John Glew

Background

About John Glew

Set up John Glew Architect in having previously worked with Wilfried Wang, Trevor Horne and Dixon-Jones and collaborated with Tony Fretton. He has taught, lectured and exhibited in the UK, Scandinavia and the USA, including at the Royal College of Art, the Architectural Association and the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts where he was Visiting Professor in 1995 and 2001. In 1983 he was awarded the Eileen Gray Travel Scholarship to the USA and in 2007 he was awarded the Statenskunstfund –The Danish National Arts Award– in recognition of his contributions to architecture and culture inDenmark. His work, including articles by Tony Fretton, Mark Pimlott, James Payne, Kjeld Vindum and Thomas Bo-Jensen, has been published internationally. John Glew’s architecture, Design and teaching is informed by observation and an interest in specific responses to our surroundings. His practice is broad-based, ranging from specific design to cultural buildings, landscape and residential projects, including work for the London Director of the Gagosian Gallery and the Chief Curator of the Whitney Museum NYC, Anthony D’Offay, the UNESCO World Heritage Site Parco di Cilento, Jasper Morrison, and Leeds Grand Theatre. A specific interest is in the small unsettling, habitual perceptions, which render foreign the familiar, making visible that which has become invisible due to everyday use and absorption in our subconscious. This new-found strangeness begs our examination and thus allows us to see the similarities between dissimilar things. The result of this close examination can often be a heightened awareness of our surroundings. The way things look, in the broadest sense their appearance, is a result of the conditions of their making and this is recognised and enjoyed in all of the work. Its sparse aesthetic lies beyond mere function where limitation is employed as a form of invention, spurring creativity from the recognisable elements of the world around us.