The first volume of Caruso St John's Collected Works is published this month by Mack Books. The publication covers the first fifteen years of Adam Caruso and Peter St John's partnership, following a thematic course shaped around key phases and aspects of their thinking, and offering a detailed reflection on the practice’s activities between 1990 and 2005. Through a chorus of voices including critics, clients, and artists, it narrates Caruso St John's early emergence and development through to the international recognition which came with projects such as Nottingham Contemporary, the New Art Gallery Walsall, and the Brick House.
Detailed accounts of early projects and competition entries, with unseen drawings and new commentaries by Adam Caruso and Peter St John, are presented here accompanied and contextualised by inventories of references from across architecture and contemporary art, together with new and archival texts capturing each project’s formation and reception. With an open and reflexive structure, the book offers both an accessible introduction and a detailed, cross-referential constellation of ideas, images, influences, and documentation. Diverse projects such as the progressive reiterations of Peter St John’s home at Orleston Mews and the signage system for London’s Bankside sit in dialogue with more well-known buildings. Bringing together the renowned and the minor, the peripheral and the spectacular, the ugly and the beautiful, this essential book – the first comprehensive monograph on the practice – embodies Caruso St John’s belief that the contemporary world is composed not solely of the new but of everything that has come before. It illuminates a vision of the built environment as a network of culture, memory, construction, and emotion, and articulates an architecture that inhabits and evolves with that fluctuating whole. Includes texts by Wim Wenders, Hans Kolhoff, Irénée Scalbert, Vicky Richardson, Claes Caldenby, Dominique Boudet, James Lingwood, Adam Caruso, Peter St John, and more.
Images © Caruso St John and Mack Books.
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Adam Caruso will be speaking on the theme of ‘Semper and Material Culture’, as part of the book launch for A New Agenda for Gottfried Semper. Alongside Elena Chestnova, Murray Fraser, Michael Gnehm, and Sonja Hildebrand, Adam will discuss the mid-nineteenth century’s emphatic interest in material history against the backdrop of the precariousness of a life in exile confronted with a globalised world.
Sofie De Caigny, director of the Flanders Architecture Institute, reviewed Caruso St John's Collected Works: Volume I for Drawing Matter. She discusses the book's choice to submerge the reader into the cultural sphere of the end of the 20th century, through contemporary texts, lectures and references.
Casabella issue 940 features a review Caruso St John's Complete Works, Volume I, published by Mack Books. Federico Tranfa commends the book's thematic collation of projects, found texts and commentaries, stating it is a 'courageous way to come to terms with the past, because it is not analysed a posteriori, but instead with the cultural context of the epoch of pertinence'.
Edmund Fowles, director of Feilden Fowles Architects, reviews Caruso St John's monograph published by Mack books. Discussing the books openness, he praises the presentation of projects and references alongside commentaries, a 'constellation of culture, memory, construction and emotion'.
Book launch, London
Caruso St John: Collected Works
Volume 1, 1990–2005
AA Bookshop, London
18:00 19th October 2022
Adam Caruso and Peter St John will celebrate the publication of their Collected Works: Volume 1 1990–2005, by presenting two personal projects from the formative years of their practice; their homes at Swan Yard and Orleston Mews.
Book launch, Zurich
Caruso St John: Collected Works
Volume 1, 1990–2005
Erikastrasse, Zürich
18:00 CET 1st November 2022
Adam Caruso will be in conversation with curators Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen to celebrate the launch of Caruso St John's Collected Works: Volume 1 1990–2005.
Award
Architecture Book of the Year
Caruso St John, Collected Works, Volume 2
London, United Kingdom
10th December 2024
The second volume of Caruso st John's Collected Works has received a commendation in the 2024 Architecture Book of the Year awards. Read the judges' report below.
Studio Caruso at ETH Zurich has designed the latest exhibition for gta exhibitions, the first comprehensive retrospective of OMARA Mara Oláh to be staged in Switzerland.
A feature-length documentary on the history and renovation of the Royale Belge building will be premiered in the building's auditorium.
The ZSC Lions have been crowned champions of the Swiss National Hockey League after defeating rivals Lausanne HC in front of a home crowd at the Swiss Life Arena.
Caruso St John have previously collaborated with the artist Rachel Whiteread, together with Marcus Taylor, on proposals for the Holocaust Memorial in Victoria Park Gardens.
Recently, Rachel Whiteread made a cast in concrete of the steel staircase designed by the practice at the Gagosian Gallery, Kings Cross. The gallery in Kings Cross opened in 2004, and closed last year after moving to Mayfair.
Royale Belge has won plaudits at the annual MIPIM real estate fair in Cannes. The project was shortlisted in two categories at the MIPIM Awards, Best Conversion and Best Mixed-use, and triumphed in both.