Founded as the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry in 1863, the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (MAK) with similar aims to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the MAK collection reflects the importance of modern and contemporary design in Vienna, including crafts from the Wiener Werkstätte founded in 1903 by […]
One of the highlights of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2015 in London is Jim Lambie’s colourful vinyl staircase installation. There is a treat in store, with another of his installations on show at the 20th anniversary exhibition of the Zabludowicz Collection. The Zabludowicz Collection has, over the last 20 years, developed into a major […]
The Affordable Art Fair, currently running in Hampstead, has a balanced representation from both British galleries and galleries from European and elsewhere bringing new emerging contemporary artists, working in a wide range of media and styles, to the London art scene. In this modern international age, gallery representations cross country boundaries and it is amusing, […]
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2015 has used colour on the walls of three of the main galleries; the Lazarides Gallery in London has also adopted colour for the walls of its new exhibition “Antimatter Series: A Boundless Vision”, in this case the classical dark green used in gothic churches, renaissance palaces and revivalist interiors, […]
Brixton Station Road in south London is a street of contrasts. An ugly brutalist sports centre looms over the wide variety of street and food stalls that add life and colour in and around Brixton railway station. Beyond the sports centre, on a site formerly occupied by a car park and temporary ice rink, “Pop […]
At the heart of the new campus for WU (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien or Vienna University of Economics and Business) opened in 2013 is Zaha Hadid’s Library and Learning Centre (LLC). WU, originally founded in 1898, is the largest university for business/economics in Europe and is ranked as one of the best business schools in Europe. After […]
Summer arrives in London with the opening of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. This year the show has been coordinated by the artist Michael Craig-Martin who has taken the opportunity to make changes; the architecture and print galleries have been moved into new locations and he has, most radically of all, introduced bright colours to […]
The theme for the Architecture Gallery at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2015 is ‘Inventive Landscape’, examining the relationship between architecture and landscape from a wide variety of perspectives, including natural and man-made landscapes, the future of our environment and what to do in Mars if we colonise it. The largest and perhaps most inventive […]
Across the Danube from the historic centre of Vienna, Donau City is developing with apartments, offices, restaurants, hotels and other facilities and a focus on high quality buildings and on art to help shape its future identity. At the centre is DC Tower 1, Austria’s tallest skyscraper, designed by French architect Dominique Perrault. 60 storeys […]
Vienna is famous for its historic architecture, with notable buildings by the Secessonist architects Josef Hoffmann, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Otto Wagner and others. There are other surprising buildings such as the gasometers in Simmering and surprisingly, in the leafy Arenbergpark, two immense concrete second world war Flak towers rising above the trees, among the largest […]
"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
Recent Comments