Skip to main content

Pattern Place Purpose

Pattern Place Purpose

Pattern Place Purpose, a new book showcasing the practice, is available online.

Pattern Place Purpose explores the practice's work through four thought-provoking essays by Peter Blundell Jones, Alan Powers, Jeremy Till and Matthew Wells. It also showcases some of their most innovative projects through drawings, plans and photographs.

In his essay Englishness and Modern Architecture, Alan Powers describes Proctor and Matthews' "attractive modesty" and "unpretentious care" that has quietly transformed approaches to housing - whether for people or primates. Jeremy Till's essay The Selfless Plan compares the "tendency in current architecture towards visual excess" with Proctor and Matthews' quieter approach, describing them as "masters of the soft plan".

Featured buildings include the pioneering low-energy Greenwich Millennium Village, described by the Financial Times as "a blueprint of a new approach to high-density housing"; Gorilla Kingdom, the most significant new building at London Zoo for 40 years; and their major mixed-use regeneration project featuring a new civic square for central Hastings

Paul Finch says "If you're looking for a good architectural book for Christmas this is it - whatever your region or nation."

Satwinder Samra says "This monograph offers a thoughtful and investigative trace through the practice's influences, agendas and outputs."