Outside in the green landscape of the August sunshine, the atmosphere in Holland Park in Kensington is peaceful and relaxing, with families walking through the gardens and runners jogging along the paths. Inside the Design Museum, you enter another world, a world that is current closed due to coronavirus, the world of pulsing throbbing nightclubs […]
Sprüth Magers in London is one of my favourite galleries with its quirky semi-industrial character (even though it is in Mayfair) from the days when the building was a clothing warehouse/showroom, hence the large windows allowing light to flood in (when they want it) – something galleries generally don’t approve of – and the views […]
As you travel around the countryside deep in Surrey, you don’t expect to find a Turkish Tent perched up on a ridge with extensive views across the countryside, but here it is, a short distance from the Grecian Temple of Bacchus. The Turkish Tent, now reconstructed in robust long-lasting materials as one of the many […]
Cemeteries have recently suffered in terms of their meaning in the modern world. Once the height of social status, many have fallen into decline and have been seen as a financial burden whereas the most forward looking see them for what they are – a unique library of social history and a much-loved green space […]
Gunnersbury Park is a place of contrasts. How many parks have two mansion houses side by side and how many have parts that are smart and newly-restored, and others that are fenced off, boarded up, derelict or recently-destroyed? While there have been previous houses in Gunnersbury Park, located to the north of the M4 […]
For those of you who know the history of Hampton Court Palace, you will know of its reputation for ghosts who wander the dark corridors at night. While we have all been focused on our personal experiences during the recent coronavirus lockdown, have we neglected the spiritual world? Perhaps they have been enjoying their new […]
Home of the great early 20th-century socialite Margaret Grenville, the old Regency house was extensively remodelled in 1906 as a base for her country house parties and filled with her collection of fine paintings, furniture, porcelain and silver. The future George VI and Queen Elizabeth spent part of their honeymoon here in 1923. While the […]
One of the joys of wandering around cities is finding hidden histories behind the roads, the modern developments, the retail parks and the housing developments. The 20th century was not kind to Colliers Wood. One indeed there was a wood here, but it was gradually cleared from the late 19th century and today the area […]
Have you ever wandered through a graveyard and seen a gravestone that so attracts your attention that you wonder more about the occupant or occupants underneath? Sometimes it might be because the gravestone, once erect, is now leaning at a dangerous angle or the sepulchre has a gaping hole – was the occupant trying to […]
There are two houses called Wakehurst Place: one, the original house in West Sussex; the other a replica in Rhode Island completed in 1887 under the supervision of the American architect Dudley Newton for the sportsman and politician James J. Van Alen from plans designed by the British architect/designer Charles Eamer Kempe, and now owned […]
"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
Recent Comments