DARBISHIRE PLACE, WHITECHAPEL PEABODY HOUSING
JANUARY 2015
We have completed our housing project for the Peabody Trust in John Fisher Street in Whitechapel, London. 13 families now occupy the building. It was built on an empty site in Henry Derbyshire’s Peabody Estate from 1870. The building is made from brick with deep precast concrete reveals, framing large windows and balconies. It is a real pleasure to see the balconies occupied by plants, bikes and carpets; people hanging out the windows watching their children playing in the courtyard below.
‘ETERNAL PROBLEMS’, RIBA JOURNAL EXHIBITION REVIEW BY NIALL MCLAUGHLIN
JUNE 2014
Niall McLaughlin has written a piece for the RIBA Journal on the symbolic use of architecture within early Renaissance Art. The essay describes observations based on a visit to the ‘Building the Picture’ exhibition, currently on show at the National Gallery in London. The exhibition gathers together architectonic works by the Italian masters of the 14th-16th centuries that explore real and imagined architectural space.
The article observes how the Renaissance artists’ enthusiasms for displaying their newly discovered skills of perspective and knowledge of the classical forms are conflated with a religious symbolism. The tropes of classical architecture are used as visual metaphors for the divine and eternal. The article explores the effect of these spaces on the viewer and the reasons why the idealised architecture tends to alienate rather than engage.