Selected Works John Pawson Project: Flagship Store Completed in 1995, This Reinvention of a Structure Is Subtly Transformed by the Client: Calvin Klein Inc

Selected Works John Pawson Project: Flagship store Completed in 1995, this reinvention of a structure is subtly transformed by the Client: Calvin Klein Inc. corner site on Madison Avenue quickly deft insertion of huge panels of glass Location: New York achieved the status of landmark that have the effect of turning the whole Start date: 1994 architecture. A decade and a half later, building into a showcase. Inside a limited Completion date: 1995 the normally short-lived cycles of retail material palette and rigorous clarity of architecture notwithstanding, the design line and proportion come together to remains essentially intact. Externally the produce a quality of space rare anywhere handsome existing neoclassical but virtually unprecedented in a store.

2 Calvin Klein Store Project: Schrager Apartment Spanning the façade’s twenty-one everyday domestic life can naturally take Client: Ian Schrager bays, one long edge of the apartment’s place. This approach allows the focus to Location: New York floor plan is left clear, preserving an fall on the combinations of materials and Start date: 2006 uninterrupted 40-metre vista, with views the detailing of the junctions, the pairing Completion date: 2009 out to the city at either end. A series of of fired black granite and brushed, white walls mark out areas for family stained Japanese cedar in the kitchen, living, kitchen and library, maximising for example, playing with ideas of the sense of an open, loft-like layout, similarity and contrast in terms of texture whilst creating a sequence of gathering and tone. spaces in which the activities of

3 Schrager Apartment Project: 50 Gramercy Park North This design creates a series of simplex, two original structures. This new slice Client: Ian Schrager Company duplex and triplex apartments in the of accommodation is predominantly a Location: New York former Gramercy Park Annex on glass composition articulated in bronze, Start date: 2004 Gramercy Park North, completed in which adds landscape as well as Completion date: 2007 1930 by Thompson & Churchill as a architecture to the elevation, in direct complementary extension to the reference to its park setting. neighboring Gramercy Park Hotel. Inside the scheme reinvents the grand The scheme refines and simplifies traditions of New York apartment-living Thompson & Churchill’s original brick for a new century. The focus of the elevations set above a two-storey stone design falls on innovative layouts which plinth, paring away surface distraction organize living space as a series of fluid to reveal an underlying formal clarity. gathering places, discarding conventions The enlarged envelope includes entirely of form to reflect contemporary patterns new architecture inserted between the of use.

4 50 Gramercy Park North Project: Dienst Apartment X Client: Jil and Dan Dienst Location: New York Start date: 2009 Completion date: 2012

5 Dienst Apartment Project: Christopher Kane Store Underlying everything here is the idea openings, stripped of all extraneous Client: Christopher Kane of atmosphere as the product of the details, with successive portals Location: London delicately subversive play of contrasting heightening the experience of entry: Start date: 2013 characteristics — the natural and the the heavy timber leaves framing a Completion date: 2015 synthetic, the classical and the second transparent threshold of glass experimental, the recessive and the set in Portland stone. Inside permanent arresting, the reflective and the gestures that include the attenuated transparent, the solid and the line of steel running through the depth dematerialised. of the floor plan and down the stairs are combined with vocabulary that can be Externally the design reinstates changed and curated from season to elements of the original Edwardian season, such as the brilliantly coloured elevations, creating simple, full-height acrylic elements.

6 Christopher Kane Store Project: Pawson House Planning regulations prohibited made to the envelope allow natural Client: Catherine & John Pawson alterations to the front of this traditional light into the full depth of the plan. At the Location: London nineteenth century row house in a top of the house a glazed slot running Start date: 1996 conservation area in west London. the length of the ceiling allows light to Completion date: 1999 Working within these restrictions, spill down a triple-height staircase. the design scoops out the interior in its Outside the conventional street entirety, leaving the protected façade elevation gives only a tantalising glimpse untouched. Floor layouts are radically of the new life which has been flipped redrawn to give the maximum amount into the frame of the old. of unencumbered space, while cuts

7 Pawson House Project: California House This family house in the hills overlooking which contrasts the solidity of limestone Client: Private Los Angeles takes the form of two with the lighter rhythms of vertical Location: California, USA distinct horizontal volumes, stacked one timber panels. The house’s structural Start date: 2006 above the other. Where the lower volume configuration increases space on the Completion date: 2009 is visually anchored in the landscape, upper level and gives the ground floor the cantilevered upper storey appears an open character in terms both of its to float. This impression is reinforced by layout and of the relationship between the different material treatments of each, interior and exterior areas.

8 California House Project: Montauk House The volume of this house on the Atlantic architecture and context, with walls Client: Private shore is pulled north, away from the finished in sandy render and decks Location: Long Island, USA ocean and towards a small valley made from silvered ipe, resembling Start date: 2009 running along the west side of the plot. driftwood. A series of pristine vertical Completion date: 2013 The building form flexes to follow this planes rises from the upper deck, topographical line, allowing the lower framing space and views and providing deck to engage naturally with the flow of a powerful counterpoint to the the dune. The material palette reinforces structure’s low horizontal mass. the intimacy of the relationship between

9 Montauk House Project: Casa delle Bottere The dart-like volume of this family home in precedents, the design incorporates a Client: Private the Veneto region of northern Italy is set pair of cross-views, orientated on the Location: Treviso, Italy within a deep excavation, creating a single cardinal axes. A goal of the project was Start date: 2006 storey above ground and a basement to create a building with virtually zero Completion date: 2011 level, with a sunken courtyard to the energy energy requirements and Casa west. The central roof plane rises from delle Bottere is one of only seventy the east elevation, its lines converging at houses in Italy to have been awarded the apex of a pitched gable on the gold star certification for sustainability. western façade. Following Palladian

10 Casa delle Bottere Project: Tetsuka House This design for a compact site in a suburb the internal division between floors and Client: Private of Tokyo, the office’s first realised animated by openings. These apertures Location: Tokyo, Japan domestic project in Japan, takes the form frame a series of meticulously edited Start date: 2003 of a rectangular box containing living vistas out of the building that become Completion date: 2005 quarters, a room dedicated to the rituals part of the landscape of the interior. of the traditional tea ceremony and a The exaggerated length of the wall double-height courtyard open to the sky. leading to the entrance brings quiet The concrete envelope is tinted to reflect theatre to the experience of arrival.

11 Tetsuka House Project: Palmgren House This house on the shore of Lake In summer, viewed from across the Client: Maths Palmgren Drevviken takes the form of a simple water, the elevations are fragmented Location: Drevviken, Sweden box, with an enclosed courtyard at the by foliage. Inside the house is designed Start date: 2006 back and a terrace to the front. to be as open as possible to views over Completion date: 2013 Uncompromisingly contemporary, the lake, with spaces framed in simple the architecture is nonetheless a quiet surfaces and in a pale tonal palette. presence in the landscape. In winter, when the lake freezes over and the site is blanketed in snow, the pale volume is all but invisible.

12 Palmgren House Project: Interior remodelling of The church of St Moritz has been project. The work has involved the St Moritz Church through many changes since its meticulous paring away of selected Client: Helmut Haug & Michael Grau foundation nearly a thousand years ago. elements of the church’s complex Location: Augsburg, Germany Devastating fires, changes in liturgical fabric and the relocation of certain Start date: 2009 practice, aesthetic evolution and wartime artefacts, to achieve a clearer visual Completion date: 2013 bombing have each left their mark on field. Drawing on existing forms and the fabric of the building. The purpose of elements of vocabulary, an architectural this latest intervention has been to retune language has evolved that is the existing architecture, from aesthetic, recognisable in subtle ways as functional and liturgical perspectives, something new, yet has no jarring with considerations of sacred foreign elements. atmosphere always at the heart of the

13 St Moritz Church Project: Sackler Crossing In 2005 the Royal Botanic Gardens, bronze — the walkway is designed to Client: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Kew, commissioned John Pawson to unite sculptural and functional qualities, Location: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew design a walkway across the lake at the opening up a new route through Kew’s Start date: 2004 heart of its 120-hectare, World Heritage historic landscapes and placing the Completion date: 2006 designated site. The finished Sackler individual as near as possible to the Crossing opened to the public in June surface of the water. The project has 2006. A serpentine composition of won a number of prizes, including four simple repeating horizontal and vertical separate awards from the Royal Institute elements, realized in a visible palette of of British Architects. only two materials — black granite and

14 Sackler Crossing Project: The Feuerle Collection The subject of this project is a pair of South-east Asian sculpture and work by Client: Private former telecommunications bunkers international contemporary artists, Location: Berlin, Germany dating from the period 1942–44, including Nobuyoshi Araki, Adam Fuss, Start date: 2011 located in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, Cristina Iglesias, Anish Kapoor, Completion date: 2016 next to the canal. Fabricated from in Zeng Fanzhi and James Lee Byars. situ shuttered concrete, with 2-metre thick walls, ceiling thicknesses of 3.37m Intervention has been purposefully kept and 1.6m wide columns, the bunkers to a minimum, respectful always of the are connected at basement level, ways in which nature, man and the while their roofs are populated with lines passage of time have made their marks of larger and small vents, protected by on the fabric of the buildings. Rather massive concrete slabs. Square in plan, than grand gestures, the focus of the these vents remain key elements of the effort has fallen on the subtle calibration architecture’s identity. of key thresholds, on the spatial narrative through the galleries, on the quality of This site was acquired by the art historian the light and on specific, quietly charged and connoisseur, Désiré Feuerlé, with sensory encounters — with the flooded the idea of creating a permanent home lake room and with the enclosed space for his private collection of Chinese dedicated to the 1000-year-old imperial Imperial furniture, 7th–13th century ritual of incense burning.

15 The Feuerle Collection Project: B60 Sloop B60 is the outcome of collaboration horizontal lines to appear to pass Client: Private with the Milan-based designers Luca uninterrupted through the vertical Start date: 2006 Brenta, who developed the yacht as an elements, projecting immaculate Completion date: 2007 evolution of the smaller B38. Below phantom spaces forward and back of deck the emphasis falls on the the saloon and galley. The floor below possibilities of bringing together light, deck is laid with washed lunar larch and shadows and reflections on high-gloss the deck itself with naturally bleached white surfaces to manipulate the eye’s teak, the sealant tinted RAL 9010 to spatial experience, allowing the strong match the hull.

16 B60 Sloop Project: Chroma On 17th November 2006, the world outside, entrance and exit, light and Client: Dame Monica Mason DBE premiere of Chroma, a new one-act shadow, void and plenitude to create a Director, Royal Ballet ballet by Wayne McGregor, opened at spatially charged environment which is Location: Royal Opera House, London the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. explored through the medium of the Start date: 2006 The occasion also marked the realization dancers’ bodies. World Premiere: 2007 of John Pawson’s first set design. Chroma is now established as part of the The collaboration between Royal Ballet’s repertoire and has already choreographer and architect was been performed in the Far East, Cuba, based on a shared preoccupation with Canada, New York, San Francisco and light and space. The design uses the Moscow, using a specially adapted set. architectural motifs of inside and

17 Chroma John Pawson was born in 1949 in Whilst private houses have remained a Halifax, Yorkshire. After a period in the consistent strand of the work, family textile business he left for subsequent projects have spanned a Japan, spending several years teaching wide range of scales and building English at the business university of typologies, ranging from Calvin Klein Nagoya. Towards the end of his time Collection’s flagship store in Manhattan there he moved to Tokyo, where he and airport lounges for Cathay Pacific in visited the studio of Japanese architect Hong Kong, to a condominium for Ian and designer Shiro Kuramata. Schrager on New York’s Gramercy Park, Following his return to England, he the interior of a 50-metre yacht and sets enrolled at the Architecture Association for new ballets at London’s Royal Opera in London, leaving to establish his own House and the Opéra Bastille in Paris. practice in 1981. Over the years John Pawson has From the outset his work has focused accrued extensive experience of the on ways of approaching fundamental particular challenges of working within problems of space, proportion, light and environments of historic, landscape and materials, rather than on developing a ecological significance. Key examples set of stylistic mannerisms — themes including the Sackler Crossing — Pawson also explored in his book a walkway over the lake at London’s Minimum, first published in 1996, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — the which examines the notion of simplicity Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Nový in art, architecture and design across a Dvůr in Bohemia, the interior renovation variety of historical and cultural contexts. of the basilica of the Benedictine Archabbey of Pannonhalma in Hungary Early commissions included homes for and the remodelling of the former the writer Bruce Chatwin, opera director Commonwealth Institute in London, Pierre Audi and collector Doris Lockhart opened as a new permanent home for Saatchi, together with art galleries in the Design Museum in 2016. London, Dublin and New York.

18 John Pawson Minimum Phaidon Press 1996

John Pawson Editorial Gustavo Gili 1992

John Pawson Works Phaidon Press Revised edition 2005

Themes and Projects Phaidon Press 2002

El Croquis 127 John Pawson 1995–2005 2005

Leçons du Thoronet Images En Manoeuvres Éditions 2006

Plain Space Phaidon Press 2010

El Croquis 158 John Pawson 2006–2011 2011

A Visual Inventory Phaidon Press 2012

Katalog Walther König 2012

Spectrum Phaidon Press 2017

19 Publications The ambition of the practice is to turn a materials. These qualities are sought not set of ideas about space into a body of simply as things of value in themselves, architecture of real and enduring quality, but as a means to support a quality of embracing the challenge of producing human experience. work which is true to the defining vision but remains fresh, pushes at the As a team, our priority is to hold onto boundaries and which cumulatively the all-embracing passion for getting a leads to the development of a unique building right, approaching each new architectural language. project from first principles, with a clear eye for the site and the programme and At the core of everything lies an ideal of a willingness to listen and learn, simplicity and a vision of an architecture consistently providing consummate of fundamentals based on the professional service as well as the best qualities of space, proportion, light and possible architecture.

20 Design Philosophy Address: John Pawson Ltd. Unit B 70–78 York Way London N1 9AG United Kingdom

Telephone: +44 20 7837 2929

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Website: www.johnpawson.com

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