The US State Department created controversy when, despite deep budget cuts, it spent $400,000 on John Baldessari’s sculpture “Camel Contemplating a Needle”, representing the difficulty the wealthy have in entering the kingdom of heaven, for the new American embassy in Islamabad in Pakistan. The price was apparently discounted, but even Donald Trump couldn’t resist commenting […]
Remember when, as a child, you used to create imaginary rooms from anything you could find. Perhaps you collected old wood and built a house in the garden or in the tree; perhaps you used the dining room table, piled chairs and other furniture around it and hung sheets or tablecloths over it to create […]
It was a bitterly cold, damp and dark January night in London and the normally-quiet Rathbone Place, north of Oxford Street, had, unusually, a long queue of people, stretching along the street, waited in anticipation for the opening of “The Road; Soho” from UNKLE, or rather James Lavelle, at Lazardies Rathbone. Who, for the unitiated, is UNKLE and who […]
Swirling shimmering shoals of fish are swimming round in the sea, up towards the light cascading down into the water, in the same way as unconscious emotions swirl round as humans searching for the light, while men and women explore their personalities and reason for existence with shadowy alter-egos and pages ripped from a notebook […]
It’s depressing to be 60+ in Britain. Is it time to leave for Greece? At a participatory event, young 7-year old Oona reckoned that old age starts when you become a grandparent – with a likely age of 80 plus-, while an European Social Survey across Europe of nearly 55,000 people about when old ages […]
Having climbed up a staircase with papers flying up the walls, like playing cards from Alice in Wonderland, you open the door of the bedroom to find black birds flying round the room trying to escape. You try another room to find a large black hairy animal, which could be from another planet, waiting patiently […]
It takes imagination and dedication from designers and clients to reuse materials such as clothes, carpet tiles or old windows in buildings, along with the necessary support from building control, structural engineers, fire officers and other statutory bodies,……but it can be done. The Pavillon de l’Arsenal in Paris is a 1988 conversion of an […]
In December a colony of huge colourful Adelie penguins arrived in Antarctica; this week they reached London. A project by Belgian artist William Sweetlove and the Cape Town Art Agency, the penguins, who have their own water-backpacks so they can survive in any environment, draw attention to environmental issues in the Antarctic and will then […]
How do artists reflect on modern politics, commerce and technology, at a time when Britain is planning to leave the EU, immigration remains a major world issue and the 2016 US presidential election, which may have been influenced by Russia’s infiltration of email accounts, resulted in President who uses twitter relentlessly? The third of four […]
Scottish artist Charles Avery (born 1974), born in Oban, works in the urban environment of London and on the island of Mull. Since 2004, his work has revolved around a fictional island, which feels more like Blackpool than Mull, and has become his lifetime’s project as he narrates, through his paintings, drawings, installations and films, […]
"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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