building has an art deco exterior that hides the unusual […]
Why are pedestrian tunnels often dark dismal spaces? The new lighting artwork at King’s Cross, London shows that it can be different and that starting a journey on the underground can be a joy rather than a burden. As part of the King’s Cross redevelopment, a new entrance has been created to the underground station with a 90 […]
The start of the art year in London is marked by the annual London Art Fair, now in its 27th year, being held at Business Design Centre in Islington, London. 128 galleries primarily from the UK, but with a good selection from Europe and the US, display a mixture of contemporary and modern works. It […]
Tucked away in Union Street in Southwark, only 10 minutes’ walk from Tate Modern, is the Jerwood Space. Opened in 1998 as the first major new building initiative of the Jerwood Foundation, the Jerwood Space occupies a former Victorian school converted by Paxton Locher Architects in 1998 to create theatre/dance rehearsal facilities in addition to a […]
One of the most unlikely areas to find international art galleries might be an industrial estate. But, why not? Industrial estates are full of a mixture of businesses often including other creative organisations, in joinery, metalwork or marble, or kitchen interiors or pehaps web-design, and can provide large high-volume inexpensive spaces, difficult to find or afford in […]
The 1920’s and 1930’s were the heyday of the cinema and Art Deco cinemas were built in cities and towns across the county. Many of these have been demolished or their interiors ripped out when they were converted into multiplexes or bingo halls. This week the planning committee in Kensington and Chelsea in London rejected proposals […]
Malaga, birthplace of Pablo Picasso, has been developing as a major centre for the arts over the last 15 years with the opening of the Picasso Museum and the Centre for Contemporary Art in 2003 and the Museo Carmen Thyssen in 2011. This year will see two major new additions to its cultural life with the […]
The tobacco industry has provided us with a number of historic buildings which have proved remarkably adaptable to other modern uses. London has the 1920’s Art Deco Carreras Cigarette Factory, the entrance guarded with the famous black cats, and now converted into offices; Seville has the Real Fábrica de Tabacos (Royal Tobacco Factory), an exuberant […]
The historic town of Estepona is a popular resort at the western end of the Costa del Sol at the foot of the Sierra Bermeja mountains between Gibraltar and Marbella. The town has not experienced the tourist intensification of Marbella or Malaga and still retains cobbled streets and squares of terraced white-washed houses, enhanced with […]
"The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul."
(Thomas Moore)
To be an architect means having a wide range of interests - architecture, art and creativity in all its variety of forms, sustainability, science and innovation. The greatest interest is often where these different worlds overlap and collide - that is when something imaginative often occurs that pushes us all forward to another place
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