NASRIN SHAH BUILDING GROUND BREAKING
FEBRUARY 2015
A Ground Breaking Ceremony was held on 25th February for the commencement of the Nasrin Shah Building in Worcester College, Oxford. The event was attended by Beard the main contractor, members of the design team and representatives of the College. The Provost Sir Jonathan Bate and the Client’s representative Dr Afifi Al-Akiti conducted the ceremony, allowing work to commence on the construction of ground works. The building is expected to be completed in late summer 2016. You can follow progress on site by visiting the contractor’s webcam here.
‘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.