Nigel Coates – författare

Irreverent and iconoclastic, Nigel Coates has been stirring up the architectural scene for over 40 years. In this warm and compelling autobiography, he explores the highs and lows of life at the cutting edge of architecture and design. Coates’ work often treads playfully at the intersection between bodies, sexuality and design. His portfolio includes interiors for Liberty, Jigsaw and Caffè Bongo in Tokyo, the Body Zone in the Millennium Dome, and built work such as Noah''s Ark and the Wall (both in Tokyo) and the Geffrye Museum extension, London. He has also collaborated with high-end product and lighting manufacturers Fornasetti, Fratelli Boffi and Slamp. Formerly the Head of Architecture at the Royal College of Art, London, he is now a leading light of the new London School of Architecture.

Featuring over 100 images of Coates’ most celebrated projects, this memoir is a visual feast for any devotee of contemporary British design. It encompasses his childhood in postwar provincial Malvern, student years at the Architectural Association, the founding of radical architectural group NATØ, 70s and 80s London club culture and lost loves along the way, as well as his prolific professional career, which has spanned buildings, interiors, teaching, exhibitions, furniture and products. This is a searingly honest, unvarnished personal history of one of the UK’s most versatile designers.

Irreverent and iconoclastic, Nigel Coates has been stirring up the architectural scene for over 40 years. In this warm and compelling autobiography, he explores the highs and lows of life at the cutting edge of architecture and design. Coates’ work often treads playfully at the intersection between bodies, sexuality and design. His portfolio includes interiors for Liberty, Jigsaw and Caffè Bongo in Tokyo, the Body Zone in the Millennium Dome, and built work such as Noah''s Ark and the Wall (both in Tokyo) and the Geffrye Museum extension, London. He has also collaborated with high-end product and lighting manufacturers Fornasetti, Fratelli Boffi and Slamp. Formerly the Head of Architecture at the Royal College of Art, London, he is now a leading light of the new London School of Architecture.

Featuring over 100 images of Coates’ most celebrated projects, this memoir is a visual feast for any devotee of contemporary British design. It encompasses his childhood in postwar provincial Malvern, student years at the Architectural Association, the founding of radical architectural group NATØ, 70s and 80s London club culture and lost loves along the way, as well as his prolific professional career, which has spanned buildings, interiors, teaching, exhibitions, furniture and products. This is a searingly honest, unvarnished personal history of one of the UK’s most versatile designers.

Since the early eighties, many architects have used the term "narrative" to describe their work. To architects the enduring attraction of narrative is that it offers a way of engaging with the way a city feels and works. Rather than reducing architecture to mere style or an overt emphasis on technology, it foregrounds the experiential dimension of architecture. Narrative Architecture explores the potential for narrative as a way of interpreting buildings from ancient history through to the present, deals with architectural background, analysis and practice as well as its future development.

Signposting narrative''s significance as a design approach that can aid architecture to remain relevant in this complex, multi-disciplinary and multi-everything age, Narrative Architecture is a must-read for anyone with an interest in architectural history and theory.