Press - Jamie Fobert Architects

Jamie contributes to Pamela Buxton’s article on how the Covid-19 pandemic has influenced and may affect museums and galleries, as they begin to open their doors once more to visitors. Topics from safety to funding and sustainability are discussed, along with some possible changes we can expect to see put in place moving forward.

Jamie comments that “The one positive thing that might happen is that when they [galleries and museums] do come back, people will appreciate the experience they offer all the more.”

Read the full article in The RIBA Journal.

Jamie recalls fond memories of visiting Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute in San Diego for the first time, when discussing buildings that we will look forward to seeing again after the coronavirus pandemic.

‘With its extraordinary setting and views, as well as its immense physical form, is the most powerful reminder of the importance of the direct encounter’.

Read Amanda Baillieu’s full article on Dezeen here.

The Globe and Mail, Canada’s foremost newspaper, has published a feature about Jamie.

Writer Katherine Ashenburg met with Jamie in our Shoreditch studio to learn about our projects, focusing on significant gallery projects for Kettle’s Yard, Tate St Ives and the National Portrait Gallery. She tells the story of Jamie’s journey from being a young student in Canada to an established architect in London:

“The lessons we learned in first year,” Fobert says, “are still some of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned: that
architecture should be unpretentious and it should be humane and it should be about the users and about improving their existence and their lives in ways that were beautiful.”

Photograph ©Justin Griffiths-Williams/The Globe and Mail

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Jamie sat down with Nick Carvell, Editor of The Jackal, as part of the magazine’s Citymakers portfolio to discuss architecture in the city, including the proposed new public space at the National Portrait Gallery:

“Public space is an integral part of what makes a city great – or not. Many of these places already exist, but what is important is how they are handled, how inviting they are, how open they are to having events, or to having people sit.”

This article is out now in the latest edition of The Jackal Magazine or you can listen to their conversation on the podcast by clicking here.

We are delighted that Jamie Fobert Architects is shortlisted alongside five other practices in the Public Building category of the BD Architect of the Year Awards 2019.

Our submission included three completed public gallery projects – Tate St Ives, Kettle’s Yard and Charleston – and our reconfiguration of the National Portrait Gallery, which is currently in the design process.

Read more about all the shortlisted practices and their work here.

In the February issue of ICON magazine, in partnership with Arper, Jamie is interviewed by Priya Khanchandani about weaving ‘finely crafted buildings into the awkward, hidden folds of our urban fabric’.

Portrait by Carl Russ-Mohl.

Ahead of this weeks announcement for Art Fund’s Museum of the Year, The Art Newspaper explores Tate’s connection to the community in St Ives.

Ben Luke describes how “..the extension to the Tate’s westernmost outpost has been welcomed and is now enabling the gallery to reach its full potential”.

Photography by Marc Atkins for the Art Fund.

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.