William Lasdun

William Lasdun was born in 1960. He studied at City and Guilds Art School, London (1978-79) and at the University of East Anglia (1980-83), where he majored in the history of art. In 1984 he worked for the Royal Institute of British Architects as a research assistant and exhibition organiser, training as a technical draughtsman and model maker. He was employed as a set design assistant, technical draughtsman and model maker for English National Opera (1984-87) and then set up a model-making firm servicing the advertising industry, set designers and architects (1988-90). At this time Lasdun began producing sculptures. He expanded the firm into construction and design while increasing his sculpture projects between 1990 and 1993, since when he has been concentrating on his work as a sculptor and designer.

He has exhibited since 1996, but it is commissions that form the major component of his work. Having undertaken a number of private commissions from 1996, his first public project was for the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, for which he designed the main piazza, including paving, seating and lighting, in 1997. He was commissioned to make a sculpture for the Public Library Museum in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 2000, and his most recent project is a memorial for the Royal Sussex County Hospital.

'My work,' says Lasdun, 'is currently engaged in exploring how certain forms and structures are rooted in the ground, rise up, develop and return to the ground. This also applies to forms such as waves in the sea, the strata of rock and structures that straddle the disciplines of engineering and architecture. One can walk through these pieces and in some sense they can be seen as gateways and arches, a kind of modern form of the traditional folly in the landscape. They are concerned with movement and travel, with leading the viewer around them and most importantly being visually and therefore structurally resolved from every angle.'