Charterhouse Tour. Review by Barbara Lewis. An inspired condition of a National Heritage Lottery Fund grant, agreed around the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, was that the Charterhouse, whose origins date back to the Black Death of the 14th-century, should open its doors to the public.
architecture
Marie of Romania and the Pelisor Castle. Review by Barbara Lewis. Princess Marie Alexandra Victoria of Edinburgh became Marie of Romania after, guided by her family, she rejected a proposal from her first cousin the future King George V.
Casa Balla. Review by Carla Scarano. Giacomo Balla was an Italian painter, who moved with his family to 39b, via Oslavia, near piazza Mazzini, in June 1929. Balla, his wife, Elisa, and his daughters, Luce and Elica, transformed the house into a work of art, a workshop of sorts in which he experimented with his futurist theories.
St Michael and All Angels Church, Berwick: Should we be in need of a reminder, lockdown has provided it: our appreciation of a work of art can depend on experiencing it in the context for which it was created; the vacuum of an online viewing is no substitute.
Post-Virus Venice: More than looks. Venice is, to a majority of us, one of humanity’s most seductive achievements.
Raphael: The exhibition was organised in collaboration with the Uffizi Galleries and acts as a flash-back to Raphael’s life and career. It starts from his sudden death in Rome five hundred years ago.
Tokyo: a bridge between tradition and modernity, by Carla Scarano D’Antonio. Compared to Kyoto, Tokyo is bigger, busier and cosmopolitan. My friend Ornella and I had plenty of time by ourselves as my daughter was busy with her course at the Bunka Gakuen University where she is attending a Master in Fashion and Design.
The Russian architect Berthold Lubetkin once declared “Nothing is too Good for Ordinary People”* and as a founder of the radical Tecton group he designed municipal housing which combined the creation of healthy spaces, where people could live healthy lives, with the expression of his modernist aesthetic.
A new municipal HQ for the Borough of Tower Hamlets is being built on the site of the old Royal London Hospital, and it’s due to open in 2022.
Stroll through the streets of Turin or look out from the city’s rattling trams and you’re confronted with wall after wall of windows framed by whatever architectural embellishments were fashionable at the time of construction, from the standard shutters of residential apartment blocks to ornate neo-classical gods and gargoyles on civic buildings.
It is overwhelming to enter this striking twelfth century London church which provides the delightful setting for this touring production. We are inside the Norman and Gothic architecture of English history. This is a strong visual for Shakespeare’s propaganda play which scholars acknowledge as the rewriting of Richard Plantagenet’s life to please Shakespeare’s Tudor patrons.
The Charterhouse garden tour. Review by Barbara Lewis. Mr Weeding was in 1795 the aptly named first recorded gardener at the Charterhouse – or at least that’s what Emily, one of the current team tells, with a straight face, the mixture of Londoners and tourists she is showing around.
By Barbara Lewis • architecture, history, year 2025 • Tags: architecture, Barbara Lewis, history