Overview of Palmyra at sunset showing the Great Colonnade running from the Funerary Temple in the foreground to the Temple of Bel at rear. Photo: Quintin Lake

Monumental Arch, the entrance to the city, Palmyra, Syria. Photo: Quintin Lake

Great Colonnade, Palmyra. Photo: Quintin Lake

Columns of the Great Colonnade in front of the Valley of the Tombs, Palmyra. Photo: Quintin Lake

Arch of the Great Colonnade at sunset, Palmyra, Syria. Photo: Quintin Lake

Tetrapylon, placed at a crossroads, Palmyra, Syria. Photo: Quintin Lake

Theatre, Palmyra, Syria. Photo: Quintin Lake

Stone seats and steps in the theatre at Palmyra, Syria. Photo: Quintin Lake

A commanding view of Palmyra seen from the Temple of the Standards in Diocletian's Camp (said to be the location of the Palace of Zenobia) Photo: Quintin Lake

Funerary Temple at Diocletian's Camp. Palmyra, Syria. Photo: Quintin Lake

Temple of Baal Shamin. Palmyra. Photo: Quintin Lake

Temple of Baal Shamin Interior. Palmyra. Photo: Quintin Lake

Cella or Inner Temple of the Temple of Bel, Palmyra. Photo: Quintin Lake

Towers of Yemliko, Valley of the Tombs, Palmyra, Syria. Photo: Quintin Lake

Tower of Elahbel, burial tower, Palmyra, Syria. Photo: Quintin Lake

Burial Chambers inside Tower of Elahbel, burial tower, Palmyra. Photo: Quintin Lake

Muslim Castle, Palmyra (Qala'at ibn Maan or Fakhr-al-Din al-Maani Castle), built by the Mamluks in the 13th century. The castle overlooks Palmyra. Photo: Quintin Lake

Valley of the Tombs at sunset, Palmyra. Photo: Quintin Lake

Roadside poster of Bashar al-Assad, president of Syria, February 2011 depicted with the ruins of Palmyra. Photo: Quintin Lake

An oasis in the Syrian desert, north-east of Damascus, Palmyra contains the monumental ruins of a great city that was one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world. From the 1st to the 2nd century, the art and architecture of Palmyra, standing at the crossroads of several civilizations, married Graeco-Roman techniques with local traditions and Persian influences.

It had long been a vital caravan city for travellers crossing the Syrian desert and was known as the Bride of the Desert. The earliest documented reference to the city by its Semitic name Tadmor, Tadmur or Tudmur (which means “the town that repels” in Amorite and “the indomitable town” in Aramai is recorded in Babylonian tablets found in Mari.

Palmyra became the capital of the short-lived Palmyrene Empire (260–273) which was a splinter empire, that broke off of the Roman Empire during the the Third Century. It encompassed the Roman provinces of Syria Palaestina, Egypt and large parts of Asia Minor. The Palmyrene Empire was ruled by Queen Zenobia.

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All images available as fine art prints or for publication / licensing contact me for pricing and to arrange use. Photographs © Quintin Lake  

Sensitivity to context is neatly sidestepped by razing the 30,000 homes, churches & synagogues - an area of the old city the size of Venice - which once stood here. Front Facade. The Palace of the Parliament (Also known as Ceausescu'€™s Palace or House of The People) in Bucharest, Romania. Built 1983-1989. Architect: Anca Petrescu

Unirii Hall, the largest of the 1,100 rooms in the entire building. Available for wedding hire should you wish to entertain 2,000 guests or enact a megalomaniac fantasy. Photo: Quintin Lake

I. I. C. Bratianu Hall. The building is so out of scale to the human body that it feels uncomfortable to walk about - as if one has been shrunk. Photo: Quintin Lake

This room was intended as Nicolae Ceauşescu's office with direct access to the balcony, now Al. I. Cuza Hall. The blank space at the end of the room was originally intended for a painting of the modest fellow - perfectly positioned to be admired by his number one fan. Photo: Quintin Lake

Currently entitled the Human Rights Hall, it seems droll that the round table - symbol of democracy should be housed in such totalitarian architecture. The room hosted the 20th Nato summit and other EU conferences. Photo: Quintin Lake

The Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest, Romania designed by architect Anca Petrescu for Nicolae Ceauşescu is today a multi-purpose building that contains both chambers of the Romanian Parliament. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the Palace is the world’s largest civilian administrative building, most expensive administrative building, and the heaviest building.

Entire neighborhoods were destroyed to make way for the building, equating to an area the size of Venice. Among that which has been lost are churches, synagogues, valuable historic constructions and 40.000 people were forced to move. Most of them, to newly constructed communist blocks of flats of a poor quality in the city.

At the time of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s 1989 overthrow and execution, the building structure and design were complete. With supreme irony he never had the chance to occupy the monster he created. Subsequently, many of the furnishings were never installed (mostly evident because of the many large, empty spaces throughout the palace), while the last three basement levels and a large clock tower (that would display the official Romanian time) were never finished. During the regime change, the new leaders of Romania referred to the building as the House of Ceauşescu, to highlight the excessive luxury in which Ceauşescu would have lived, in stark contrast to the squalor and poverty endured by many people living in the surrounding neighbourhoods.

Everything about the building is supersized: Petrescu led a team of 700 architects to build the project. In the ’80s 20,000 men worked in shifts for 24 hours a day. The building contains 1,100 rooms. Today the building has a symbolic ambiguity, after so many Romanian people laboured over it’s construction it is hardly surprising it was not demolished. Like it or not, the portentous building over which so much was lost and so many suffered has become the architectural symbol of Bucharest.

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All images available as fine art prints or for publication / licensing contact me for pricing and to arrange use. Photographs © Quintin Lake  

Umayyad Mosque, Damascus viewed from Mount Qassiun

Courtyard and The Minaret of the Bride at dusk after prayers, Umayyad Mosque

Ablution fountain in front of the main prayer hall decorated with mosaics said to depict paradise.

Roman arch east of Umayyad Mosque and sheesha cafe, Damascus, Syria

Birds fly by the Minaret of Qaitbayt, Umayyad Mosque, Damascus

The Umayyad Mosque also known as the Great Mosque of Damascus is the first monumental work of architecture in Islamic history; the building served as a central gathering point after Mecca to consolidate the Muslims in their faith and conquest to rule the surrounding territories under the Umayyad Caliphate. It is considered the fourth-holiest place in Islam.

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Photographs © Quintin Lake

Krak des Chevaliers Castle from the south West, Homs Gap, Syria. Photo: Quintin Lake

“The Krak of the Knights [Krak des Chevaliers], described by T.E. Lawrence as ‘the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world,’ is the easternmost of a chain of five castles sited so as to secure the Homs Gap…The castle stands upon a southern spur of the Gebel Alawi, on the site of an earlier Islamic ‘Castle of the Kurds.’ In 1142 it was given by Raymond, Count of Tripoli, into the care of the Knights Hospitallers, and it was they who, during the ensuing fifty years, remodelled and developed it as the most distinguished work of military architecture of its time.”Sir Banister Fletcher. A History of Architecture

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Photographs © Quintin Lake

Detail of West front of St Paul's Cathedral, London. Completed 1697 by architect Sir Christopher Wren.

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photographs © Quintin Lake

"Your Rainbow Panorama" The 360° multi-coloured glass viewing walkway on the roof of ARoS Aarhus Kuntsmuseum by Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Quintin Lake

Your Rainbow Panorama by Olafur Eliasson on the roof of ARoS Aarhus Kuntsmuseum, Denmark. Photo: Quintin Lake

Panorama of Aarhus beyond. Photo: Quintin Lake

Underside of Your Rainbow Panorama walkway. Photo: Quintin Lake

Inside of Your Rainbow Panorama coloured walkway by Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Quintin Lake

Inside of Your Rainbow Panorama coloured walkway by Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Quintin Lake

Inside of Your Rainbow Panorama coloured walkway by Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Quintin Lake

Inside of Your Rainbow Panorama coloured walkway by Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Quintin Lake

“Your Rainbow Panorama” is a Rainbow-coloured glass walkway on the roof of the Danish art museum ARoS Aarhus Kuntsmuseum, by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. The permanent piece consists of a 150-metre-long and three-metre-wide self-contained circular walkway with glass that moves through all of the colours of the spectrum. The 52-metre-diameter walkway “floats” 3.5 metres above the roof and stretches like a multi-coloured halo — supported by 12 slender columns. The piece opened to the public on 28 May, 2011. In order to access the walkway, visitors can take stairs or a lift from the museum in order to appreciate a panoramic view tinted in different colours.Eliasson describes the work:

Your Rainbow panorama establishes a dialogue with the existing architecture and reinforces what was already there, that is to say the view across the city. I have created a space that can almost be said to erase the boundary between inside and outside — a place where you become a little uncertain as to whether you have stepped into a work of art or into part of the museum. This uncertainty is important to me, as it encourages people to think and sense beyond the limits within which they are accustomed to function.”

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photographs © Quintin Lake

Interior of Postmodernism: Style and Subversion Exhibition at the V&A Museum. Photo: Dezeen

Gehry House, by Frank Gehry, Santa Monica. Photograph featured in V&A Postmodernism Exhibition. Photo: Quintin Lake

My photo of  Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica house is printed alongside other icons of  deconstructionist architecture by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates. The curators were keen to include Gehry’s residence as it symbolizes an “early venture in bricolage and the postmodern”. The house built in 1978 represented the first and radical steps of Deconstructivist movement in architecture more info and photos on the building.

My personal sentiments on postmodernism which developed as an architecture student are encapsulated by Alastair Sooke who wrote in the Telegraph

Charles Jencks, the architectural theorist credited with inventing the term “postmodernism”, once pointed out that what is exciting and avant-garde one moment tends to feel like old hat the next. No doubt he is right: younger generations often berate the immediate past to assert their own identity. Even so, walking through the V&A’s new exhibition, which traces the rise and fall of postmodernism across different disciplines during the Seventies and Eighties, I was tempted to ask: has there ever been a more irritating movement in the history of art and design?”

Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990
24 September 2011 – 15 January 2012 at V&A South Kensington info

Ashampstead Nativity Greetings Card available at St Clement's Church. Photo: Quintin Lake

St Clement’s Church, Ashampstead, Berkshire contains fine medieval wall paintings dating from c1250. These four Holy Infancy scenes with their decorative heading are in the nave. They illustrate The Annunciation, The Visitation, The Nativity and the Appearance of the Angels to the Shepherds. The paintings were defaced and covered over at the time of the Reformation. they were rediscovered in 1886 and are now being conserved.

The wall-paintings were specially photographed to reveal the maximum amount of detail in the originals. More images from the photoshoot

Also available at St Clement’s Church are a set of 6 different postcards of the Nativity and a folded card. Proceeds from the sale of the cards go to the maintenance of the church. Map showing location of the Church

The City of London: Architectural Tradition & Innovation in the Square Mile, Thames & Hudson. Authors: Michael Hall, Kenneth Powell, Alan Powers, Aileen Reid. Editor: Sir Nicholas Kenyon.

I was delighted to be one of the View Picture Agency architectural photographers commisioned to capture the images for this book. The fascinating buildings that I photographed for the book include : Fox’s umbrella Shop, Ironmongers’ Hall, Postoffice Park, General Post Office Headquarters, Overseas Bankers Club & Snow Hill Police Station.

The City of London is a major illustrated celebration of the architecture and of the Square Mile. Beginning with a general introduction that provides an historical overview of the Citys development, the main part of the book is divided into 8 chapters, each devoted to a particular district of the City. Each chapter begins with a 1,500-word introduction (with a specially commissioned map of the district as well as additional illustrations) and then includes approximately 25 entries on individual buildings and urban spaces such as squares and public gardens. Each entry is illustrated with 24 images, including specially commissioned exterior and interior photographs and selected archival images provided by the London Metropolitan Archives and other City sources. In total, there are approximately 200 entries, including major landmarks such as St Pauls Cathedral and 20th-century developments such as the Barbican, and each of the bridges that connects the City with the South Bank. The Tower of London, although not technically in the City, is also covered, as its history has been so bound up with that of the Square Mile.

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Auditorium & Art Gallery take shape along Brewer Street

St Ebbes Accommodation at left and Roger Bannister building behind white sheeting.

Auditorium / Art Gallery seen from New St Ebbes street accommodation

Measuring concrete form-work

New accommodation block at Rose Place

Preparing concrete form-work

Stairs from the Brewer Street bridge (not yet on site) that will link the two sites together

New Brewer Street Accommodation block, street facade

New St Ebbes Street Accommodation block, street facade

These photographs are part of an ongoing monthly assignment to document the building work at Pembroke College, Oxford due for completion summer 2012.  View all previous posts of the Pembroke College Bridging Centuries Project >>

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Photography  © Quintin Lake, 2011