Press - Jamie Fobert Architects

Jamie sat down with Robert Bevan of the Evening Standard to discuss being appointed to transform the National Portrait Gallery, how he started his career in architecture, his affinity for art and the links between Tate St Ives, Kettle’s Yard and Charleston.

Robert described Jamie as the “go-to man for cool, clever museum extensions — and the National Portrait Gallery is next”.

Read the full article in the Evening Standard.

Gillian Darley eloquently writes for Frieze Magazine of our careful changes, thoughtful details and observant touches at the new Kettle’s Yard, which opened to the public on Saturday 10 February.

“the transformation has been achieved, seemingly, by sleight of hand. Jamie Fobert Architects inserted a set of entirely new buildings which, until you set off for a room in the four-storey education centre or press on past the entrance area towards the pair of full height white-walled exhibition galleries, you scarcely suspect are there at all. The effect is the result of adherence to a palette of materials and forms that spill over and bond the old extension and the new front of house”.

Read Gillian’s full review in Frieze.

With less than a month until the re-opening, the Kettle’s Yard team is busy preparing the new galleries for the inaugural exhibition, ‘Actions: the image of the world can be different’.

We have reconfigured and extended the existing building to comprise a new entrance and welcome area, two new galleries, a new education wing which includes two learning spaces, a cafe and a shop. The spaces and facilities of Kettles Yard have been vastly improved and yet the particular character of the place, created by curator and collector Jim Ede, is retained.

Our excitement for the re-opening of this much-loved Cambridge gallery is shared by The Art Newspaper, Frieze Magazine Archiboo, and The Times, all of whom have included the event in their previews for 2018.

As 2017 draws to a close, magazines and newspapers are looking back at the highs and lows of the year and we are delighted that Tate St Ives is being remembered as one of the highlights by so many:

In the Guardian, Oliver Wainwright describes his ‘top 10 architecture events’

In the Observer, Rowan Moore lists his ‘5 best buildings’

Dezeen gives a roundup of the ’10 best museum and gallery buildings’

The Art Newspaper reviews the highs and lows of 2017

In The Times, Jonathan Morrison lists his ’10 best buildings of 2017′

Jamie chatted to Monocle 24 Radio about everyday life in our Shoreditch studio, about how his nine years working for David Chipperfield was a formative part of his education as an architect, and his intuitive approach to design.

Listen here

The Art Newspaper announced today that Kettle’s Yard will be reopening their doors on 10 February 2018, with the exhibition ‘Actions: the Image of the World Can Be Different’.

Our work at Kettle’s Yard is a series of gentle additions to improve visitors’ experience, which will include two new exhibition spaces, an education wing, café, shop and new welcome area.

Learn more about our work at Kettle’s Yard.

Rowan Moore describes our new gallery for Tate St Ives as “not any old exhibition space but one that contains about as much intelligence, strength of mind and sensitivity as it is possible to put into a single plain rectangle. It is only a room, as Cézanne didn’t exactly say of Monet, but what a room”.

Read The New Tate St Ives review by Rowan Moore in The Observer.

Architecture critic Ellis Woodman writes that our new Tate St Ives gallery “ranks among the most beautiful galleries in the country”.

Read Ellis Woodman’s review in The Telegraph.

Oliver Wainwright describes our new gallery as a ‘stunning space’ and examines some of the wider issues in the story of the building.

Read Oliver Wainwright’s review in The Guardian.

En Liang Khong describes the changing light in our recently completed Tate St Ives gallery. He writes that even on a cloudy day, sunnier intervals “transform the space, with light pooling and gently hanging in the centre”.

Read En Liang Khong’s full article ‘When The Light Shifts’ on Frieze.com

Filmaker, Tapio Snellman, has elegantly captured in video our recently completed house Camino de Playa which has been featured online by Wallpaper*.

Visit Wallpaper* to watch Tapio’s video or read more on Camino De Playa here on our website.

There has been a flurry of press today announcing the new Tate St Ives!

Ellis Woodman in The Telegraph described it as ‘ranked among the most beautiful galleries in the country’.

In The Times, Jonathan Morrison writes: ‘St Ives has always been famous for its magical light, and Fobert and his chambers have captured it and refined it, producing a limpid, cool radiance, as calming as an Arctic summer. It spreads evenly and softly across all the walls, and may just turn this new exhibition space into a world-beater.’

In The AJ, Rob Wilson presents a selection of our drawings and design material to describe the building.

Oliver Wainwright in The Guardian describes our new gallery as a ‘stunning space’ and examines some of the wider issues in the story of the building.

Photography by Dennis Gilbert.

Jamie was invited by Wallpaper* to design a one-off ‘offertory bag’ with leather specialists Studioart for the annual Wallpaper* Handmade exhibition, launched at Salone del Mobile 2017.

“While researching offertory bags I came across many historic examples that were both deep and lined in richly tactile material, like luxuriant velvet. I interpreted this as an attempt by the church to endow the act of almsgiving with a brief moment of pleasure. I began to imagine a bag where the act of reaching inside became a sensory journey. Three iterations of the offertory bag were created: one with a tough, black outside and a soft, warm interior; one with a mild, malleabale outside and a prickly interior; and one with a natural, hairy outside and a slick, cool interior”.

Jamie’s ‘Dig Deep’ bags and concept sketches are featured in this month’s Wallpaper* Magazine.

Jamie and partner Dominique have opened up their getaway home in Galicia, Northern Spain, to Caroline Roux for a feature in Wallpaper’s July 2017 design special.

Entitled ‘Stone Love’, the article takes the reader through the twelve year development story of what was once a long-abandoned house now stunningly transformed. Roux writes ‘It’s so beautifully embedded in the landscape, you’d hardly know it’s there’.

To read the full article visit Wallpaper or read more on Camino de Playa here on our website.

BD has published a technical study of the Tate St Ives extension. The piece discusses the importance of light, construction challenges and how landscaping and locally sourced granite have been used to integrate the extension into the Cornish coastline.

“Jamie Fobert’s discreet subterranean gallery extension has calmed locals’ concerns about the impact on the town’s skyline and reflects in its design all the elements that make St Ives special”.

Written by Thomas Lane, BD Online. 26 May 2017.

Yesterday, Tate hosted a press launch to announce that the new Tate St Ives will be opening to the public on 14 October 2017, with double the existing exhibition space. With great excitement, curators revealed that the first exhibition in JFA’s new gallery will be a solo show by artist Rebecca Warren.

Jamie and project architect Matthew Whittaker shared our design with the gathered press. Dezeen gives a descriptive account of how we are channelling St Ives’ beautiful light into our submerged gallery.

Recently opened Fondaco dei Tedeschi, in Venice, is featured in the October edition of Wallpaper magazine. Ellie Stathaki writes that ‘the Fondaco baton’ was passed over to Jamie Fobert Architects to create the internal retail vision.

“The architect [Jamie] drew inspiration from all things Venetian to create a contemporary space full of bespoke elements, from shelving to display cases.”

Daven Wu’s online version is still available to read on Wallpaper’s website.

In an enlightening piece published in Domus, the design, fabrication and installation of our travertine stair is examined alongside a museum intervention in Milan by Massimo Curzi.

The scale and elegance of our carefully crafted stair “takes the London house towards the status of a house-museum”, writes Manolo Giorgi. He describes how, “as though it were a single, living organism, this mass of travertine shows its sculpted underbelly in a perfect continuation of the floor.”

Domus. June 2016. #1003.

With construction work currently progressing well in St Ives, our designs for this major gallery extension are featured in the current issue of Domus:

“His long-term frequentation and collaboration with artists constitutes the solid basis upon which Jamie Fobert founded his project for a prestigious British institution, a building that shows his compositional skill and sensitivity to the character of the site’s surroundings.”

Domus. July/August 2015. #993.

Our new floor for the 220m-long Burlington Arcade, adjacent to the Royal Academy on Piccadilly, London, is now complete. Comprising four British stones – Moorcroft, Ashburton, Mendip Marble and Burlington Slate – cut into thousands of intricate pieces, the new floor takes its design cues from the geometry of the arcade itself as well as several neoclassical British floor patterns. It is a practical, accessible and beautiful addition to this historic shopping arcade.

Read Wallpaper*s impressions of the new floor.

Visit The Burlington Arcade.