Thursday, Dec. 30, 2010 11:27 a.m.

John Pawson exhibition at Design Museum

Walking from London Bridge station to the museum. I think this is the only city street in London that strikes me so far.

A site-specific installation by Pawson.

View from the inside

Model of a monastery in France that Pawson designed.

His own house

I like this one but this is unbuilt.

Another house.

City Hall

I would say he is a very classical kind of modern minimalist architect. He suits our every imagination of what an architect does and has - an office flooded with drafts and models, a multi-national team that looks young, neat and professional, opportunity to design furniture and cutlery, projects with plain white walls, long wooden benches, play of light and shadow, hiding the light source etc. Every project goes through the very classical process - floor plans > small models > big models > 3D renderings, and you can see some classical architect-ish gesture e.g. a long lava stone kitchen that extends all the way into the outdoor patio, cut through only by a thin piece of glass which is the only divide between the indoor and outdoor, or a wall that extends to the upper floor but bends 90 degrees at the end to become the balustrade of the upper floor. These are all quite pleasant of course, for white cubes never look bad, but there are times when I feel that it is too much that it is not minimal anymore. The long wooden benches he designed for this exhibition all have hidden lighting that lights up the wall behind. I know this is pretty, but it doesn't always work. It might work very well in the church or even the house he designed, for we all like clean, atmospheric ambient light without seeing the fussy light bulbs, but what's the point of making all the furniture glow when that light is so eak that it functions as nothing but a mere highlight of the silhouette of the furniture itself? But other than some excessively "architectural" gestures, the exhibition is still nice. I particularly enjoyed seeing the interaction between the monks (the clients) and the architect.

I went to National Portrait Gallery for the long-awaited Taylor Wessing Prize exhibition. It was terribly crowded inside and that's quite annoying. I still don't think I like the first prize photo... After seeing the dramatic rest (the twin prostitutes, third prize, for example) this was quite an anti-climax, but maybe the judges liked the subtlety of the winning photo, I don't know. I like the fourth with the obese girl for the intimacy and tenderness. The second, My British Wife, didn't look that right to me from the title to the photos itself... Her exposed genitals were distracting -_-" and what's so British about her anyway?
The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010