Perspectives: St Paul's Cathedral

Characteristically, the grand master of minimalist architecture John Pawson regards his installation in one of London’s greatest architectural works as being less about the physical piece he has created, and much more about what it reveals. ‘It has never really been about what we put into the space,’ says Pawson, ‘so much as how we enable people to see what is already there.’

Offered a unique chance to work in the cathedral’s rarely seen Geometric Staircase, Pawson has created Perspectives, a work imaginatively designed to reveal the genius of Sir Christopher Wren’s 17th century masterpiece in ways the viewer would not ordinarily see. The elegant spiralling staircase, built to provide access through the Dean’s door to the upper levels of the cathedral, including the library, is not usually on view to the public – and even if you were to visit it you would not be able to see it in quite the same way as Pawson allows.

Collaborating with Swarovski, Pawson has created a precision-made meniscus – the largest lens possible to manufacture. This is located at the bottom of the stairwell, sitting on a much larger reflective hemisphere, with a spherical convex mirror suspended in the tower’s cupola above. Together these optical devices create an extraordinary composite image of the view up through the tower for visitors gathered around the hemisphere at the base, allowing them, as Pawson says, ‘to see beyond the level of the naked eye’.

Pawson’s Perpectives project forms part of the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the completion of St Paul’s. Interestingly, Pawson’s work fulfils one of Wren’s ambitions – that each of his buildings should include a scientific instrument of some kind. For Swarovski, Perspectives at St Paul’s Cathedral marks the apotheosis of its 10-year Crystal Palace project, an experimental design platform developed by Nadja Swarovski, allowing designers including Ron Arad, Zaha Hadid,Tom Dixon, Ross Lovegrove, Tokujin Yoshioka, Tord Boontje, Arik Levy, Yves Behar and Gaetano Pesce to develop extraordinary work using crystal.

Yorkshire-born John Pawson spent several years teaching English in Japan before returning to England to train as an architect, establishing his own practice in 1981. The keynote of his work has always been simplicity, consistently focusing on ways of approaching fundamental problems of space, proportion, light and materials, while reflecting the environmental and historical context of the work, rather than developing a set of individual stylistic mannerisms. Recent key works include the RIBA prize-winning Sackler Crossing – a walkway over the lake at London’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew – and the Cistercian monastery of Our Lady of Novy Dvur in Bohemia, awarded the Frate Sole International Prize for Sacred Architecture in October 2008. In 2010 the Design Museum in London mounted a major exhibition of his work, John Pawson Plain Space.

Supported by Swarovski Crystal Palace