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Inspiration

It often seems that architecture misses a fundamental point: that of creating buildings and places that are pleasant places to be. The places and spaces here all have this quality.

Untitled  1970 Cy Twombly  1970

Luis Barragán

What appears incoherent in plan becomes a fluid sequence of spaces in the built reality of this house. The furnishings and art are in perfect accordance with the architecture.

Eduardo Prieto Lopez house, San Angel, Mexico  1951

Filippo Brunelleschi

We should never forget the power of architecture to move us and to express matters quite other than bricks and mortar.

Pazzi Chapel, church of Santa Croce, Florence, Italy  1443-78

Barbara Hepworth

In an incredibly small space, this garden captures the magic of the English walled garden – gardens whose delight is heightened by their containment – and adds the extra dimension of art and sea views.

Her studios within the garden have powerful qualities of space – the terracotta tiles and whitewashed walls offer an alternative to the sterile boxes of many contemporary art galleries.

Barbara Hepworth’s garden  St Ives, Cornwall  1949-75

Kettle’s Yard

My thought was that the one thing a human being really needed was a room to live in, and scarcely any human being lived in one, it lived on him    Jim Ede, creator of Kettle’s Yard 

This oft quoted and never bettered house-gallery is powerful for just that: a house that makes no distinction between life and the display of art. All objects in the house, from the most humble to the most considered, are treated in the same way.

Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge  1957 & 1970

Ben Nicholson

The spareness of line of Ben Nicholson’s etchings nonetheless manages to convey the character of a whole country.

1967 (Patmos monastery), etching  1967

Peter Zumthor

Quite simply the purest expression of architecture of recent times.

Thermal Spa, Vals, Switzerland, 1996