A Time of Gifts. It’s the title of Patrick Lee Fermor’s absorbing travel memoir, but also how Tim Bell describes his sojourn in Rome in 1998. Following the suggestion of his head of school at Edinburgh College of Art, Bell applied for the Rome Scholarship in Architecture at the British School at Rome (BSR). It was subsequently awarded to him and he spent nine months at the BSR studying the influence of Rome’s public buildings and monuments on the street patterns and secondary elements of the city.

Bell has gone on since to co-found Bell Phillips, an innovative London architecture practice that focuses on the design of social housing. He freely admits however, that the time he spent in Rome was formative to his design theories, speaking of the ‘masterclass’ that each day in Rome seemed to offer in terms of space, light and geometry. It is also a time he draws on when he’s in the thick of the nuts and bolts of procurement or delivery of a project - a point of inspiration around which he can centre himself when bogged down.

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