Bibliothèque Nationale de Luxembourg Bolles and Wilson
As a student of architecture in the 1970s, I remember being astonished by a set of design competition drawings with amazing atmospherics, seductive material sensibilities, and a sense of programmatic mystery and uncanny juxtapositions. The images were all the more impactful as they were the work of a student architect – an Australian studying in London at the Architectural Association: the young Peter Wilson. Here was an unmistakable talent.
The images were for Water House (1976), which remains a refreshingly provocative and alluring project. In some ways, it provides the initiating bookend to an increasingly expansive portfolio that defines the German–Australian practice that is Bolles and Wilson. I describe these drawings and design as a “bookend” not just on the basis of chronology, but also because the role of the drawing, the hand sketch, the impressionistic view, has remained ever-present in the work
