Design
An Artistic Twist on London's Pseudo-Georgian Architecture
A photogenic and tongue-in-cheek look at the commonly reviled design trend that signifies London’s luxury housing boom.
On first glance, the plates in Pablo Bronstein’s new book look like a set of yellowed reproductions of 18th-century architectural prints. The Anglo-Argentinian artist’s drawings of elegant, apparently Georgian buildings lie framed with lavish curlicues of scallop shells, serpents, and swags of heavy fabric. Look closer, however, and incongruous details start to emerge—a contemporary drugstore sign on one page, or the thicker modern window frames currently spreading across London on another. On closer inspection, some of the old buildings don’t look all that old.
That’s because they aren’t.