by Haig Beck & Jackie Cooper
The giant architectural practices that set the pace today rarely have the capacity to devote their attention to a single house. This collection of six houses is the product of Denton Corker Marshall, an architectural practice that over the past 40 years has built on the largest scale across Asia, Australia and Europe. They have designed representational buildings such as embassies and law courts. They have built skyscrapers, conceived masterplans and created landmarks and landscapes. They have built museums, war memorials, convention centres, and hotels. Works such as the Manchester Civil Justice Centre, the Melbourne Museum and Embassies in Beijing, Tokyo and Jakarta demonstrate the practice’s significant contribution to the global architectural scene, but – as they say of themselves - from time to time they enjoy the opportunity to design houses. This monograph presents a collection of houses built for friends and colleagues, for people who work together, who share values and relationships and priorities. The houses display, as Deyan Sudjic writes in his introduction, a delicacy and precision that comes close to jewellery.
