Skene Catling de la Peña, London, England, United Kingdom
From Archiplanet
| Architecture Firm | Skene Catling de la Pena |
| People | Charlotte Skene Catling and Jaime de la Peña |
| Address | 44 Lexington Street |
| London, W1F 0LW England, United Kingdom | |
| Telephone | +44 (0)207 287 0771 |
| Fax | +44 (0)207 439 1932 |
| mail@scdlp.net | |
| Web Site | http://www.scdlp.net |
| AW Directory | ArchitectureWeek Directory Listing |
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Contents |
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Architecture, Design
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[edit] Firm Statement
In 2002 Charlotte Skene Catling and Jaime de la Peña formed Skene Catling de la Peña architects. Their work is design and research led and addresses the social, the sustainable and the sensual. The practice draws on their combined range of experience together with that of their international and multidisciplinary staff. This leads to rigorous explorations of ideas and possibilities at all scales from concept to detail. The results are often intuitive, narrative extrapolations of hardcore, rational foundations, or the ‘poetic’ expressions of an underlying scientific principle. Charlotte Skene Catling also runs a postgraduate architecture unit at the Royal College of Art, London, with architect Fernando Rihl.
The practice has won numerous awards. It was included among Wallpaper* Magazine’s ‘Top 50 Young Architects in the World’ 2008, and on The Daily Telegraph’s list of ‘Britain’s Top Notch Architects’, and has been extensively published internationally.
Skene Catling de la Peña has completed over seventy projects around the world, in cities including London, New York, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing and Doha. They are currently engaged with projects that range in scale from the ‘extra large’; city master-planning in the Middle East, and the ‘medium’, such as the renovation of an entire Georgian terraced block in London; to the ‘small’ and ‘very small’; boat building, furniture and graphic design. They have worked successfully in both urban and rural environments and have extensive experience with listed buildings through, for example, successfully completed projects at The Royal Exchange, London, and the Liberal Club, Manchester, both Grade I listed. They have a particular interest in sustainability, and innovation in this field.
The results of examining how people behave, and how spaces are really used, suggest design solutions from which an aesthetic naturally emerges. They believe successful architecture bridges the intellect and the senses, and that sight is too often privileged over the other senses when all are important in spatial experience.
Influences are taken from a range of other disciplines including the sciences, the fine arts, film and literature, and the final work emerges through their cross fertilization. The science of optics - the behaviour of light - is of particular interest. Equally interesting to them are the cognitive sciences – perception - or the process of understanding sensory information with the mind or senses. Finally, narrative is used as a bridge between these worlds, in the development of the brief and spatial programme, and ultimately experienced as an enriching layer in the built results.
