Caruso St John

Adam Caruso and Peter St. John, partners in the London firm Caruso St. John, insist on architectural history as a creative resource, and on embracing that resource rather than forsaking it for the rat-race Modernist pursuit of novelty: as St. John argues, "The new for its own sake seems to us both hopeless and pathetic. We prefer characterful ugliness to calculated perfection." Aiming for a "richly associative" architecture that draws on the nature of its materials, Caruso St. John embraces outside disciplines like art, design, literature and philosophy to enrich its practice--Claes Oldenburg´s 1960s work at the Storefront Gallery, for example. Almost Everything documents buildings and projects in Britain and Continental Europe since the early 1990s, and also assesses Caruso St. John´s philosophy. With contributions by Philip Ursprung, Thomas Demand, John Blockehurst and Jonathan Glancey, it is a thorough overview of one of Britain´s most independent-minded architectural firms.