Bere Admin February 23rd, 2007
By Elaine Knutt
Building Design
23 February 2007
Surfaces lay bare the architect’s imagination and clients’ aspirations, say BD’s surfaces experts
In architecture, surfaces are anything but superficial. When the site is small, the programme rigid and the budget tight, they leave architects a layer of imagination and an affordable arena for innovation. “Often, the way you can be playful in the space is via the surfaces,” says Pippa Nissen, architect, theatre designer and partner of Nissen Adams. “It’s especially true for a small practice like us, given the scale of our projects - refurbishments or adaptations.”
For clients, surfaces are often a project’s voice and personality. “You can get clients to focus quite readily on the surfaces - it’s where they interact with the building. It’s often an area of quite intense discussion,” says Mark Hewitt of d-squared, ironic understatement audible just beneath his own surface. His practice has been experimenting with solar-collecting exterior surfaces, thermochromic furniture, and holographic video projections for daylit spaces. Continue Reading »
Bere Admin February 14th, 2007
In the Evening standard on 14th February 2007, Nicole Swengley wrote
‘Amid the Victorian terrace homes in one Islington street sits a modern gouse, glamorously clad in Zinc. The owner of this unusual property, which, surprisingly, does not look out of place, is graphic designer Edward Gibbs, who moved there with his wife, Felicity Canning, an NHS manager, and their children, Sarah, 28, Jack, 16 and Hugh, 12, from a four-bedroom house in Stoke Newington.
But it is only due to Gibbs’s vision and persistence that the house is there at all. “When the Islington house came on the market in May 2004, I immediately saw the potential for building a completely new house in its triangular-shaped garden,” he says.
Gibbs’s offer of ₤500,000 was accepted for the house and he called the Royal Institute of British Architects for a lost of architects. “Buying only made sense if we could get planning permission and an architect on board,” he says.
Architect Justin Bere responded enthusiastically and “straight away there was a rapport between us”. Gibbs recalls. Continue Reading »
Bere Admin February 2nd, 2007
BBC London have created a 360 degree image of the new Monument Square.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/panoramas/monumentsquare1_360.shtml
