It would be inconceivable to allow street artists to busy themselves on the walls of the refined streets of Mayfair. Brick Lane in the East End of London or Leake Street at Waterloo may provide urban canvases for an every-changing programme of Street Art but Mayfair is more refined, more controlled and much cleaner. So, […]
When Mayfair was open countryside and agricultural land, were there any pine trees? If not, there are now – pine trees have come to the elegant 18th century of Mayfair, in stark contrast to the urban landscape, the cyclists and the fast cars outside, in the form of beautiful black and white drawings hung on […]
How do you turn a wall into a door? It’s easy. If you are an artist – you just take a coloured crayon or pencil and draw a door on the wall. Job done! The ground floor windows of the elegant 18th century townhouse in Mayfair are frosted over. Is it open? Look carefully and […]
As part of the celebrations on the reopening of the Kettle’s Yard Gallery in the normally conservative university town of Cambridge, the French-Tunisian artist El Seed painted one of his characteristic murals on an architecturally-uninspiring post-war block of flats, Arbury Court. Intended to be there for only three months, such was its reception that it […]
Why is it that public galleries don’t collect paintings from popular artists, but go their own way with more esoteric artists promoted by curators and international galleries? Apparently there are no works by Banksy in a major public gallery in the UK, something Scottish artist Jack Vettriano has also had to endure – it was […]
In Savile Row, the shop windows are full of male mannequins dressed in expensive clothes from summer blazers and trousers to top hat and tails. A short distance away, in Sackville Street, another group of men (and women) are hanging around, one – a Fisherman, stands on a first floor balcony in a thunderstorm as, […]
Is there something about the month of May, when spring starts to move into summer, when the dark winter gives way to bright sunshine? This month, in May 2018, students in French universities are demonstrating and visitors to the Pantheon will notice the police at the entrance to the nearby Law Faculty and Library at […]
Giants have invaded Mayfair! Bursting out of the first floor windows, the giant’s legs drop down into Sackville Street while, through the ground floor windows, you can see his head and shoulders; hopefully his acrobatics have not damaged the historic Robert Adam ceiling in the first floor. No 29 Sackville Street in Mayfair was […]
"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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