Shanghai’s Art Deco Master
By Spencer Dodington and Charles Lagrange. We celebrate Art Deco architecture today because it reflects a tangibly optimistic and vibrant spirit from long ago. Its colourful ‘Devil-may-care haughtiness’ feels impossibly carefree, particularly when contrasted with less visual concerns, such as planning regulations and economic engineering, which seem to dominate an architect’s time these days. Forgive […]
Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours
Adapted to Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy, Anatomy, and the Arts Syme’s publication is not so much a book, as a presentation of the first known study of colours and how to classify them, a novel break-through idea of its era (1814). Today, we can celebrate its creator, Abraham Gottlob Werner, as offering us the first […]
The Gingerbread City
7th December 2019, this time last year, the lead-up to Christmas was cast very differently. Our intrepid MAAPS team of “fluff & puff” bakers were happily returning from their heady ginger-scented bake-off contribution to The Gingerbread City® exhibition, a joyful Christmas fund-raiser hosted by the Museum of Architecture at Somerset House, with a warm glow […]
MAAPS Shortlisted In The 2020 IHPA “Hotel Under 50 Rooms – Europe” Awards
We are honoured to have been short-listed in the 2020 IHPA “Hotel Under 50 Rooms – Europe” Awards for our design work at Club Quarters Hotel, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. We are one of four companies short-listed in this category so our odds of collecting the award, with your support, are encouraging. View the project […]
The Fabulous Interiors of the Great Ocean Liners
William H Miller Jr. is affectionately known within the cruise fraternity as “Mr Ocean Liner” with over 40 books on the subject to his name. This 1985 edition is a chronological (1890 – 1982) pictoral journey into the “FABULOUS”. At MAAPS, we have worked within the refit and new-building world for many years, and the […]
Penshurst Gardens
Penshurst Gardens It’s always fascinating how new projects arrive at our door. Penshurst Gardens came to us via a trusted contractor whose Client had bought a 2-storey North London home in dire need of an overhaul. As initial repair works commenced, the Client soon realised a far more ambitious project was achievable. Our specialist guidance […]
Joseph Cornell
The beguiling intrigues of Joseph Cornell’s (1903 – 1772) cabinets of Mercuriosities constantly reward the viewer with surprise and delight. His collages and constructions are singular affirmations of his own sense of serenity, nostalgia, enchantment, beauty, and a quite compassionate sprinkling of the extraordinary. Cornell’s surreal and intensely private world view is crafted out of […]
4+1 Peter Salter: Building Projects
We were torn between sharing 4+1 or the equally beguiling 2019 Walmer Yard book (ISBN 978-1-911422-07-5) which both convey Peter’s singular architectural imagination as both drawn and built work. Peter’s unique way of work seems to be a beautiful, delicate, and obsessive lunacy, sometimes corpulently populated, in which he creates evocative and memorable spaces. The […]
Brian Eno – Light Music
Our office library holds its share of rare and lovely surprises. This limited-edition copy (64/1500) of Brian’s “Light Music” catalogues the 2017 installation at the Paul Stolper Gallery. Much as the ambient music created by Eno inhabits our office soundscape, these works of light bring a meditative state of calm contemplation from which ideas can […]
Carlo Mollino
The eclectic and inventive furniture designs and interiors of Carlo Mollino (1905-73) draws its dynamic tension and figurative energy from the Second Futurist and Surrealist avant-gardes. Born in the quintessentially industrial city of Turin, the son of a prominent design engineer, and an architect by training, he shunned the prevailing rationalist modernism of the 40’s […]
