Lecture date: 1996-05-08
Architect and designer John Pawson came to architecture relatively late, beginning his studies at the AA in his early thirties. In 1982 he established his practice, John Pawson, and began to develop his signature style, a pared-down simplicity which he has refined in a number of projects, including art galleries, domestic interiors, restaurants and shops. Amongst his first projects was an apartment for the writer Bruce Chatwin, who found in Pawson’s work the perfect expression of ‘wabi’, the Japanese term denoting ‘voluntary poverty’, a stripped-down simplicity and purity of form. In this eponymously titled lecture, Pawson gives a personal and historical description of the notion of simplicity, with examples of his practice’s recent work.
