Adam Caruso Caruso St John Architects

摘要

When Peter St John and I started our practice in 1990 we were inspired by the careless city that surrounded us. Although the abandoned factories and unkempt houses and streets were the result of the longstanding de-industrialisation and decline of the British economy we saw potential in this almost ruinous state, informed perhaps by an English appreciation of picturesque ruins. Rather than bemoaning the obvious fact that London was not, and had never been, Paris or Barcelona, we tried to imagine an alternative version of the city that was more open, that in the absence of strong civic traditions and administrative structures, would be able to lever the brutal forces of Thatcher's Britain into something that still held something of the shared and collective qualities of the European city.