The Spirit Of Place
Richard England



1


Richard England

©Richard England


"What is new and significant must of necessity be grafted to old roots." These are the words of the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, and it is this philo- sophy which I have tried to follow in my architecture, in trying to produce an architecture of place, an architecture which is in fact an expression of regional- ism, but regionalism with relevance to a particular sense of place. The Maltese Islands where I was born and bred, float like a scorched leaf in the centre of a blazing Mediterranean sea, an archipelago made of stone and still more stone.





2


Stone Quarry

©Richard England


This is an island where the fields are rock and the hedges are stone. This is a place which has always practised, because of the one sole building material avail- able, a maximum utilisation of minimal resources, something which the world of the 60's have forgotten. In Malta, this globigerino limestone, these blocks, seen in a quarry, somehow echo the future buildings of tomorrow. We can see the geometry of the same townscape forms,once this is put together in completed buildings. In Malta, the sum of the parts is actually equal to the whole.







Thanks for previewing this talk


If you would like to view the whole talk please follow one of the following links

Subscribe

Or if you already have an account: