From Escape, Spring 2022 It’s useful to be reminded what great architecture can achieve, to be moved by it, because as an industry, architecture isn’t always that moving. Like every business, it has its awkward corporate events, its veneers and personalities. In 2008, like many others seeking the architecturally divine in a stone pool, weContinue reading “Breakfast in Vals”
Category Archives: Architecture
Plum’s Paradise: the joys of a shared garden
We have a book called Mr Plum’s Paradise by Elisa Trimby. It was published in 1977 and tells the story of a man who turns the yard at the back of his small, terraced house in London into a garden. Mr Plum starts off by growing a few bits of fruit and veg. It escalates,Continue reading “Plum’s Paradise: the joys of a shared garden”
A House in a Garden by Foster + Partners: Singapore, 2003-2008
“The water seems to originate in the pond and flow beneath the house. It was important that we gave the impression of a source. This is an illusion – part created, part imagined – and forms a visual link between the different parts of the building.” David Nelson, Foster + Partners Singapore has an eclecticContinue reading “A House in a Garden by Foster + Partners: Singapore, 2003-2008”
Pilgrimage: Leça tidal pools, Álvaro Siza
Simple pleasures – sun, sand and concrete We didn’t set out to do a series of ‘design pilgrimages’, we were just trying to find somewhere to go on holiday. If we started with a building we both wanted to visit, there would be fewer decisions to make. Looking back in 2021, overwhelming choice was aContinue reading “Pilgrimage: Leça tidal pools, Álvaro Siza”
Pilgrimage: Naoshima, Japan’s art island
“Naoshima is a small, beautiful, somehow sad little island. A tiny town in squares and patches. On one side, beginning several feet back from the sea, a ruined shrine, a general store, a shaved-ice shop. The sadness comes perhaps from the loneliness – in the early afternoons, there never seems to be anyone on theseContinue reading “Pilgrimage: Naoshima, Japan’s art island”
Barbican Conservatory, Luke Hayes
Built between 1965 and 1976, the Barbican Estate was designed to repopulate the post-war City of London. Nowhere has its Brutalist vision of utopia taken root more than in the conservatory, which was added later, in 1980, to disguise the theatre’s 100-foot fly tower and improve views for residents. The concrete fly-tower is surrounded byContinue reading “Barbican Conservatory, Luke Hayes”
Two Cities: Tokyo & Chicago, Luke Hayes
“Tokyo and Chicago, vast cities on opposite sides of the globe. These photographs are my first impressions of each, taken on assignments in 2009 and 2010. Despite being 10,000 kilometres apart, there were similarities. The images attempt to capture some of these parallels, the views that the people living there have stopped seeing – theContinue reading “Two Cities: Tokyo & Chicago, Luke Hayes”
Editorial Content 