Acclaimed architects and design commentators reflect on the cities, eras, inventions and trends that have inspired them.
Neale Whitaker is the editor-in-chief of Belle
and associate publisher of ACP Magazines’ home and food group.
The precinct with the most notable examples of fine architecture… Any part of London with perfect early- or late-Georgian architecture: Bloomsbury, Islington, Clerkenwell, Spitalfields, Fournier Street. You can feel the centuries all around you.
We could do without... Much of the brutalist architecture that gripped the world – particularly Britain – in the late 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Ernö Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower in west London terrifies me. Brutalism works better under an Australian sky.
Most innovative designer… Jonathan Ive and Arne Jacobsen. If I were a pharaoh I’d ask to be buried with an iPod, iPhone and Egg chair.
Wish you’d designed… I think the iPod is one of the most significant designs of recent years. And I find Foster + Partners’ Gherkin in London magnificent.
Image: Egg
ChairSource: Qantas The Australian Way July 2009