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Sofa Combacio designed by Nigel Coates in collaboration with Barnaba Fornasetti (April 2014)


Defining Design N


Nigel Coates explores the interrelationship between architecture and design.


igel Coates is a fascinating figure, spanning the worlds of architecture, design and academia, shooting to fame


in his Narrative Architecture Today magazine article of 1984 he advised readers to ‘be the architects of their own lives, and in doing so, to radically adapt the buildings around them’. He believes that the city is best understood if explored as a living organism, and that popular experience and culture are central to the experience of architecture.


In this exclusive interview with ‘Global Opportunity’ Nigel explores the nature of design as we understand it and his thoughts and ideas on British architecture. Why is British architecture so in demand?


Britain has always had a leading approach to architecture education. This approach has had commercial validity but also an intellectual and creative validity that comes from a long tradition, in particular from the Architectural Association


where most successful architects were trained. This included great discourse about the ideas of architecture as well as its practice. Secondly London is an


international city and has become more so over the past decade and architecture has therefore been a great success. London has become a global resource for realising architecture, whether it’s hotels in the Far East or museums in Qatar. London has the highest density of architectural practices


NIGEL COATES


lTrained at the Architectural Association Nigel Coates is one of Britain’s most celebrated practitioners of architecture, interior and product design. His most high-profile buildings are The Hub in Sheffield and the 20th century wing of the Geffrye Museum in Shoreditch, London. He led the Department of Architecture at the Royal College of Art in London from 1995-2011 and is now an RCA Professor Emeritus. In 2012 he received the Annie Spink Award for excellence in architectural education.


anywhere, I believe, and it has huge practices that can deliver in terms of creativity and dependability. If you go to Norman Foster you are pretty much guaranteed to get the thing you have asked for, with an unexpected dimension. If you go to Zaha Hadid you will get a more experimental atelier-based tradition, but nevertheless now a huge machine for designing and completing buildings that are extraordinary. Zaha and Norman Foster represent two extremes of the profile of the profession. There are also thousands of little studios that are interested in a new hands-on artisanship about how architecture is realised. The freedom to build, the fact we were bombed in the war and left lots of sites and broken buildings has enabled London to keep renewing itself and that has been immensely important since the 80s and the explosion of creativity in London at the small scale in schools, fashion lifestyle. that kind of trajectory has grown into one of the most successful cities in the world if not the most creative. The South Bank Centre in London


is a very controversial building, but I love it because of the great


118 GLOBAL OPPORTUNITY 2014 | ISSUE 01 global-opportunity.co.uk


ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN


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NIGEL COATES


© PETER GUENZEL


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