This project houses the new studio of the rock band Marillion, the Racket Club, and adds the Racket Records merchandise office and a guesthouse, the Mill End Pub. The site is on the outskirts of Aylesbury, halfway between London and Oxford. The scheme is not a response to a problem, but simply combines my enthusiasm for English music, architecture and landscape. The project explores the social phenomena of pop music and the internet and their impact on architecture. It seeks to build up the image of a wealthy music label. I am certain that the design will at the same time be the centre of the invisible network of activity based on internet campaigns and supported by thousands of fans worldwide. It will also make sense to the adjoining terraced houses and industrial estates and to the footpath and Bear Brook with its remnants of rural origin.

During a protracted intuitive process I developed a building that seems to have always stood there. In this I am heavily indebted to the work of Heinrich Tessenow, Sigurd Lewerentz, Adolf Loos, Hans van der Laan and my compatriot Luis Barragán, architects who are concerned with use, forgotten craftsmanship and simple materials. Other designers with a strong influence on my work are Andy Goldsworthy with his magnificent structures in the British landscape and Tony Fretton, Caruso St John, Robbrecht & Daem and Marie-José van Hee with recent buildings that bring together present and past and are rooted in the fragmented structures of cities in England and Flanders.

I am convinced that good architecture is more than an innovative idea or an intelligent strategy. My project began as a criticism of this notion as upheld in the Netherlands by the schools, vetting committees and architects themselves. I feel that social and cultural aspects are more important in the long run. Architecture is the frame for everyday life, it stimulates our memory and suggests a use without conditioning it. This is where the strength of the Racket Club lies, the most important goal being to invite a reassessment of the architect's profession. The Racket Club reflects the transformation of the traditional structure of production and consumption brought on by the internet. It is a hybrid building assembled from public, private and technical aspects. It is a Club, a house, a Studio. History is full of examples of such hybrids: the English 'Public House', the doctor's surgery, the artisan's workshop...

For music fans, when their thoughts branch off into private language, the address on the back of a record sleeve is imagined to be many things. At this point the distance between their thoughts and the ideas which preoccupy architecture ... marks our territory which is a huge collective resource.
Tony Fretton

Place of education: AvB Maastricht
Specialization: architecture
Tutors: Elmar Kleuters, Fred Humblé, Maarten Terryn, William Mann