Hawksmoor restaurant off Regents Street

Hawksmoor Air Street                                                  Windows by Ray Bradley

At the end of March we were contacted by the interior architects and designers Macaulay Sinclair, “With regards to a restaurant project we are currently undertaking in London.”

Having then discovered, at an initial site meeting with clients and designers, that it was to be a significant 10-window project (9 overlooking London’s Regent Street) in a listed grade II property opposite the refurbished Café Royal, it seemed promising!

The Regent Street building (circa 1927), with its long first floor space chosen to be the fourth and largest of the Hawksmoor Restaurants to date, was to follow their established design ethic reflecting the context of the host architectural period with a general practice to draw much of the fabric to be used from architectural reclamation. Glass was one area where this would have been extremely difficult, especially trying to fill ten arched windows with a 2m radius of a particular genre. This was also the first of their restaurants with windows!

The initial request from client and designers was therefore inevitable, with suggestions made to base designs on existing Art Deco examples to achieve a memorable interior ambience similar to other situations around the world. It was also considered necessary as a means to visually modify the considerable distraction of the Regent Street activity. Fortunately after an initial ‘trial’ along those lines it was agreed that it would be a more honest option to allow us to create an original solution, to recreate in context rather than emulate.

The design development therefore came, not only through references to core architectural and design elements of the period, but also referenced some previous works with my use of geometrics.

Stairway stained glass windows in private residences, Bradley.Basso Llp

The more recent Knightsbridge example having been one of those seen on our website, which led to our original meeting with the clients. Drawing from these examples as well as historical references helped the design process to adopt a more personal character.

Although I missed the actual period by quite a few years! a temporarily ‘assumed provenance’ helped me develop the design, with subtle variations through the 10 windows, to attempt to create a parallel to previous iconic restaurant installations.

With the request to maintain a ‘modified’ visual connection to Regent Street, whilst minimising the loss of light, a combination of acid etched float glass panels in tandem with leaded panels was the choice agreed. Set into an integrally designed bronze framework with a particular choice of the textural light diffusing qualities, the choice of glass to be used was selected on site in relation to the variable light transmission at different times of day and night and also for its affect on the high activity of the Regent Street backdrop.

(Hawksmoor Window images here?)

In practice the combination has worked almost better than anticipated, the movement of people and traffic beyond being experienced as an animation of the visually fragmented glass surface.  At night with the added benefit of floodlighting to opposite buildings, together with the moving lights of traffic, the windows provide a glowing almost kinetic lightshow, as the glass qualities become intensified.

For the restaurant, which officially opened on 1 November, the reviews were glowing too! Why not try the gastronomy and see the windows for real!

Entrance windows here by Bradley.Basso.

Menu and booking – http://thehawksmoor.com

THE BRADLEY + BASSO EASA TALK : EASA conference 2012 PDF

Background: This article is based on one of the talks at the EASA Spring Meeting

Bradley Basso is an architectural glass and mosaic art and design partnership, formed in 2004 between Ray Bradley and Denise mt Basso.

Artist’s Profiles

As a student at Wimbledon School of Art, Ray Bradley specialised in stained glass for his National Diploma in Design in 1955-56. The deciding influence on his future was a visit to the V&A exhibition ‘Windows for Coventry’ in 1956, which displayed some of the Royal College of Art nave windows, prior to their installation into the new Cathedral designed by Basil Spence and consecrated in 1962.

Gaining entrance to the RCA in 1959, Ray studied under Lawrence Lee and Keith New, two of the artists responsible for those windows at Coventry.  During his three years there, among the notable contemporaries of that landmark period, he also independently visited Patrick Reyntiens and John Piper in their studios, while they were collaborating on the baptistry window for Coventry.

Having set up his own studio in West London by 1964, most of his subsequent work has been created for secular buildings.  His most notable early religious commission came in 1965 when his RCA architectural tutor Donald Insall invited him to create two 21 ft inclined Sanctuary windows for his award winning extension to St Peter’s Church in Thundersley, Essex.  Then in 1972 he was commissioned by Maxwell Fry to design six memorial inscription windows to the exit ambulatory of his new West Chapel at Breakspear Crematorium, Ruislip.   Gradually over the succeeding years there followed some significant works for the Church in this country and overseas.

His developing knowledge of glass techniques enabled him to work on a wide spectrum of private and public projects, and also led to his appointment as visiting glass tutor to various colleges; most recently Chelsea College of Art & Design (1993-2003).  In 2000, while scanning through a student sketchbook, his interest was drawn to the work of Denise mt Basso, an Italian mature student who had applied to Chelsea because of the glass content and facilities within the course.  By 2003 she had achieved national glass competition awards in each of her three years and been awarded a 1st Class degree.  A working empathy developed, and Ray asked her if she would consider forming a partnership “to work with me, not for me”.  Bradley.Basso was formed in 2004.

An AHRC award enabled Denise to study part time at the University of East London whilst continuing in the partnership, and resulted in an MA in Fine Art with Architecture.  Since then there have been some significant, mutually supportive commissions, developed independently or as a duo, and Denise has patiently been introducing Ray to the technology of the 21st century!

For more information see their website www.bradleybasso.com: images of the St James’ Priory project appear in ‘Portfolio/Architectural Glass Art’ under the title ‘Fragments of Lives’.  To complement this article a self explanatory sequence of images from their EASA talk can also be found in ‘More’.

The St James’ Priory Project

The partnership received an initial approach via their website in July 2009 from Corinne Fitzpatrick of Ferguson Mann Architects, Bristol, for a potential glass installation at St James’ Priory.  A shortlist of artists was invited to meet the clients and architects, and Bradley.Basso was selected.

The commission was unusual in being for the St James’ Priory Project, the private client within a Grade 1 listed church renovation, so communications with architect and client could be more direct than the usual church commissioning process.  This gave Bradley.Basso more freedom to develop subjective responses to the physical and spiritual context of the architecture and to the aims of the Priory Project, in their endeavour to create a relevant installation in glass.  The final concept was created primarily by Denise as a sequential series of six panels down the north aisle, which culminates in an arched screen at the east end.

In terms of the re-ordering of the building, the six panels essentially form two large glass screens with doorways, which separate the former Victorian north aisle, now remodelled as meeting or function areas, from the main body of the Priory Church.  They have the dual function of creating a significant architectural feature along the north side, which establishes visual separation of the two areas whilst allowing light to penetrate from the aisle windows.  The arched screen separates off the new Priory café beyond.

The Design Concept – Denise mt Basso

My personal and creative growth and my works of art are undoubtedly linked by an umbilical cord.  The final outcome is not known at the beginning, it is born from the place and its people – even starting growth long before the commissioning date.  St James’ Priory was one of those very special commissions that triggered my innermost instinctive and creative responses.  That is why I decided to share my creative process, following on from the EASA Meeting, to explain where my ideas come from and how they develop.

The duality of past and present and their interrelation defines the concept and the aesthetics of the art installation: the historical ‘Blackletter’ typefaces versus the contemporary look of acid etching; the aesthetics and layout of the 1450 Gutenberg Bible manuscript versus new content.  Lapis Lazuli is traditionally used to portray the Mantle of Mary; the symbolic use of the blue glass fragments at the west end and their gradual reassembly towards the east end, suggests the old values offered by the Priory to its people for a contemporary time.

Architecturally, the design of the screens is intended to visually complement the simple Norman grandeur of the Priory.  Their boldness, forceful strength and weight are supported by columns of deep blasted and etched text, in a rhythmic crescendo towards the altar.  The texts use Textualis and Schwabacher blacklettering, whose vertical letter strokes and horizontal guidelines give the impression of a woven structure of light.

Like visual music, the crescendo grows dal niente, counterpointed by the weightlessness of the fragments, which are sewn together by Ariadne’s Thread.  The progress of time, which ceaselessly weaves past happenings and actions into our hodiernus dies (“the day of today”), is the same time line that takes us along the Via Crucis.  The apparent opposites of ‘fragmentation’ and ‘re-assembling’ visually and conceptually aim to explore man’s struggle towards wholeness: ‘the quality or state of being whole, entire, or sound’.  The aim of the Priory is to heal, repair and restore lives; to ‘rebuild’ them.  Threads of time connect the past with the present.

Layers of words, layers of thoughts, and layers of memory: we are what we are at this present time because of our past.  Our present is a wounded patchwork of memories and actions.

‘To destroy, to smash, to break, to wreck, to shatter, to demolish.’

‘To repair, to restore, to create, to build, to fix, to mend, to join, to assemble, to rebuild, to improve.’

I work with these actions.  These actions define my work.  Their significance for me in relating to the restoration of the building helped me to react more personally to the aims of the Priory Project and to conceive the design, which links 1129 to 2011 and fuses the secular and the ecclesiastical functions of the building.

The way this project was commissioned provided a unique freedom to do this, as well as the opportunity to be technically innovative and perhaps break new ground in a church project.  The work aims to enrich the Priory Church with powerful symbols relevant to the Priory Project, which draw upon the agonies and ecstasies of the Christian journey as a complement to the Stations of the Cross.  There is also a subtle reference to Bristol!

Photograph by Graham Wyles – www.studiogo.net

Opus Incertum is derived from an ancient Roman construction technique; using irregular shaped and random placed uncut stones inserted into a core of Opus caementicium (Roman cement).

Courtesy of Dagmar Friedrich, mosaic collaborator.

Opus Incertum is derived from an ancient Roman construction technique; using irregular shaped and random placed uncut stones inserted into a core of Opus caementicium (Roman cement).

Courtesy of Dagmar Friedrich, mosaic collaborator.

Opus Incertum is derived from an ancient Roman construction technique; using irregular shaped and random placed uncut stones inserted into a core of Opus caementicium (Roman cement).

Courtesy of Dagmar Friedrich, mosaic collaborator.

Opus Musivum is rather like ripples on a pond, with repeated rows of tesserae which spread out as a visual rhythm to fill a background to the edges of the mosaic area.

Courtesy of Dagmar Friedrich, mosaic collaborator.

Opus Regulatum, as the name suggests, is a very regular pattern of tesserae, like bricks in a wall, or squares on a chess board. With a subtle variation Opus Tessellatum describes rows of tesserae laid in regular horizontal or vertical lines, more generally referred when used in backgrounds.

Courtesy of Dagmar Friedrich, mosaic collaborator.

Opus Vermiculatum, refers to a single row or multiple rows of tesserae following the outline of a feature (such as a figure or other subject) in a mosaic, highlighting the subject and providing contrast against a background with tesserae laid in a different style.

Courtesy of Dagmar Friedrich, mosaic collaborator.

Opus, a creative piece of work in any field of the arts. In architecture, (from studies on the Romans) it refers to a technique, method or style of connecting building elements. Here in the sense of “artwork” the terms are used  as a way of describing the andamento, or flow of tesserae, or other features of mosaics, classifying the different styles of placement and juxtaposition.

Opus Vermiculatum, refers to a single row or multiple rows of tesserae following the outline of a feature (such as a figure or other subject) in a mosaic, highlighting the subject and providing contrast against a background with tesserae laid in a different style.

Opus Regulatum, as the name suggests, is a very regular pattern of tesserae, like bricks in a wall, or squares on a chess board. With a subtle variation Opus Tessellatum describes rows of tesserae laid in regular horizontal or vertical lines, more generally referred when used in backgrounds.