Kathryn Findlay, Architect, British Building Photos, News, Scottish Design, Projects, Office
Kathryn Findlay Architect
Contemporary Architecture Practice Scotland, UK Design Office Information
post updated 3 May 2022
Kathryn Findlay – Key Projects
Featured Kathryn Findlay Designs
Hotel Puerta America, Madrid, Spain
Design: various interiors, various designers
image from Hotel Puerta America website
Hotel Puerta America with an interior by Kathryn Findlay – Spanish designer hotel
Kathryn made her name as part of the Ushida Findlay practice. Ushida Findlay went into voluntary liquidation in Jun 2004. Kathryn has been teaching at Dundee University School of Architecture, Scotland, since 2004/2005.
Homes for the Future, Glasgow, Scotland
Date built: 1999
Homes for the Future Glasgow
Kathryn Findlay housing – contemporary housing
Homes for the Future was masterplanned by Page & Park Architects and coincided with Glasgow’s 1999 Year of Architecture.
Kathryn Findlay – Building News
Victoria & Albert Museum proposal, Dundee, Scotland
Date: 2007
Design: Fieldwork
‘The Hill’ – proposal, Potters Field, southeast London, England, UK
Date: 2007-
Design: Fieldwork
image from University of Dundee PR 081007
GLA BUilding – Fieldwork – The Hill, London
Public building focusing on sensory experiences adj. Tower Bridge
For Simon Elliot
Green organic form reminiscent of Future Systems Library proposal for Prague, won 2007
The Fieldwork practice is located inside the Dundee University School of Architecture
Kathryn Findlay: Professor of Architecture and the Environment at Dundee University
Maggies Centre Wishaw by Kathryn Findlay, Scotland, UK, since ‘carried on’ by Reiach and Hall Architects, Edinburgh
Granton Strand, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Ushida Findlay Partnership
Kathryn Findlay, 1953-
Eisaku Ushida 1954-
The Tokyo-based Ushida Findlay Partnership was set up in 1987 by the Japanese architect Eisaku Ushida and the Scottish architect Kathryn Findlay. Ushida and Findlay are former associates of Japanese architect Arata Isozaki (1976-82).
Ushida Findlay work is characterised by plasticity: one of their most noted works is the fluid, organic project entitled Truss Wall House.
Ushida Findlay Architects: Homes for the Future
Location: Carlow House, Carlow Street, London, NW1 7LH, UK
Kathryn Findlay Practice Information
Ushida Findlay Architects located in London NW1, England
Kathryn Findlay – Teaching Positions
1999 Professor – UCLA, Los Angeles, USA
1998 Professor – Tokyo University, Japan
1979 Architectural Association, London – Diploma
Ushida Findlay – Key Projects
2004 Maggies Centre, Wishaw, UK
2004 Granton Strand, Edinburgh, UK
1999 Homes for the Future, Glasgow, UK
1999 Hopton Street loft residential interior, Thames, London, UK
1998 Billiard Hall & House, Nagoya, Japan
1998 Kumamoto Artpolis Park Management Office, Kumamoto, Japan
1997 Polyphony House, Osaka, Japan
1997 Financial Times Millennium (Inhabitable) Bridge Competition, London, UK
1995 Housing Prototype 1, Osaka, Japan
1994 Soft and Hairy House, Ibaraki Prefecture, Tsukuba-city, Ibaraki, Japan
1994 Kaizankyo company villa, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan
1994 Spiral Wall House, Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan
1994 House for the Third Millennium, London, UK
1993 Chiaroscuro House, Tokyo, Japan
1993 Truss Wall House, Machida-city, Tokyo, Japan
1991 Vertical Horizon, Tokyo, Japan
1990 Yokohama Sportsman Club, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan
1989 Echo Chamber, Tokyo, Japan
1989 Park Museum City, Japan
Kathryn Findlay – Background
Kathryn was the daughter of an Angus sheep farmer but went on to great things, invited to the Venice Biennale, and Professor of Architecture at Tokyo Unversity.
Findlay graduated from the London AA in 1979. Recently Kathryn made her name with a starfish-plan design for a country house in England – Grafton New Hall. Ushida Findlay gained this project by winning the Royal Institute of British Architects’ competition in 2002 for a proposed English country house. The developer of Grafton New Hall intends to use the starfish design with a new architect.
Kathryn Findlay became an honorary architecture professor at Dundee University in 1999. Kathryn received an architecture scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education for postgraduate research at Tokyo University.
Apart from Wishaw and Granton, Ushida Findlay were working on projects in Doha – a Museum and two grand houses, one for Quatar’s Minister of Culture.
As well as the problems in Quatar, Ushida Findlay Architects’ £4m arts centre was halted by Bury St Edmunds Borough Council in April 2004. Ushida Findlay had won another Royal Institute of British Architects’ competition converting the Corn Exchange in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. Ushida Findlay also lost the Plymouth University Competition in 2004 to design their Faculty of Arts & Humanitites building. An English project Stade Maritime Landmark project – visitor centre and restaurant – in Hastings, West Sussex was won in 2002 but Kathryn Findlay was dropped in 2003.
Kathryn Findlay interviews in AJ Sep 04 & BD w/e 27.08.04
Scottish Architect
Findlay is the Scots-born half of architects Ushida Findlay. Over the last 13 years Kathryn, along with her partner Eisaku Ushida, has been responsible for designing some of the “most appealing visions to emerge in some decades” as well as also enjoying a spell as the first women Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Tokyo. Kathryn has an intuitive intelligence for what she calls ‘poetic space’ for the possibilities inherent in translating the idea of landscape into buildings and interiors. Kathryn will explore the journey of discovery from concept to completion in Japan, the UK and around the world.
Penny McGuire in AR1257 describes Ushida Findlay buildings as all being “products of a quicksilver originality”, drawing on “dream-like, poetic impulses to unsettle and delight”; they have a “habit of borrowing ordinary materials and using them in ways that challenge perception of them”.
Architectural Design
Dundee Buildings home of the new V&A Museum
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