Many architects like to say that they practise attention to detail. (As, you may say, they should.) Sometimes this statement is a form of faint self-praise, a signal not to expect too much more from their work, an excuse for being a bit dull. Not so with Adam Caruso and Peter St John. “We spend a lot of time on the detail,” says the latter. “That’s what we enjoy and that’s what we expect every project to have.” But their preoccupation is not dutiful. It’s what makes their projects zing. It makes the spaces they design richer and curiouser than they would otherwise be. If you experience a kind of heightened attention in their architecture, that’s because they put it there.
Their attitude has, over the past 34 years, made their practice, Caruso St John, one of the best of their generation. It has also led them to be somewhat estranged from the land where they set up their business, Britain, whose commercial culture is not always conducive to subtlety and care. “Developers are too powerful in this country,” says Caruso (who is Canadian), “and everything is deliberately upped in terms of crudity and brashness.” The duo, who have offices in London and Zurich, have thrived better in continental European nations – Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and France – where city planners use “proper competition systems” to raise the quality of architecture.
