‘House on a Hill’ by @officedka has just been reviewed by @lucywwatson for @ft_houseandhome whose headline is ‘Edwardian’! It was certainly one of the strangest shoots of last year, photographed on one of those rare Saturdays in summer when London seems empty. It’s a new-build house built upon another building, and, while replete with architectural references it’s one of the most immediately lovely of his projects.
It was a great pleasure to be invited to attend the launch event of Thames & Hudson's new book 'The Art of the Book: 75 years of Thames & Hudson'. It was even more flattering to find a double page spread on me in it.
Swiftly casting aside the necessary passage of time I'm posting some photos from those fantastic early projects which started me in my career.
1 - 'Albi Cathedral' from 'Brick, A World History' (with text by James W.P. Campbell) which was an attempt to describe the oppressive scale of this cathedral/citadel built as part of the surpression of the Cathar heresy and begun after the Albigensian Crusade in 1282
2 - 'The Ark, Bukhara' also from 'Brick, A World History' was a structure we happened upon rather than went to find. We were in Bukhara to shoot what is, in my view, the world's best brick building, the 'Tomb of the Saminids' the tiny 10th century mausoleum which is such an exquisite piece of design that no photograph does it justice.
3 - The Fairbanks House, Mass. The oldest wooden building
3 - Staff leaving Airbus's Jean-Luc Lagardere Building after working on a380's from "Big Shed' (2007). Sadly it's churning out a321neo's now.
4 - Lufthansa Technik Building at Munich Airport also from 'Big Shed' (2007)
'Shard Place 'by Renzo Piano Building Workshop Part 2 (2025)
This building completes Shard Quarter consisting of The Shard, The News Building and now Shard Place. It's entirely high-end residential with the usual accoutrements: 24/7 conceirge, a gym and a pool on the roof.
📷 @willpryce (a mixture of architecture, drone and helicopter photography)
@shardplacelondon@rpbw_architects #willprycephotography #theshardlondon #theshardview #shardplace
A slight aside here... but why is it that so many people hate Venice?
A client has just visited Venice, I think for the first time, and I find I'm anxious as at some point I'm going to have to find out what she thought as Venice, for one of the most extraordinary places on earth, gets some pretty mixed reviews.
I once asked an American friend what the highlight of his epic European holiday had been and his instant response was "I never have to go back to Venice!"
On another occasion I spent a lovely evening out in Hanoi with a group of clients and an engineer I had just met. I liked the engineer immediately and felt we were getting on famously until the subject of Suzhou came up. We both knew the city and someone brought up that old saying that "Suzhou is the Venice of China". The engineer and I looked at each other and grinned. I started what I assumed would be the mutual condescension: "Well they say that about a lot of places..." and then the engineer chipped in: "and Venice...talk about over-rated!".
I felt like he'd just slapped me across the face.
There is an irritating character in a Nick Hornby novel who carps on about things that are 'over-rated' memorably including, in a long list: "...Homer, Homer Simpson..." The most egregious, to the narrator at least, is Maurice Greene, then the fastest-man-in-the-world. For how can the fastest-man-in-the-world be 'over-rated' ?
That is how I feel about Venice. If you go in the height of August and the place is heaving, the canals smell and you find yourself getting seriously ripped off then might I suggest you avoid the area around St Mark's Square entirely. It's not mandatory. Walk in any direction as far away from it as you can, get on a water-bus maybe, to anywhere that is quiet, which even in August, is the vast majority of the city and then
LOOK AROUND YOU!
📷 Will Pryce - 'World Architecture, The Masterworks' (Thames & Hudson)
I can't figure out how people find the time to post. I'm running about a year behind (sorry)....
'Shard Place 'by Renzo Piano Building Workshop Part 1 (2025)
This building completes Shard Quarter consisting of The Shard, The News Building and now Shard Place. It's entirely high-end residential with the usual accoutrements: 24/7 conceirge, a gym and a pool on the roof.
📷 @willpryce (a mixture of architecture, drone and helicopter photography)
@shardplacelondon@rpbw_architects #willprycephotography #theshardlondon #theshardview #shardplace
The House of Commons - this year marks 75 years since it was rebuilt following its destruction during the Blitz in 1941
A gloriously understated design by Giles Gilbert Scott that serves as a foil to the much grander House of Lords that survived the Blitz intact and sits on axis with it
📸 Will Pryce
Can’t help but notice Jenna Ortega is running up and down this rather wonderful staircase in Wednesday Season 2
It’s from Charleville Castle an extraordinary neo-Gothick number in County Offaly near Tullamore. All very…err…Alice in Wonderland-esque.
It’s in need of constant financial support and when I shot there they were eagerly awaiting producers from Games of Thrones coming to take a look. No joy with GoT but Tim Burton seems the perfect match
📸 Will Pryce
#charlevillecastle #wednesdayseason2 #timburton
Huge congratulations to my client Lord Chris Smith on his elevation to Chancellor of The University of Cambridge. I shot this book for him last year and he was utterly delightful. He was then Master of Pembroke College where he was seemingly known throughout the college as simply ‘Chris’
It’s worth another quick look at some of the details in the Gradel Quadrangles by David Kohn Architects not least the artwork of the new gates by sculptor Eva Rothschild, the sculpture of the college’s founder William of Wickham (by Fergus Wessel) that can be found just inside the gates (on the left hand side) and Wessel’s gargoyles along the roofline
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📸 @willpryce
