Reflections, lights, colours and shapes brought the sunshine of California to the dark cold winter of Edinburgh at the Fruitmarket Gallery. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, artists in California such as Robert Irwin and Larry Bell were experimenting with minimal materials using colour, lighting, reflections and geometry in a movement known appropriately as “Light and […]
Hidden away through a dark forbidding tunnel under the Regent Bridge built in 1814, at one of the entrances to Waverley Station, in a building that was previously a notorious nightclub, the Ingleby Gallery moved into its new space here in Calton Road in 2008 after refurbishment by Helen Lucas Architects to create a series […]
In the 1960’s, in the era of optimism after the Second World War, the University of Edinburgh controversially demolished many of the old buildings around George Square as part of its post-war campus redevelopment. Some of the new buildings such as the Library built between 1965 and 1967 to designs by Sir Basil Spence + […]
On a cold February day, the wind howls round the exposed top of the hill, blowing through the Grecian columns of the acropolis, around other monuments and the observatory, modelled appropriately on the “Temple of the Four Winds” and contributing to the city’s name as the Athens of the North. Calton Hill in Edinburgh is […]
500 years ago, Henry VIII was king of England. He and his wife Catherine of Aragon had just celebrated the birth of their daughter, Mary, though Henry was desperate for a son to succeed him, and Thomas More completed his book “Utopia” describing the political system of an idealised island state, published in Latin in […]
It’s a hard act to follow when one of your neighbours won the Carbuncle Cup for the worse new building in the UK in 2009 and another was the runner up in 2011. Formerly derelict warehouses and dock buildings, Mann Island has been a difficult challenge next to the historic “Three Graces” while also trying to undo […]
The city claims to have once been the second city of the British Empire, eclipsing even London for the amount of trade going through its port at times; it is one of the most successful footballing cities in England; it’s art gallery houses one of the best collections of European art outside London and it […]
Bernard Buffet (1928-1999) is well-known for his angular sharply-featured portraits and images of clowns, using black lines and dark shadowy trees creating a slightly melancholy atmosphere devoid of any emotion – no bright colours or fat and jolly people here. He used this same style for his paintings of cities, towns and harbours and for his […]
Half a century ago, architects and artists such as Archigram and Eduardo Paolozzi were exploring our future in an age of optimism about how technology and science would enable us to achieve things that had previously not been possible. In 1959, the Soviet Union’s “Luna” made the first landing from earth on the moon while, […]
All eyes will be on Los Angeles and the recipients of those golden statuettes at the Oscars at the end of the month while, in the same week, the gallery which Wallpaper magazine has declared to be the best new gallery in its 2016 Design Awards will open at 5900 Wiltshire Boulevard across the road […]
"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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