Strange bedfellows – on one side of the narrow street is the dark sombre stonework of the old Convent of San Domingos de Bonaval (part of which is now the Museo del Pueblo Gallego), enlivened by the architectural detailing around the doorways, and dating back to 1228, the inside being less exuberant and more restrained than […]
Was it happy coincidence or masterful planning that, with the new Mathematics Gallery designed by Zaha Hadid Architects opening at the Science Museum, the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, refurbished in 2013 with a swooping, flowing extension by Zaha Hadid Architects, is filled with an exhibition of Dame Zaha Hadid’s early drawings and paintings. In contrast to the curves of […]
Churches with roofs shaped in a huge variety of folded concrete forms, spirals and shells, bus shelters that are sculptures, paraboloid arches, flying circular disks or a series of shell barrel vaulted shells, sports halls, theatres and concert halls with soaring concrete domes which are free of internal columns; government offices, libraries, hospital and university buildings which […]
On an expansive flat plateau with views across to the city sit sculptural concrete forms - a pillar for a pencil, curved waves like the wings of the bird or the waves of the ocean, circular pools like ink wells. Oscar Niemeyer (1907 – 2012) considered the University of Mentouri in Constantine in Algeria built between […]
You are a major health organisation commissioning a new headquarters building. What image would you want it to project about your organisation and its values? Healthy must be a first priority. What else? Efficiency, caring, organised, and perhaps innovative thinking? Bilbao is a city which has commissioned world-class architecture in Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum, Norman Foster’s “Fosteritos” […]
At the heart of the new campus for WU (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien or Vienna University of Economics and Business) opened in 2013 is Zaha Hadid’s Library and Learning Centre (LLC). WU, originally founded in 1898, is the largest university for business/economics in Europe and is ranked as one of the best business schools in Europe. After […]
"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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