The reason for coming to Vicenza was to see the large exhibition about the work of David Chipperfield, held upstairs in the Basilica Palladiana, full of wooden models, which are used very much by the office during the work, and outline formal diagrams, stripped of context and detail, in order to demonstrate his deep interest in modelling and formal geometry.
It includes a great number of projects I didn’t know about: a big private house in Cherwell (2006-2018); Lah Contemporary, a private museum in Bled, complete with multiple working drawings and sketches:-
Ingawa Cemetery chapel, done for Hide Osawa and opened last year.
His amazing project for a grand new elliptical, neoclassical concert hall in Edinburgh New Town:-
The James Simon Gallery, due to open later this year and programmatic in the way that it refers to Schinkel (it also takes pride of place in the Biennale):-
Also, the work he does for fashion stores – Brioni in the Rue Saint-Honoré and Madison Avenue and Valentino.
I very nearly missed the section devoted to the RA, which is represented by beautiful, detailed drawings (I have never previously seen these), and a wooden model:-
And the Lecture Theatre in immaculate styrofoam:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
David Chipperfield has always been hugely admired in Europe. In those years in the 1980s and early 1990s, when he scarcely got a commission in the UK, apart from the River and Rowing Museum, he was commissioned in Europe. Other architects here admired and valued him (Richard Rogers always said, when we were working on A NEW LONDON in 1990, ” David is the one you should study – he’s the best architect of our generation” ) but the architectural press generally ignored him, with one or two exceptions. Even today the British press do not cover his European work, like this).