“The influences from ancient stone architecture – and in particular those monumental spaces that exude power and depth and volume – have had a profound effect on how I think about create architecture. As with the perfect, sequential execution of martial arts movement, these master works are built around an interlocking succession of fundamental spatial figures. Courtyards, cloisters, porticos, platforms, verandas and gated thresholds combine to create enclosure and protection – what we might call privacy today. The elements that most drew me were features that engaged with public space – in domestic palaces, religious buildings and monuments. They were clearly more fluent with scale, landscape and their physical bodies than we are today. We seems to be less conscious of ourselves in space and how space can influence our feeling and emotions. There are, of course, easy parallels to draw within Asian philosophies in the martial arts – that Zen state of being: clarity, refinement, emptiness, the natural and intuitive. “

Tom Rowe