- guardian.co.uk, Sunday March 31 2002 02.01 BST
- The Observer, Sunday March 31 2002
When the British architect John Pawson showed three Cistercian monks around his west London home before starting work on a monastery in the Czech Republic, they were surprised by its austerity. But then Pawson, 52, the only architect who could apply the same aesthetic to a Calvin Klein store and a Trappist monastery, has been dubbed the father of minimalism. For him, architecture is about reduction: take away all unnecessary ornamentation until you are left with the essentials.
Pawson was born in Halifax, the son of Methodist parents. He was educated at Eton, and worked at the family's textile mill before travelling to Japan. When he returned, he studied at the Architectural Association and started his practice relatively late, in 1981. The house he shares with his wife, Catherine, and sons, Benedict and Caius, was completed in 1999 and is a working prototype. The whole family wrote their own brief. 'Ben wanted Chelsea FC wallpaper,' remembers Pawson. Caius wanted a bedroom with a locked door. Catherine wanted neither 'to spend more than we have, nor over-capitalise the property.' She also wanted a comfy sofa.
'I designed it to let the light in and get the views out and still retain some privacy,' he says. It's not so much empty as calm. The basement kitchen has a wall of glass leading to a mirror image in the back garden. The stairs are tall and narrow, giving an illusion of height, and the shower room has a glass ceiling. 'You can see and hear the weather,' he says. 'Ursa Major is just above the shower. On a clear night, you can see it.'
What gets people talking about Pawson's work is the lack of stuff. The buildings are stripped of distractions - to fill them with clutter would defeat the object. And Pawson has minimal living down to a fine art. That doesn't mean that he doesn't have any possessions. It's just that he builds storage that is apparently invisible. When people come to visit the house, they delight in opening the cupboards. Pawson pre-empts them by clearing the bathroom cabinet. 'People think I'm making some judgement about the way they're living,' he says. 'I'm not. It's not a hair-shirt thing.'
