SURFACE MAGAZINE - Key Persons
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In the two decades since the British architect John Pawson designed his now-famous New York store for Calvin Klein Collection, he has created homes in places like Montauk, Mallorca, St. Tropez, and Treviso; a Cathay Pacific airport lounge in Hong Kong; a gallery and café in Okinawa, Japan; ballet sets for Paris's L'Opéra Bastille and London's Royal Opera House; a kitchen system, lines of cookware and tableware, and a steak knife; a Swarovski crystal lens; the interiors of two yachts; seven Phaidon books; and an ongoing master plan for Cistercian monks in the Czech Republic. A recent commission saw Pawson designing the just-finished London flagship of fashion designer Christopher Kane. Along the way, he has also forged an unusually strong relationship with real-estate developer and hotelier Ian Schrager, whose immaculate Manhattan apartment the architect designed. Last year, Schrager unveiled the Pawson-designed Miami Beach Edition residences, and the pair are currently collaborating on the interiors of two New York City residential projects- 215 Chrystie and 160 Leroy-and the West Hollywood Edition hotel, scheduled to open in 2018. On top of all of this is the commission of a lifetime: the interior of the London Design Museum's new building, opening in late 2016 and located in a structure formerly housing the Commonwealth Institute.
Throughout all of these projects Pawson, 66, has remained steadfast in his detail-oriented, clean-lined approach. One could call his designs Raymond Carveresque: As economical as the writer was with his words, Pawson is with his architecture and interiors. Like Carver, he manages to say with a lot with a little. His projects pack a punch-even if they're neutral, clean, and well lighted, with little flash or pomp. They're warm, often rich places with deep thought and complexity behind their seemingly simple surfaces. Earlier this spring, over coffee at the boardroom table in his London office near King's Cross station, Surface spoke at length with Pawson about everything from what it was like meeting Calvin Klein in the early '90s to why he recently joined Instagram.
Your father was a textile manufacturer. Did growing up in that environment, surrounded by fabrics, get you thinking more about the material world?
Now that you've asked me the question, looking back, definitely. Dad was amazing, because he could feel this [touches sleeve of interviewer's jacket] and tell you its weight, and that it was silk and cotton. I spent a lot of time rifling through textile collections there to choose fabrics, and I was sometimes commissioning designs. The majority of what we did was make clothes for manufacturers. But it was too frenetic for me. It was too "on to the next thing!" all the time. I never had a chance to think.
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