LONDON, EGLAND.-Jay Merrick, Architecture Correspondent for The Independent, will engage Architect Declan O'Carroll of Arup Associates and Artist Simon Patterson in a debate about the role of public art in cities. The talk is based on a collaborative public walkway project by O'Carroll and Patterson called Time and Tide. Located in the in The City of London amongst large scale office buildings designed by Arup Associates, Time and Tide is a thoughtful response to the problem of the public art commissions becoming tokenistic or contrived responses to improving the built environment. O'Carroll and Patterson want to discuss through their work how a seamless Renaissance spirit of inter-disciplinary design could be injected back into working practice. Jay Merrick who has written extensively on the subject of Art and Architecture will challenge the speakers on how they might introduce a new direction in thinking about public art as a truly civic medium.

Profile - Arup Associates - The Arup Associates Studio forms a focus for holistic design in Arup. It is a design studio focussed on the creative integration of architecture, structural engineering, environmental engineering, urban design and product design. The aim is pioneering a 'Total Architecture' in which technologically advanced building is always appropriate, economic, and sensitive to environmental and human needs. This is an ideal which is well worth striving for, for artistic wholeness depends on it, wrote Ove Arup who founded the practice in 1963.

Profile - Simon Patterson - Simon Patterson (b.1967) is one of the new generation of contemporary artists in Britain. He studied at Goldsmiths 'in London, and took part in the seminal Freeze exhibition on 1988. In 1992, he made his best-known work to date, The Great Bear, a reworking of Harry Beck's classic London Underground map. The following year, he showed a pair of Last Suppers at the Aperto of The Venice Biennale, in which the disciples took the formations of football teams with Jesus Christ in goal. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1996.

Patterson has made numerous temporary works and installations and has exhibited in major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Kunsthaus, Zurich, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart; the Hayward Gallery and Tate Modern, London.

Lectures are held at The Gallery, 77 Cowcross Street, London, EC1M. Thursday 20th October 2005. Doors open at 6:30pm, talk starts 6:45pm. No pre-booking necessary, tickets are available at the door. Members £2; Corporate Members £3; Non-members £5; Students with ID £2. Nearest tube: Farringdon (Circle/Hammersmith lines and Thameslink) (2 mins walk).