- Editorial:
- GUSTAVO GILI
- ISBN:
- 978-84-252-2023-4
- Páginas:
- 144
- Encuadernación:
- Rústica
- Colección:
- ARQUITECTURA
SERGISON BATES
AA.VV
TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction: Building with Presence by David Chipperfield Works: Public house, Walsall, UK Studio offices, Clerkenwell, London, UK Semi-detached houses, Stevenage, UK Urban housing, Hackney, London, UK Mixed-use development, Wandsworth, London, UK Studio house, Bethnal Green, London, UK Three school buildings, Bedfordshire, UK Assisted self-build housing, Tilbury, UK The Comfort of Strangeness by Adrian Forty The Fragile Surface of Everyday Life, or, What Happened to Realism? by Philip Ursprung Upper Lawn: The Invisible Restoration. A Conversation with Sergison Bates Peter Allison in discussion with Sergison Bates Projects: Cultural History Museum, Bornholms, Denmark Industrial Design Department and Administration building, Kortrijk, Belgium City library, Blankenberge, Belgium Dramatic Arts and Audio-visual Department, Brussels, Belgium Office building, Bronschhofen, Switzerland Biography nexus: Resistance by Stephen Bates and Jonathan Sergison Interview with Jonathan Sergison and Stephen Bates by Ellis Woodman |
The pragmatic Anglo-Saxon method of competition (reliability, track record, ability to get on with the client) is hardly the environment to encourage creative young architects, or to give them the opportunity to acquire the skills of their craft or the experience of developing and testing ideas through construction. It is no surprise therefore that the young partnership of Jonathan Sergison and Stephen Bates looks towards Europe for its inspiration. These are architects not interested in pursuing the spectacular, nor are they interested in concentrating their energies in the evolution of strategies to win commissions in the commercial market. Instead they would like the opportunity to practise architecture that has social relevance and physical meaning. They are inspired by the European architecture of the last 30 years (Rafael Moneo, Álvaro Siza, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Herzog & de Meuron, Roger Diener), as well as a younger generation of European contemporaries. Along with some of their London colleagues, especially Tony Fretton and Caruso St John, they share a fascination for the work of Peter and Alison Smithson.
Since setting up in practice together in the early 1990s, Sergison Bates has carved out a distinctive, more European-style niche in the UK. They are to be respected for their commitment to a rigorous way of working and a challenging body of work. The achievement of this young practice lies not with any singular work, rather in the fact that they have accumulated both a convincing way of working and talking about architecture and, as this monograph of 2G review testifies, a body of work to be admired.