SAWSA Lecture - Peter St John

Last Updated on Tuesday, 01 December 2009 13:36

As always FREE for Sawsa members, £2 staff/students, £3 Everyone else.Thursday 26 November 2009, 18:30; Room 0.14, Bute Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, CF10 3NB

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS LECTURE WILL TAKE PLACE IN ROOM 0.14, NOT BIRT ACRES LECTURE THEATRE AS PREVIOUSLY ADVISED!

Ending their lecture series for this term, SAWSA are excited to have Peter St John, founding partner of Caruso St John Architects join us.

A practice fascinated by the specificity of cultural context, Caruso St John rose to public attention in 1995, winning the commission for the “New Art Gallery“, Walsall, later short listed in 2000 for the Stirling prize. Drawn from the ‘pleasure principles’ of architecture such as ornament and texture and colour, Caruso St John work on an international scale on a range of projects that seek to resist standardised construction and push the idea of visually and emotional intense spaces. Work such as their “Brick House” (also short listed for the Stirling Prize) explore the emotional experience of materiality and the dichotomy between site, context and client; as St John advocates; 'A building should be emotional. It can have an intellectual idea behind it but it's not supposed to be cerebral. There is a playful quality, a richness in our work.'

Caruso St John are committed to an architecture of cultural choice. A large portfolio in restoration of some of the UK’s most prestigious Victorian and Arts and Crafts public buildings has clearly had an influence in their work, best seen in the renovation of The Victorian and Albert Museum of Childhood. Although the practice admits to not having a ‘style’ or ‘aesthetic’, their design ethos clearly demonstrates an acute dedication to the underlying beauty of early 20th Century Architecture and rejects the trends of architectural taste.

Perhaps one of the UK’s most esteemed practices, Caruso St John Partner, Peter St John, will no doubt give us an inspirational outlook in the idea that abstraction and simplification of architecture to a pared down emotional and material substance can truly embody the special details of everyday life

Seeing as its the last enstallment in the series before Christmas, there will be some festively themed drinks and nibbles.