The Brilliance of British Architecture and Design

During these three one-hour talks we will examine the best of British architecture and design from a non-technical perspective with an emphasis on British talent. Ian Swankie will take us on a journey around some of the finest buildings and will introduce us to the talented people who designed them.

Lecture 1 - The Gleaming Spires of London from 1066 to 2066

London boasts an extraordinary range of architecture and this talk reveals the evolution of the capital through its prominent buildings. We start by examining London’s architecture following the Norman Conquest and then explore the way it has developed over the centuries right up to the present day.

Whether we like it or not, the skyline of London is changing with the construction of hundreds of new buildings over 20 floors high including dozens twice this height. This talk looks at the best of these buildings including the cutting-edge designs of the recent towers such as the Shard, the Walkie-Talkie, Twenty-two Bishopsgate, and the Cheesegrater. We discover their extraordinary architectural and engineering challenges but also examine the controversies and difficult social decisions needed to manage this dramatically changing skyline which will be around for future generations.

Lecture 2 - The Brilliance of Thomas Heatherwick – a Modern Leonardo.

The past few years have seen the meteoric rise of this extraordinarily versatile British designer with his acclaimed Olympic Cauldron, the iconic new London bus and designs for some spectacular high- profile buildings in the UK and overseas. Over the last twenty years the Heatherwick Studio has used an intriguing combination of curiosity and experimentation to produce a vast range of solutions to design challenges around the world. This talk looks at the problems presented, and the wonderfully creative ways in which Heatherwick and his team have responded in designing everything from handbags and furniture to universities and entire towns.

Lecture 3 - The Classical Re-invented – the legacy of Sir Christopher Wren

In this talk we wind the clock back to the seventeenth century and enjoy an armchair tour of some of Wren’s magnificent structures including City Churches, the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich and of course, his greatest masterpiece St Paul’s Cathedral. Wren was primarily a mathematician and astronomer and we’ll see how these disciplines are harnessed in his work. His love of the classical order is everywhere to be seen in his legacy.

Ian Swankie

Ian Swankie is a Londoner with a contagious enthusiasm for art and architecture. He is an official guide at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Guildhall Art Gallery and St Paul’s Cathedral. He is also a freelance London tour guide. Since 2012 he has led a popular weekly independent art lecture group in his hometown of Richmond in West London. He is an accredited lecturer for The Arts Society, and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars, one of the City Livery Companies.

Ian is a highly sought after Arts Society lecturer and someone who is very popular with our Society.

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Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797) is celebrated as the first professional British painter to capture the spirit of the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment

3 Lectures, lunch etc  £39pp

Lecturer:  Clare Ford-Wille

Image:  Own image Joseph Wright's "Philosopher lecturing on the Orrery"

The Medici were in many ways an unattractive family. Ruthless in pursuit of profit for their Florentine bank, which had branches in every city of the known world, they were greedy for success, merciless to those who opposed their ambition and vicious in their own internal squabbles. And yet without them we wouldn’t have Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus”, the Fra Angelico frescoes in San Marco, Donatello’s “David” or the majestic Michelangelo sculptures in the Medici chapel. The Platonic Academy wouldn’t have been founded and the doors for the Baptistry would never have been cast. This lecture looks into the turbulent history of this extraordinary family. The triumphs and tragedies, the intrigues and plots; the assassination attempts, the years of exile and their perpetual desire to glorify the family name in works of art, which was to result in some of the greatest achievements of the Italian Renaissance.

About the Lecturer:  Douglas Skeggs

Douglas read Fine Art at Magdalene College Cambridge and has been a lecturer on paintings since 1980. In that time he has given over 8000 lectures to universities, colleges and art societies. He was the director of The New Academy of Art Studies for three years and is presently a regular lecturer at The Study Center, Christie's course 'The History of Art Studies' and other London courses. Among his more improbable venues for lectures are the bar on the QE2, MI5 headquarters, the Captain's Room at Lloyds, and an aircraft hanger in a German NATO base. Overseas he has lectured in Belgium, France, Germany and Spain, and has taken numerous tours around Europe. He has written and presented various TV documentaries, notably the Omnibus programme on Whistler and the exhibition video on William Morris. Three one-man exhibitions of his paintings have been held in England and Switzerland. He has published five novels, which have been translated into 8 foreign languages, and his book on Monet, River of Light, has sold 30,000 copies in England, America and France.

3 Lectures, coffee & lunch  £39 pp

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