How to define success… Integrity? Turnover? Satisfaction with your surroundings, process, or clients? This question seemed a preoccupation of the speakers at Designival, Liverpool’s one-day festival of design, hosted by Camp & Furnace last Friday. For first speaker Jonathan Sands, without question the primacy of his agency Elmwood is paramount. Joining the studio as a … Continue reading
The success of Liverpool ONE has in one sense been in the redefinition of Liverpool as an acceptable shopping destination to those outside the city. Hitherto, the city appeared to lag behind others as a desirable retail destination, well below the potential for a city of this size, notwithstanding the presence of such redoubtable institutions … Continue reading
The recent determination by the city of Preston that the Central Bus Station & Car Park (BDP, 1969) will be demolished is the unsurprising, but nonetheless disappointing, echo of an earlier, unfortunate episode in the architectural legacy of the city. The majority of the people of Preston never grew to love the behemoth Bus Station, … Continue reading
Can we learn to love the architecture of the 20th Century, as we have learned previously to love the architecture of the 19th Century? I’m referring here largely to those buildings and structures completed after the Second World War, currently maligned to a degree once reserved for the excesses of architecture erected during the reign … Continue reading
Becconsall Farm annexe is a C19 former farmhands’ cottage conjoined to a barn conversion, in the settlement of Lower Bartle, to the rural West of Preston, Lancashire. Although modest in scale, the project demonstrates the complexities inherent in any response to an established setting. Here, restrictions of footprint and external appearance were tested to establish … Continue reading
Preparatory questions/notes for conversation with artist Doug Aitken and architect David Adjaye at Tate Liverpool, September 15th 2012, on the subject Sky Arts Ignition: Doug Aitken – The Source, part of the Liverpool Biennial 2012. Read the conversation at The Double Negative. Continue reading
MgMaStudio/architecture is a compound, proximate characters binding personality to place, underpinned by process. Directors and chartered architects Mathew Giles and Matthew Ashton supply the initials, highlighting the commonality of the ‘M’. Studio is the process and environment; the intent to produce, to build, together with the definition of our premises (see previous post. The ‘/’ … Continue reading
To begin, the beginning. Affordable, ambitious architecture; to hear the street and enjoy the sunset – the brief for a studio space in Liverpool city centre. The destination: Oriel Chambers, designed by Liverpool architect Peter Ellis (1864) and located on the Water Street descent to the riverfront, amidst the grand relics of Herbert Rowse and … Continue reading
Collected thoughts on the subject of making architecture. Continue reading
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