Over decades spent photographing architecture across continents, I have had the rare privilege of observing those few architects whose work doesn’t merely respond to the present moment, but helps define it.
To call Amin an architect feels, in some ways, insufficient. He is a builder in the truest, oldest, and most intellectually rich sense of the word, part Semperian craftsman, part Renaissance humanist, part stone-age mason. His work is neither nostalgic nor futuristic. It is anchored, critically and constructively, in the long arc of architectural thought and tectonic invention.
I have photographed his buildings for years, not because they are photogenic in a traditional sense (though they often are), but because they compel the camera, the eye, the heart. These are works that do not wear style as a skin. They are not interested in the visual pieties of the present. Instead, they reveal architecture, its bones, its logic, its labours.
Take 15 Clerkenwell Close. A project that attracted controversy not because it was poorly conceived, but because it was too well conceived. Too rigorous. Too honest. Unwilling to pretend that a building should hide how it stands. For that, Amin was threatened with demolition by local authorities who mistook innovation for insubordination. And yet he persevered. The demolition order was overturned, the building stood, and today it is widely recognised as one of the most original contributions to British architecture in decades.
What courage that takes.
Amin insists on pushing on. While many practices chase image and spectacle, he chases structure, material, and reason. And this is not a pose; it is a position. An intellectual position, yes, but also a moral one.
Amin’s architecture draws deeply from the historical well: Gottfried Semper, Karl Bötticher, Viollet-le-Duc, Eduard R Ford and Kenneth Frampton, not just names on his bookshelf but collaborators in spirit. His work revives long-dormant conversations about structure, expression, and materiality. He brings craft back to the centre, not as a nostalgic affectation, but as a method of inquiry and construction. In that, he is rare.
To build something great today takes not only talent, but bravery. An intellectual delight in form, in physics, in history, in stone and timber and light. Taha understands what architecture is, and might again become. He reminds us of what matters: intelligence, integrity, courage, and commitment to ideals.
I know, as do all his collaborators, the cost and strain of his commitment. His work, often diluted, compromised and misunderstood by others, continues to rise above the noise and chatter. A lesson, that intellect, talent, purpose and passion can be a burden for those afflicted, but a constant source of joy and wonder for those willing to meet it on its own uncompromising terms.
