JESUS COLLEGE COMPETITION WIN
OCTOBER 2014
The practice is delighted to have won the competition for a new development within Jesus College, Cambridge. The practice secured the appointment from among a strong short-list that that included Wright & Wright, Haworth Tompkins and Cullinan Studio.
The project forms the first part of a three-phase development, to create a new outward-facing research centre for the College that includes a communications facility and 150-seater auditorium. The scheme involves the reordering and renovation of the site’s existing buildings and incorporates the western half of the historic Wesley House.
Work is due to start on site early next year.
‘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.