why pubs?

 

In the same year we began in practice the architectural historian Mark Girouard had lamented the rate at which old pubs were loosing their character and rich eclectic ornament under new management.

 

"What survives is only a tiny fragment of the splendours that have gone. The breweries are, it is true, less prone to destruction than they were ten years ago but they are continuingly altering, improving, rearranging, renaming and touching up their Victorian pubs, sometimes with skill and taste but all too often with neither."

 

Taking this to heart a brewer who was planning work to six of his London pubs asked us to ensure that these criticisms did not apply to them. He also invited us to design two new ones.