'Continuita' at West Malling Abbey Part 1: Fusion Cuisine by Maguire & Murray

In Gorgias, Plato's critique of the art of oratory, Socrates states that this art, (along with cookery) isn't an art at all, but a knack of producing a 'pleasurable [emotional] response' in subjects; a sort of 'pandering'.  Socrates goes on to say that he regards any kind of 'irrational' occupation as more of a 'knack' gained by experience, rather than a genuine ‘art’ supported by sound theory and training {Gorgias, Penguin Books p.45-47}

Although this critique is in fact a thinly veiled (but valid) discussion on the drawbacks of democracy and the 'surly mob' placated by 'bread and circuses', the argument itself is flawed and contains within it the sort of 'cold-logic' that would eventually lead to Plato's call for the transference of the breeding and rearing of children to special centralised authorities in 'The Republic'.

The same cold logic was employed by Le Corbusier in the development and enunciation of 'his machine for living in' and just like no wants to outsource their breeding capabilities similarly, no one really wants to live in hygienic white boxes.

Rational systemised housing, though not quite 'white and hygienic' has proven to be just as unpopular.  The masses have not swallowed architects' various overtures to 'platonicification' in the built environment and have instead, led chiefly by Prince Charles demanded pitched roofs, cornices and fluted columns.  The blighted neighbourhoods and sink estates that have resulted from this impasse has led in recent years to an increasing number of architects attempting to chart a conciliatory course; The likes of FAT, Sergison Bates and Caruso StJohn have all attempted to reconcile the demands of a platonic architecture with the emotional needs of the masses with the result that their architectural practice has assimilated familiar forms and patterns and beloved cultural quirks with varying degrees of success.  Is this pandering?  To some degree perhaps but this doesn't make it wrong. 

We as architects have to accept that our offerings must sometimes be tempered with sugary motifs to make them palatable and perhaps this formed part of thinking of architects Maguire & Murray when they approached the commission to design a new chapel for the Benedictine Order of nuns who live on the ancient site of St Mary's Abbey in West Malling Kent in 1962.

After you enter the abbey complex you turn left to approach the chapel which is situated just to the left (north east) of the 10th century ruin of the original Norman cathedral.  Two things are immediately apparent; the first is that the chapel while taking clear cues from the Norman ruin, clearly 'panders' to [entirely appropriate] associations of a rural kind.  While the agricultural grade precast concrete blocks and the precast semi-circular window surrounds in the lower part of the building are clearly meant to pay homage to the illustrious ruin adjacent, the tower/elongated dome form above recalls the barns and oast-houses that one imagines to be common to this part of the world, while also acknowledging the partial octagonal tower form embedded in the ruin.  Secondly, as we move closer, we see that the forms are combined with a pitched pantile roof to create a further new and unique form which has something of the naiveté and irreducible character of an Aldo Rossi archetype only even more abstracted so that in amongst the associations, we are presented with an attractive disposition of volumes ‘in light’ to enjoy, something that is reinforced, as with their slightly earlier church at Bow Common, by superlative workmanship.

Having said that, this strategy of 'fusing' disparate elements and accents into a new evocative whole has given rise to some strange occurrences, such as the 'collision' between the pitched pantile roof and the base of the oast-house 'tower' form.  Details like these have pushed the limits of traditional detailing and narrowed the tolerances within which builders must have been required to work.  This is as much about the strength of personality of the architects as it is about the drawing-board.

However, the 'feeling' that results from these decisions is 'spot on', the conviction behind many of the key moves speaking of a craftsman’s sensibility; intuition and instinct abounds without the reassuring 'safety-net' of an underlying architectural order, recalling vernacular architecture and the work of figures like Carlo Scarpa. 

It perhaps comes as no surprise to learn that one half of the practice, Keith Murray was an artist craftsman by training who designed the fixtures and fittings of the practices projects.

An exposed hardwood entrance canopy, rather 'Japanese' in flavour leads into the church via a vestibule intended for 'public' use (the church space proper is reserved for the Benedictine Order).  The vestibule and the canopy together have the flavour of a 'lean-to' thus preserving the Platonic/Rossi-esque autonomy of the main building and perhaps symbolising the relationship between an enclosed religious order and a visiting public.

The Abbess who led us on the tour made the point just outside the church that people usually either liked it's exterior or it's interior but rarely both and on entering the church it is apparent why.

Quite unexpectedly, The vernacularist, oast-house aesthetic of the exterior is found to camouflage a heroic internal space reminiscent of the interior of Le Corbusier's Assembly Building in Chandigarh, India.

It’s a beautiful, pure serene space, perfectly suited to it's sacred function and far superior to the exposed trussed rafter structure that the pantiled roof suggests you may find inside.  Your mind (if you’re an architect or perhaps a epistemologist philosopher) recoils at the idea that you could clad an iconic modern  material like in-situ cast concrete with traditional clay pantiles but it ‘feels’ just right and in fact it recalls the way in which stone vaults are roofed in timber framed slate roofs in Gothic cathedrals.

Internally, the oast-house form is found to be framed in a painted exposed trussed rafter structure, it's lightness perfectly counterbalancing the solemn weight of the concrete structure that supports it below.

Maguire & Murray also designed a startling new cloister quite unlike any you will see anywhere else.

Entered through the retained ancient south wall and doorway originally used by the Order for accessing the cathedral, the cloister forms part of the access from the nuns' living accommodation to the church.  Here the slightly incongruous seeming clay pantiles and exposed timber experienced on first approaching and entering the church, reaches fulfilment and we find the same refined craftsman’s judgement here that underpins all the work.

The warm exposed timber structure of the pantile roof slopes down from the ancient stone wall towards the central garden.  It’s raining when we visit and we can see that there are no gutters so that we are faced with the beautiful spectacle of rainwater cascading down into the garden just in front our eyes, watch the fight scene between Nameless and Sky in the movie ‘Hero’ to get an idea of what I mean!  

As the exposed roof structure transitions from the floating wall plate down to the timber framed windows, something strange and rather unfashionable happens to the building work.  Lightness is added by a shallow clerestory formed of little timber cylindrical vertical supports, routed to within a millimetre of pastiche.  Below this, a further heresy as 40 years of Modernism is cast aside and we find ourselves in the presence of 'leaded lights'!  Only the honeycombed pattern of these lights prevents outright pastiche if not sacrilege.  Maguire & Murray were bitterly criticised by the architectural establishment of the time for these bold details, to get an idea of just how ‘out-there’ this work was, consider that Lasdun's 'modernist' Royal College of Physicians was built 2 years earlier to critical acclaim.

But (if you're an architect) put aside your deep seated 'modernist' conditioning for a minute and consider how bland and utilitarian the space would be without these 'traditional' touches and realise that once again, Maguire & Murray have 'judged' it just right.

As we went round, the Abbess regaled us with a litany of complaints regarding the user-friendliness of Maguire & Murray's work at the Abbey; the honeycombed windows are a nightmare to clean, the position of lighting in the church makes for inflexible use of the space and the change in character between the main church and the public/entrance vestibule means that a torrent of condensation pours down at the junction between the two in early spring.  The deep precast semi-circular window surrounds house almost inaccessible and highly impractical single-pane, vertical, centre-pivot windows with nothing but surface mounted neoprene gaskets for stops.

Many changes have had to be carried out to the original building, some quite soon after completion; the columns for example had to be introduced after major structural engineering errors meant that the original floating concrete soffit was untenable; various subtle level changes conceived by Maguire & Murray in line with their liturgical philosophy had to be expunged soon after for access reasons.  The tightly interrelated set of fine judgements instituted by Maguire and Murray at the Abbey has been disrupted but the power, serenity, beauty and quality of the architecture has become none the poorer for it.  It reminds me, for example, of the way in which Inigo Jones’ vision for Covent Garden retains it’s essential power despite the drastic changes the precinct and the church has undergone over the centuries, a mark of truly great architecture?

plans showing original column-free design and level changes

Although the building itself has tolerated and accommodated changes admirably, it seems that the architects themselves were not able to do so.  They were apparently so hurt by the Abbey’s choice to mitigate the major structural failure by installing concrete columns rather than opting for the prohibitively expensive partial rebuild required to preserve the original concept, that they never returned.  But this didn’t bother the Abbess half as much as the architect’s decision to employ an ill-conceived lighting arrangement, originally employed at the chapel, in a subsequent church design after the Abbess had informed them that it didn’t work, ‘Sheer arrogance!’ she said.  It was Confucius that said that a person’s qualities belong to a ‘set’, perhaps the sensibility required to pull off such a great piece of architecture is inseparable from this arrogant obstinate streak?

I asked the elderly Abbess, who has been there through it all, whether she, in her private moments 'cursed' the architects for all the additional costs and on-going issues, to which she replied 'Not at all, it's lovely', an answer reminiscent of Alexander Pope's line 'Proud to catch cold at a Venetian door', food for thought.