11.09.2026 The Brooklyn Rail
Will Pirkis has written an essay for the September issue of The Brooklyn Rail. ‘Containers’ looks at the physical gallery space as a site of meaning, and asks what happens to the power of art under conditions of accelerated circulation and digitisation (read the article here).
10.08.2026 Transforming Existing Buildings
Will Pirkis Architects has made a series of studies exploring the adaptation and extension of existing buildings in London. The studies seek to transform buildings in low-carbon ways, while giving them the operational clarity and presence needed to serve as lasting assets.
16.03.2026 Memorial to Journalists on the Frontline
In collaboration with artist Rut Blees Luxemburg and curator Aldo Rinaldi, Will Pirkis Architects have made a proposal for a national memorial to journalists killed in conflict. The proposal, for a site on the edge of woodland at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, incorporates a specially commissioned photograph by the artist.
10.08.2023 Bermondsey Studio
Conversion of a 900sqm warehouse in south London into a studio, for an artist represented by Gagosian. Developed with Westgreen Construction, London Structures Lab and services engineer Richie Daffin, the studio allows the artist to work on large canvases, with a growing team of technical and archivist staff. It provides facilities for display, conservation storage, offices and private viewing.
25.08.2022 Lecture Bydgoszcz
Lecture to students at Bydgoszcz University of Science and Technology. The lecture looks at our long term interest in adapting existing buildings, both in terms of reducing the embodied carbon in construction and the experiential possibilities of existing places. Three projects carried out with Caruso St John are discussed including Gagosian Britannia Street, which opened in 2004 with alterations from 2005 - 2020 to meet the changing needs of the gallery. New elements work together with the existing structure, to make a powerful environment for the art the gallery wanted to show, presenting a specificity and challenge welcomed by artists and curators. (Image Rachel Whiteread, Ghost, 1990. Installation view, Gagosian Britannia Street, London. Photograph by Hélène Binet.)
12.06.2026 Alex Israel installation at Gagosian Davies Street
An exhibition of new fin sculptures by Alex Israel has opened at Gagosian’s Davies Street gallery. Will Pirkis Architects worked on the installation with the gallery and structural engineer Price & Myers. Artwork © Alex Israel. Photography: Prudence Cuming Associates
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03.07.2025 Homer London Store
Frank Ocean’s Homer has opened its first London store in Hatton Garden. Designed by New York based ANY, the interior recalls packaging with a profiled ceiling in gloss plaster, and a vitrine for objects in slumped glass and aluminium. Will Pirkis Architects worked closely with ANY, Homer and contractors to develop and deliver the project from London. (Image Homer)
23.10.2023 Lecture Newcastle
As working with existing buildings becomes increasingly part of reducing carbon in construction, ‘Fictions’ looks at how to work with what we have in a more enduring, powerful, culturally engaged way, beyond determinism. The lecture compares adapting existing buildings with the work of Jeff Wall, David Foster Wallace, Katherine Mansfield and Karl Blossfeldt, artists and writers who are able to synthesise such disparate sources as memory, association, observation, history and anecdote, without resorting to fragmentation or collage.
30.08.2022 Garden Studio, North London
A studio for two artists in the large garden of an Edwardian terrace house bordering Wanstead Flats. The studio contains a workshop for each artist and a clean space between, for working together, hosting and holding exhibitions. The garden can be accessed either through the house or from the Flats at the rear, allowing different possibilities for daily routine or curating shows.
The design draws on images familiar to the Flats such as the cricket pavilion, with its long frontage, wood structure and painted wood linings. It works with the idea of the shed as a building that is built and not just clad in timber, as evoked in Robert Smithson’s Partially Buried Woodshed (1970). The work involved piling earth on a found shed until the central beam broke, bringing attention to the most basic element of the structure.
02.02.2021 Lecture Nottingham
Lecture to students at University of Nottingham looking at the adaptation of a listed warehouse building at the Philips industrial complex in Eindhoven. The project, carried out with Caruso St John Architects, involved reorganising the building to provide a foodhall, flexible-let workspaces, carparking for the wider site required by current policy, and three new storeys of rowhouse apartments around a courtyard on the roof. ​The façades of the rowhouses take on the language of curved brickwork in the existing architecture, forming a crown of rhythmic piers at the top of the building. Along with other interventions such as a new facade at ground floor level and colours from historical research, the new parts form a whole with the existing building. The lecture looks at the qualities of the existing architecture, and how alterations and additions were designed in a way that amplified or transformed them. (Image Filip Dujardin)