Caruso St. John

Total Projects from Caruso St. John: 2

Canadian Adam Caruso (born 1962) and Briton Peter St John (born 1959) are standard-bearers for an architecture that has less currency in the UK than in mainland Europe. They are deadly serious, making austere but intellectually allusive buildings influenced by late Modernist heroes Alison and Peter Smithson and by a strain of Swiss architecture that prizes craftsmanship and the primacy of the architect in the construction process.

Based in London, the practice had its big break in the heady days of the National Lottery in the UK, when hundreds of millions of pounds were spent on new cultural facilities. Their success in the competition for Walsall New Art Gallery (2000) put them and the building's blighted locale - more of a suburb of Birmingham than a town in its own right - on the world map. Those in the know had been waiting for them to win some¬thing substantial. Their early careers, working for influential teacher Florian Beigel and subsequently for Arup Associates, and their strong performance in competitions for the Yokohama Ferry Terminal and the Nara Convention Hall, both in Japan, suggested that something special was to come.

They did not disappoint. Walsall emerged as the most important building in England in maybe twenty years, produced with an incredible quality of construction. The gallery seems to contain within it the gamut of British architectural references, feeling by turns like a castle, a manor house and a working-class terrace, with a series of galleries of beautifully tuned, almost domestic scale. Above all, it provided a civic facade with windows presenting specific views - editorializing Walsall and reconstruct¬ing it as 'a Black Country San Gimigniano', as critic Rowan Moore put it.

Caruso St John is old school made new. The practice, usually grouped in the 'archtitecture of the everyday' movement or with conceptual mini¬malists Herzog & de Meuron, is at the other end of the spectrum from the media junkie architects that glory in the mess of the Postmodern city. Peter St John, when talking about his teaching, says: 'With our students we end up asking ourselves...what is one's attitude to urbanism, because there seems to be so little one can admire now.'

Their work is diverse. Projects for set-piece galleries like Walsall are offset by refurbishments - a new contemporary arts centre in an old industrial building in Cardiff currently on the drawing board is a potential mini-Tate Modern - signage, housing competitions and their scheme for the reconstruction of a Baroque public square in Kalmar, Sweden (2002). Their project for an acoustic ceiling for the Barbican Concert Hall in London (2001) saw them come up with a system of burnished red reflectors for the ceiling that engaged with this historical interior without obscuring the dramatic concrete construction.

Something of a hiatus in their practice occurred after Walsall when, for all the adulation, new work at a large scale was not forthcoming. Now they are moving into gear again, with the competition for the Cardiff building won, Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood completing, and the Gagosian Gallery in London about to begin. They deserve more major public buildings.

website: www.carusostjohn.com

Featured Projects

	New Art Gallery Walsall Address: Gallery Square , WALSALL - United Kingdom Architect: Caruso St. John Category: Cultural



	Nottingham Contemporary Arts Museum Address: Weekday Cross , NOTTINGHAM - United Kingdom Architect: Caruso St. John Category: Museums \| Cultural