Well done Florence for refusing to have a MacDonald’s burger bar in the heart of the Renaissance City. Bad form to MacDonald’s to taking Florence to court for this decision – it has ruined your reputation for ever and confirmed that you are a money making capitalist machine. Hopefully Donald trump will reflect on this. […]
An empty white room which pushes minimalism to its limit, black rooms with shimmering prisms that appear and disappear while pyramids are flooded in blue light, and rooms with a grotto-like landscape alongside a monumental Chinese gate surrounded in barbed wire. Three artists seek to engage viewers in different three-dimensional experiences. How minimalist can an […]
A ruined shell for 40 years behind its protected neo-classical façade, the Teatro Marti in the centre of Havana was faithfully restored and re-opened in 2014. Originally opened in 1884, it was a popular venue in which to premier Cuban “zarzuelas” (musical comedies that preceded caberets) and for “Teatro Bufo” (satirical plays that often mocked the Spanish government of the […]
It is 14 years since I last attended a performance at the Gran Teatro de La Havana; it was showing its age then and the lighting was rather dull. It has now been spectacularly transformed in a three year refurbishment that has opened up the foyer spaces with a new bar and space for art […]
Adjacent to the restaurant/bar El Cocinero, the other part of the project which transforms the former cooking oil factory in Vedado in Havana is La Fabrica del Arte Cubano, where a wide variety of arts, drinking and eating all combine together into a fantastically vibrant place, open from 8pm to 3am and where, at 11 […]
The 100-year old tall chimney of the former abandoned and derelict cooking-oil factory is a landmark on the edge of Vedado in Havana, near to the Almendares River. While proposals have come and gone for decades on what to do with Battersea Power Station in London, now thankfully moving at full steam ahead, the rock, […]
Set alongside the banks of the River Test in Hampshire, England, the old derelict industrial site which had housed a paper mill, and at one time had a major role in the manufacture and printing of England’s bank notes, has been rescued by Bombay Sapphire for a new distillery and visitor centre. Key historic buildings have been refurbished, others […]
A spaceship arrives in North America with aliens who know nothing of Earth and the people there. What do they find? Today, in October 2016, they find people searching for a potential leader for the next four years, but the two potential candidates are fighting each other and discussing all sorts of issues apart from […]
Fighting through the jungle, the explorers come across an empty plain beyond which is a simple grey temple with a door. There is nothing to hint at what is inside, or whether the temple can be entered through the door or whether it will be locked tightly shut. Quietly, slowly, the explorers move across the empty […]
It’s a busy week in London for art visitors who would have leapt round from Jeff Koons’ exhibition at Alime Rech’s new Gallery to Berkeley Square where there was an opportunity to bid for Jeff Koons’ “Dom Perignon BALLOON VENUS”, from an edition of 650 for an estimate of only £25,000 to £35,000, one of the […]
"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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