Buildings that look as if they are made of matchwood, snakes, birds, mysterious mythical animals, cheeky faces, colourful curving plants and flowers, “Greedies” and “Evils”, all intertwined in the ongoing battle between good and evil created from hundreds and thousands of penstrokes by the self-taught artist Scottie Wilson, considered one of the leading British “Outsider […]
Lovers kissing on an escalator, a newly-married couple being photographed on Westminster Bridge, a lonely Star Wars stormtrooper strolling past pedestrians on the street, boats on the river, an art car boot-sale, a child playing on the sandy riverbank, other children playing in fountains, annual and sporting events that are part of the ceremony of the […]
Concert halls and conference centres are a challenge for architects, especially when they are set on prominent sites. They are effectively huge sheds in which the design of the internal space takes priority, whether it be the circulation areas for many thousand visitors, the auditorium and other spaces themselves or the back-of-stage facilities. The exterior […]
It is almost 430 years since the death of the Spanish painter Luis de Morales on 9 May 1586 yet his paintings have a freshness and colour that makes them feel much more modern. Stylistically, they follow the Italian Renaissance painters such Leonardo, with less softness to the features, a trait which can be seen […]
Jeff Koon’s huge West Highland terrier, “Puppy” welcomes visitors to the entrance to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Opposite, a facetted façade which catches reflections of the Puppy and the Guggenheim gives little hint of the artistic interior inside, designed to reflect 20th century design in acknowledgement of its location opposite the Guggenheim and near […]
The transformation of the riverside of Bilbao from an industrial dock area to a modern international and cultural centre continues. In 1918 the Bilbao Bond Warehouse was constructed along the river. With the increasing size of ships the facility was relocated and the building became empty and derelict. Today the site and part of the […]
An immense former wine cellar in Bilbao constructed in 1909 has, a century later, been transformed into a cultural and leaisure centre by the French Designer Philippe Starck. Three new buildings with well-proportioned brick façades and connecting bridges reminiscent of warehouse buildings have been constructed around public spaces and a huge atrium within the existing […]
You are a major health organisation commissioning a new headquarters building. What image would you want it to project about your organisation and its values? Healthy must be a first priority. What else? Efficiency, caring, organised, and perhaps innovative thinking? Bilbao is a city which has commissioned world-class architecture in Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum, Norman Foster’s “Fosteritos” […]
The long ramp from the city is guarded by a huge dog, protecting and guiding strangers down to the entrance around which are towers of stone and titanium like the protective armour of an armadillo. On the other side facing the river, a moat provides protection, with mystical mists and fiery flames blasting upwards to […]
The noise and bustle of the Lawnmarket in Edinburgh with its rambling old buildings and St Giles Cathedral in the background, the rich interiors of Holyroodhouse and the ruins of the Abbey, the heather-clad mountains and the fast-moving rivers of the Scottish Highlands, Tam O’Shanter’s Chair, Sir Walter Scott’s daughter alone in his former dining room, […]
"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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