About this talk

Running time: 30 minutes

Peter Ahrends, Richard Burton and Paul Koralek first began working together while students at the Architectural Association in London, Ahrends having come to England from South Africa. They established their partnership in 1961 after Koralek won first prize in the competition for Trinity College Library, Dublin

As architects they have not embraced any specific theories but have always sought for quality in their work. The designs which they select from all possible solutions to a brief are the ones they consider most symbolise the activities and aspirations on which they were based. When designing a new building in a historical context, while paying due respect to neighbouring traditional buildings, they set up a carefully thought-out dialogue between old and new, traditional and modern, hand-crafted and machine-made.

In his talk, Ahrends speaks about the significance of the representation of opposites in ABK's work, and he describes specific examples that embody the concepts of movement and rest which he thinks establish a fundamental relation to underlying cycles and rhythms of life.

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