on 19 September 2003We like the bonkers stuff here at Twenty/20, and you don’t get much nuttier than an exhibition of contemporary architecture inspired by animals. Who the heck, for example, revamps a 1930s house to replicate the lifecycle of a butterfly? And we’re not talking airy-fairy abstract formal references here. No, the house is stuck through with all sorts of actual butterfly-shaped bits. Mad!
Or take Ushida Findlay’s planning-officer-baiting Grafton New Hall, a multi-million-pound country house for the 21st century, nestling twixt wood and stream like a Georgian pile but designed, yes, in the shape of a gigantic science fiction starfish, ‘clinging to terra firma as if held by suckers’? Crazy!
Then there’s Birds Portchmouth Russum (even their name’s barmy) completely certifiable luminous floaty shenanigans in Morecambe Bay. And plenty more where all these came from. They should have called it Animal Crackers. Oh, did you know Norman Foster’s Swiss Re HQ is supposed to be a sea sponge, not a gherkin? That’s so much more sensible. There’s a book from Laurence King if you can’t make the show.
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