When you read or watch the news can you tell what is real and what might be staged? President Donald Trump is fond of using the phrase ‘fake news’, but if you are in the USA and watch Fox News and CNN, you will find two entirely different views of the world, confusing to the […]
It seems a pity that, given that historically the predecessors of the Camberwell College of Arts and the South London Gallery were so intertwined, that today, to the outsider, they seem so separated. I was visiting the South London Gallery (SLG) for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition when, on walking to the bus stop, […]
In 2017, after 20 years, the Wilkinson Gallery in Vyner Street near Bethnal Green closed as the owners went their separate ways. Fortunately, the gallery space was taken over by Steve Shave’s Modern Art, as a counterpoint to his more industrial space opposite St Luke’s Church in Old Street. The simple modern two story building, […]
Probably one of the most unloved Brutalist buildings in the UK, with its sculptural harsh concrete exterior, the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank has been refurbished on the interior by FCB Studio Architects, keeping the Brutalist essence of the building, but with one radical change – opening up the rooflights to allow daylight to […]
Next January, you can join the P&O ship Aurora for the cruise of a lifetime – 65 nights sailing from Southampton via Madiera and St Vincent to Brazil, to Salvador, Buzios and Rio de Janeiro, from there to start your exploration of South America. Today, the Brazilian Embassy in London occupies the former headquarters of […]
There is a stereotypical view of a sailor, perhaps perpetuated in historical nautical portraits, as a tough man who enjoys travelling the world, flirting with women in many ports, having to endure tough and stormy conditions at sea, wearing a smart uniform and carrying a telescope if an officer, or wearing grubby seaman’s clothes, stained from […]
Protests, street violence, families trying to go about their normal lives, a charged atmosphere of emotional highs and lows and rising tensions leading up to the January revolution in Tahir Square in Cairo. Refugee activists fleeing violence and oppression in their home country, only to find violence, censorship and oppression in their new European home […]
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 […]
Imagine London before London, when today’s city of office blocks, department stores, shops, restaurants, galleries and palaces was marshland or jungle around the river into which several streams flowed through the roots of the dense impenetrable vegetation which covered the land on which prehistoric animals roamed searching for food. Carefully lifting and removing the thick […]
"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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