IN
SEARCH
OF
SILENT
SPACES

a journey

by
Richard
England

I find silence
in the no-time legends of endless desert sands;
in silhouettes of melancholy painted on the bleeding colours of a dying day;
in the canescent sadness of the glacial eyes of death;
in the latent stains of sacrifice on sacred altar stones;
in the unplanted virgin patch of a throbbing fertile earth;
in the echoing sounds of nature on atime-swept weathered coast;
in a garden of tranquillity under the eclipsed tones of a lingering twilight;
in threads of secret tapestries woven behind sealed unopened doors;
in the sterile songs of solitude of an old abandoned house;
in the eburnean lactescence of a heat-washed island shore;
in the bleached eroded carcass of a citadel of death;
in the monadic timelessness of an orphaned island rock;
in the shadowed mirrors of molten saline squares;
in the petrified frozen music of the homes of ancient gods;
in the quiescent veiled opacity of a salient morning sky;
on sheen-screened waters of lambent moon-lit tides;
in cloisters of seclusion of old monastic walls;
in the sheltering refuge of a lonely shrine of prayer;
in the yawning chasms of a quarry face with its future images of buildings yet to come;
in the almanac mysteries of stone age windows to the skies.



Richard England, a practising architect of international reputation, is also a sculptor, painter, photographer and poet. Born in Malta, and a former student of Gio Ponti in Milan, he has delivered professional lectures at various universities and institutions in Britain, the USA, Spain, Germany, France, Sweden, former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, Greece, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and South America.

Richard England is also a prolific author and has published a number of books including "Walls of malta", Carrier-Citadel Metamorphosis", "Contemporary Art in Malta", "white is White", "Island - a poem for seeing" and "Uncaged Reflections" (a collection of selected writings). He has also written extensively on what trends the development of architecture should take, to be compatible with ethnic environments, in order to produce valid contemporary built-form expressions relating to place and time.

(Source: Voice of the Mediterranean, Vol. 2 - Issue # 21 - March 1998)

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