Historic Context

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Will Pirkis has several years of experience working in sensitive planning environments, including London conservation areas, and Grade I and Grade II* listed buildings in London, Liverpool, Cambridge and Oxford.

With Caruso St John Will led a project for a new organ loft at Canterbury Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The loft is located at the centre of the Cathedral in the north Quire aisle, and houses the organ, organist and assistants, replacing the previous location of the console on the Pulpitum Screen. The project is part of wider works to address centuries-old issues with the sound of the organ and the relationship of the organist to the choir, and was carried out in consultation with Canterbury’s Fabric Advisory Committee and the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England. The loft takes part in the verticality, asymmetrical organisation and additive composition of Gothic architecture. It sits like a small building in the larger Cathedral, alongside other structures such as pulpits, porches and tombs. It is constructed from a delicate frame of blackened steel, recalling the ironwork gates and railings in the cathedral, and figured walnut panels, which appear somewhere between the 14th century tracery screens and the flatness of the 12th century stone surfaces around it.