The grand Chelsea Old Town Hall in King’s Road, with also includes the Chelsea Registry Office, Sports Centre and Library is called Chelsea Old Town Hall was completed over a century ago to the design of Leonard Stokes and incorporates part of the previous Vestry Building dating from the late 19th century. Inside, the fine […]
In 1863, John Curwen started producing books, posters and music manuscripts. Some time later, in 1920, Oliver Simon joined the company and forged links between Curwen and the Royal College of Art which turned Curwen Press into ‘an agent of cultural change’, commissioning work from leading artists including Edward Bawden, Claud Lovat Fraser, Paul Nash […]
The death of the book has been overdone. Sales of physical books, with the smell and touch of paper, continue to be robust while the younger generation counterbalances its use of Kindles and other digital devices. Certainty, if the London Book Fair at Olympia this week is anything to go by, the book is alive and […]
Imagine the Louvre without the Mona Lisa, the British Museum without the Elgin Marbles, the Tate Gallery without the Rothkos. Now imagine the Saatchi Gallery without Richard Wilson’s reflective oil installation “20:50” in the lower floor. It has happened; the installation, which has been with the Saatchi in its different locations since 1987, has gone, […]
New York has its High Line, Valencia has its low river bed, a new landscaped park running through the centre of the city underneath the old bridges which crossed the River Turia. While the river Turia and the port may have been the life-blood of Valencia when its ships travelled across the oceans, the river […]
One of the most influential contemporary Dutch furniture designers, several of Maarten Baas’s unique works have been on show at the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in Mayfair, which has recently moved from the ground floor gallery to a much larger and more flexible space immediately above. Now the furniture is on its way to the Groninger […]
Flocks of colourful birds perch on the outside and inside the entrance foyer, less sinister than in Alfred Hitchcock’s famous film, but still in sufficient in numbers to threaten an invasion. Inside, elephants are roaming through cities, while the forest, once cut down for new buildings, is growing back through the crumbling concrete ruins of […]
Definitions of sustainability emphasis three aspects – environment, finance and society. This week’s EcoBuild exhibition at Excel London seemed to be moving away from the environment towards finance, linked with society. Sure, there were plenty of companies showing their latest innovations in district heating, thermally-efficient building materials, water and drainage systems, solar panels, controls and […]
"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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