John Lonsdale Architect

About

I like digging into the ground called the Netherlands. At each place I am confronted by changing conditions of wetness. With each place I work with things that can only belong to that kind of wetness.

I am attracted to lines and spaces that already exist in some way. These might be a dike, a path, a wall or the edge between woodland and marsh. Engaging in a place that has already been worked in or a path already walked upon helps me understand the layering of human involvement with the landscape.

The need to build dikes and dams to tackle the rising tides and storm floods is shifting towards a more reflective attitude. My work taps into this shift and seeks more balanced relations between land and sea, between stabilities and flows.

I make work that looks forward to the release of forces of nature held between the meeting of land and sea, held in check by the work of dams, sluices and dikes. Once unleashed human involvement can engage with and put good use to the forces of wind, wave and tide.

I am not interested in a nostalgic approach. My work is of the present. I want it to resonate with rather than merely repeat what was there - using the language that is already inscribed in a place but in a way that speaks of today.

In the last years I have begun mapping the ‘Mudscapes of the Netherlands’ whereby I strive for the reconciliation of architecture with landscape. I see a future where humankind can live in a sustainable way in newly created wildernesses or mudscapes.

Background
The practice was founded in 2004 by Northumbrian born architect John Lonsdale. Work is split between Amsterdam and Northumberland, between architecture and landscape, between practicing as an architect and sculpting and drawing as an artist.

In 1991 he lived for a year on a nature reserve before graduating from the Architectural Association in London. He is currently teaching at the Rietveld Academy and the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam.

In 1993 he was awarded the Prix de Rome for Landscape Architecture and Urbanism for his work called ‘Shifting Horizons’.

His work is supported by the Netherlands Architecture Foundation, the Department of Landscape Architecture of the Technical University of Delft, the Dutch Water Authority and Natuurmonumenten.

Acknowledgments
John Lonsdale thanks David and Elizabeth Lonsdale for their kind and
generous support.
The words are partly borrowed from and inspired by reading Andy Goldsworthy’s book called ‘Enclosure’ pp92-103 ‘Coleridge’s Walk - Buttermere, Ennerdale and Wastwater’.

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