In spite of having been to Cambridge several times since 2008 when the Accordia new housing development won the Stirling Prize, I have never previously made the effort to visit it, although I now realise that it’s within walking distance of the railway station, just south of Brooklands Avenue. It’s pretty impressive – on a big scale, quite varied, keeping existing trees, very slightly eerily quiet, with hundreds of bicycles which people don’t appear to lock up, which says something about their sense of security, and limited access by cars. Actually, quite utopian. It shows that contemporary architects are perfectly capable of producing good quality, well designed housing, providing there is a good site, old trees and lots of money, so it may not be such a good model. Simon Bradley compares it to Dutch models, but this is probably because there is so little good housing in the UK, owing to the dominance of commercial volume builders. Most of it is by Feilden Clegg Bradley, but some also by Alison Brooks, including the Brass Building, to create a sense of variety:-

The next stop on my whistlestop tour of new buildings in Cambridge was to see the new Walters and Cohen building at Newnham.

Newnham itself has a good track record of buildings, starting with the wonderful set of buildings and gardens, laid out by Basil Champneys in best Queen Anne Revival style:-

The Walters and Cohen building follows the brick idiom with tact and opens the college up to the street, so that it feels a touch more connected to the world and less of a retreat (it’s the building in the distance):-

I have been neglecting my blog – poleaxed by the war in Ukraine and its consequences, about which it is hard to say anything without sounding trite, although this hasn’t prevented the Prime Minster trying.

We went yesterday to the exhibition at the Whitechapel on Artists’ Studios, a long-standing project which I think we considered at the RA: it’s a very nice, thoughtful, wide-ranging exhibition, so full of interesting material, lots of fascinating photographs, mixing photography and artwork successfully.

This was from Matisse’s house, but presumably not his studio:-

The garden is erupting – in some cases, literally. I don’t remember ever seeing a Chinese variant of a rhubarb plant in our back yard, which looks as if it is producing red-painted Easter eggs:-

I have been told that Amazon doesn’t ship to Paris.

This enables me to say that the publisher, Lund Humphries, is also taking pre-orders and I’m hoping they can, although Brexit may of course have made this, like so much else, impossible.

https://www.lundhumphries.com/products/john-wonnacott

My book about John Wonnacott is now available to pre-order. Instead of a conventional book launch on Monday 5th. September, I’m planning to show a small number of his recent paintings in our house in Stepney, including the Self-Portrait on the cover of the book. I’ve tried to get public galleries interested, but it’s an uphill struggle for an older generation painter – although the Focus Gallery in Southend did him proud a couple of years ago.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/John-Wonnacott-Charles-Saumarez-Smith/dp/1848225911/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=85&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=4&__mk_en_GB=%C3%85M%C3%85Z%C3%95%C3%91&qid=1647591820&refinements=p_27%3ASaumarez+Smith&s=books&sr=1-7&unfiltered=1

Last time, I passed the Jerusalem Tavern, it looked as if it was closing, so was pleased to see this afternoon that it is still extant under a different trading name, with its very atmospheric interiors:-

I was slightly surprised to see a man standing inside a clock at Paddington Station, even more so when I realised that he was painting on the time which could be a full-time job:-

I am re-posting the article on the front of the FT”s Life and Arts section a) because it’s free to read and b) because I found it a helpful and historically well-informed account as to why Putin has acted as he has, which otherwise is nearly impossible to comprehend. It helps make sense of the long history behind his actions, not that he is just bonkers.

https://on.ft.com/3i3pFWQ

We ate our sandwiches in front of the amazing gates to Chirk Castle – a tour-de-force of cast and wrought ironwork by the Davies brothers who lived locally and produced the gates originally for the entrance forecourt to the Castle. Quite something;-