Maxime Turner

Void

***ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY AWARD WINNER | 2022 ARCHITECTURE AWARDS | LARSEN LIVERPOOL***

I took this photograph during a trip to New York, US, in August 2018:

​"This photograph was taken moments before my oblivious subject walked off the edge of this building and fell to her death. Or was she perhaps cautiously approaching the edge to examine the void that appeared in front of her eyes?

Well, in fact, neither of these denouements happen to be true… Nor are they possible.

Revealing that this photograph was taken in the ground floor lobby of the Seagram Building in New York, it is only at second glance that most would realise this supposed “void” is in fact an overexposed wall in the foreground of the composition.

The protagonist – who was not harmed during the shooting – is about to enter a very different kind of void: one that would defy the laws of gravity and propel her dozens of meters above ground.

Camera: Canon A-1
Lens: Canon FD 50mm f/1.8
Film: 35mm Ilford HP5+ ISO 400"

How do we Live?

From 2018 to 2021, I was a collaborator and researcher for the How do we Live? project: "How do we Live? is a housing research group, based in the Liverpool Architecture School, founded by Johanna Muszbek and Jocelyn Froimovich in 2015. The group leads a series of research and pedagogic programmes in urban housing, finding different forms in teaching, exhibits, publications and events. The project aims to negotiate the practical, theoretical and speculative aspects of housing design. The attempt is to bridge through design between the conceptual and technical challenges, rethinking housing for future urbanities."

​Exhibited at the 12th International São Paolo Architecture Biennial, 2019 (photographed above), the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, 2021, and the Miami Beach Urban Studios Design Gallery, University of Miami, 2022. Photograph by © André Scarpa.

Kimbell Art Museum

I produced a set of drawings illustrating Thinking Through Twentieth-Century Architecture by Nicholas Ray (Visiting Professor at the University of Liverpool and Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge). This is a section of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1966-72, by Louis Kahn. The publication will be released on 13/01/2023.

La Fábrica

I took these photographs during a trip to Barcelona, Spain, in May 2022. Ricardo Bofill's La Fábrica, originally built in the 1920s as a cement factory, was partially demolished and reinvented from 1973 to 1975 to house his architecture office.

AstraZeneca City House

This is the detail of a bench at AstraZeneca's central Cambridge City House site. I led this project - which involved designing new changing facilities and renovating open-plan office spaces - whilst working at NRAP Architects. The project was completed in 2019. Photograph by David Valinsky. Find out more on my website.

What dreams may come?

Here is my scheme for a competition to design a "Museum of Emotions", containing a space inciting a positive emotion and a space inciting a negative emotion. My positive space represents a good dream and is a 3D interpretation of Giorgio de Chirico's "Piazza d'Italia". My negative space represents a nightmare and is a spatial recreation of M. C. Escher's "Relativity". Find out more on my website.