Collected Works Volume 1: 1990–2005 is the first comprehensive monograph on Caruso St John, tracing fifteen years of a practice whose thinking about culture, memory, and construction has shaped contemporary British architecture.
About This Book
This volume charts Caruso St John's formation and development across a defining period — from early projects and competition entries through to international recognition. Rather than a straightforward chronology, the book follows a thematic structure shaped around key phases of the practice's thinking, assembling drawings, archival texts, new commentaries, and inventories of references drawn from architecture and contemporary art. Projects ranging from Peter St John's own home at Orleston Mews to the signage system for London's Bankside sit alongside major built works, presenting the practice's belief that architecture inhabits a world composed not of the new alone, but of everything that has preceded it. Essential reading for anyone engaged with contemporary architectural discourse and the relationship between built culture and memory.
Key Features
- 416 pages of thematic essays, archival drawings, unseen project documentation, and new commentaries by Adam Caruso and Peter St John
- Texts by Wim Wenders, Hans Kolhoff, Irénée Scalbert, Vicky Richardson, Claes Caldenby, Dominique Boudet, James Lingwood, Adam Caruso, Peter St John, and more
- Notable projects including Nottingham Contemporary, The New Art Gallery Walsall, and the Brick House — the latter two shortlisted for the Stirling Prize
- Published by Mack, 2005
What You'll Discover
- How Caruso St John's practice constructs meaning through the accumulation of cultural references across architecture and contemporary art, not through formal novelty alone
- The role of the minor and peripheral project — competition entries, small domestic works, signage systems — in shaping a practice's intellectual identity alongside its celebrated buildings
- How a chorus of voices — critics, clients, artists, and the architects themselves — can narrate architectural development more truthfully than a single authorial account
- A vision of the built environment as a network of culture, memory, construction, and emotion, articulated through cross-referential documentation spanning fifteen years
About the Author
Adam Caruso and Peter St John are the founding principals of Caruso St John, one of the most highly acclaimed and influential contemporary architectural practices. Their work, including The New Art Gallery Walsall and Nottingham Contemporary, has received international recognition including Stirling Prize shortlistings.
Specifications
- Format: Embossed and silkscreened linen hardcover
- Pages: 416
- Dimensions: 220 x 265 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781913620769
- Publisher: Mack
- Publication Date: 2005
Perfect For: Architects and students of architecture interested in contemporary British practice, critics and academics working on memory and culture in the built environment, and collectors of definitive practice monographs.