Finest Architectural Illustrations

Painting all of London

My biggest project to date: Everything.

The largest watercolour project ever attempted: a complete watercolour collection of London’s most significant architecture.

As an Associate Partner at HTA Architects, I realised I needed to delve deeper into the city. I am now busy undertaking one of the most extensive watercolour surveys of London. Currently over 1,000 paintings expressing the diversity, quality, and complexity of its architecture. 

My experience visioning solutions for the city at NBBJ led me to the realisation that to know a place, you have to analyse it. It’s by tracing a building’s lines directly with my own hand that I remember them and understand why the architect made the decisions they did. It all becomes muscle memory; the design of the city becomes part of my own history, and that’s important as buildings are not just about architecture but the stories that happen in them. My website shares some of the incredible stories of the city I have learnt, together with the ever-increasing watercolour portfolio.

Other cities such as Paris, New York, and Oxford are also explored to understand how culture impacts architectural style and taste. Paris, for example, prefers a similar Neo-classical style to London but is more romantic with flourishes of decoration, particularly along rooflines and dormers. New York is more bombastic with various styles and scales of buildings jostling together. Architects seeking different idioms to express a new culture for a powerful, growing country. Cambridge and Oxford buildings are restrained and consistent, all about fronts and backs, the private hidden, and the more fortress street elevations— secrets and studies. Against all this, London is correct, handsome, and practical. Perhaps the biggest influence here is royalty and its projected power; it percolates much of the city, its grand avenues, large old deer hunting parks, and particularly its architecture. Now, that’s a story I will tell soon.

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See some of the galleries Soho, Mayfair , St James ,Marylebone and City of London

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Christian Coop (MSAI) is an Associate Partner at HTA Design and a leading architectural artist