Dumbed Down: Bach, The Stirling Prize & Mies

I'm reading several things at the same time right now; Building Seagram, the fascinating account of the commissioning and building of Mies van der Rohe's New York masterpiece.  A book on  one of the fathers of Renaissance architecture, Donato Bramante, by Arnaldo Bruschi, and the latest AJ which has eulogies, pithy interviews and details (really informative details-thanks AJ and nominated architects) of all the nominated buildings.

In fact I've got details on the brain.  Details of the process recounted by Phyllis Lambert which would eventually lead to the exquisite Seagram Building.  Things came together that would perhaps never again do so; a client with a profound sense of craft and quality; an architect with (even now after his death) an unrivalled ability to achieve it; a budget large enough to achieve it and a client advisor with the depth of passion and purpose to ensure that the achievement was measured against the best that mankind had ever produced.  Reyner Banham once said of Corb's Vers Une Architecture that it would be the only architectural treatise from the 20th Century worthy of a mention in the history of mankind.  While it's practically impossible to identify a building that could occupy the same position, it could be said perhaps that the Seagram Building, among works of architecture is the most emblematic; the perfect apologist for the 20th century.  

Designed by a man who spent much of the time, 'thinking', according to Lambert.  What thoughts! Thoughts manifested in the legendary articulation of the Seagram facade as well as in sayings such as 'form is not the aim of our work, only the result' and 'architecture is the real battleground of the spirit'.  At the same time as reading these books I'm also listening to Bach's 'The Well Tempered Clavier' repeatedly (aware that Colin Rowe once compared a Palladian Villa to a fugue and that Mies probably has equal right to such a comparison) and have watched Oliver Stone's epic on Alexander the Great 3 times in the past couple of weeks.  Alexander =Bach = Mies 

and surely they all would have all appreciated Bramante, the architect who more than any other save Alberti before him, dedicated himself to working on 'Architecture as a Language', Mies' own definition of his vocation as the Tempietto and Palazzo Caprini amply testify.  There are big dreams at work here and a recognition that they can only be achieved 'one carefully placed brick' at a time, with vision, courage, sacrifice and strength of will.  Mies's Seagram sketches are not all that impressive; Alexander wasn't necessarily the best warrior, Bramante may not have been the most talented or most skilled of his generation, even Lambert had no business experience when she commissioned Mies.  In this there is a lesson for us all.  'Means must be subservient to values', Mies would say.

So on to this years Stirling Prize.  Is there any among the nominees who will make us 'dream big dreams', as Anthony Hopkins' Ptolemy recounts in Stone's 'Alexander'?  Well I don't think it will be the very nice and very skilfully executed housing in Harlow that will do it, or some skilfully sweetened sink housing in Sheffield.  In fact it would take a lot for any housing to so move us.  No, it's more likely to be the Agora like university buildings in Limerick, all heavy concrete, stone and civilising intent.  The numinous cavern of the Giants Causeway Museum? Hmmmmm.  Then there are the two 'struggles' for the very   highest; one palpable, the other invisible; Astley Castle and Bishop Edward King Chapel respectively.  These two are separated from the others by a Lote tree.  

This years  RIBA Gold Medal winner Joseph Rykwert, in one of the best building write-ups by him in a while tells us how The chapel is liturgically formed of two elements, the altar and the lecturn, and of how the ellipse, generated from these 2 foci,  is the perfect shape to express the basic conceptual arrangement.  

From this genesis comes the roof, whose slightly sunken soffit uses the invisible line linking the two foci of the ellipse -floated down a short distance from window head height- as it's datum.  Directly from this then comes the exposed internal structure which lightly and delightfully supports this roof only at its sunken 'hull' and which, making an aesthetic virtue out of the necessity for cross bracing- assumes a form akin to the type of fan-vaulting that is associated with Gothic churches, such as one finds in and around the college where the chapel is located.  The lattice trails off beyond the hull at both it's ends, resolving itself just short of the enclosing elliptical wall where the members turn sharply downwards to form columns, the inner colonnade of an ambulatory, but more of that later.  

Light is admitted at clerestory level between slender stone fins, bouncing of the smooth plaster soffit-hull of the roof.  
Most architects can only dream of such a supreme  resolution of form and function, from which seems to derive a completely consistent layering of richness, of an order that seems all but absent from much modern architecture, here it seems effortless.  Bramante and Bach would have no doubt approved.  And yet somehow the perfect balance is upset. Something disturbs about the final result.  Something detracts from the union of concept, structure and form begun so promisingly.  Those stone fin mullions  don't quite 'fit' and there is a formalism at work bedevilling the naturalness of the final result.  It is the ambulatory, or rather the way in which it seems to have been created 'almost as an afterthought' (it seems almost silly to say that but bear with me) which seems to be at issue.   It's as if the ambulatory has been formed by disengaging the roof structure from the wall at some point during the design process, curving its criss-crossing members downwards to form the columns.  This creates two separate structural systems; the masonry one of the enclosing walls and the engineered timber one of the roof/colonnade.  Having set up this tectonic duality in order to form the ambulatory, the subsequent treatment of the now independent masonry enclosure confuses.  The tripartite stratification of its stone cladding  into ashlar, houndstooth and mullion fin at the top seems to retain a vestige of a previous tectonically unified scheme which would have, notionally, been a timber framed building with the stone encasement effectively 'hung' from it. The stone fin mullions at the top are strongly suggestive of this notional timber frame 'breaking free' at this point in order admit the clerestory light, otherwise this treatment of the stone enclosure can only be explained by wilfulness and formalism.  The details supplied by the architect support this contention.  It turns out that slender steel ''T' sections presumably bolted to an inner structural masonry leaf are the 'real mullions' supporting a clipped-on stone fin externally  and SW clad in MDF internally.  If we look closely, we might also object to the steel 'X' ties which provide hidden but necessary support to the roof structure at the criss-cross points.  

Rykwert, who wrote of the necessity of artifice, may well direct our attention at this point to the way in which Mies 'hid' the  fire-protecting concrete encasement in his steel framed buildings with a plate metal sheathing and welded-on extruded 'I' sections.  In his defence Mies would have said that these measures  played the same role as mouldings in classical architecture; elaborating on the underlying constructional philosophy; a legitimate part of the 'spiritual battle' he talked about.  

We are quite a ways from this at Cuddesdon College and it's new rather delightful Chapel.  The building I'm afraid, is the poorer for this lack, but this is to enact the harsh judgement that is reserved only for the very best.  Remember, when we mention Mies in the same breadth as Bramante or Alexander in the same breadth as Achilles, no one flinches.  An august and select group.  And why should we flinch from the mention of those names and achievements which vindicate humanity's existence?  God knows we spend enough time focusing on what detracts from it; war, environmental catastrophe, cruelty.  There is inspiration as well as caution; carrot as well as stick.

So it is with this spirit that I hope -along with McLaughlin-the architects of the re-animation of Astley castle, Witherford Watson Mann will not take offence if  perchance they ever read this.  I hope they they will see that it is their excellent work- like that of McLaughlin- that has given us occasion to remember the stuff of Greek legend (literally and figuratively), even though ultimately, that excellent work falls short of it.

I remember the original model for the Astley Castle scheme, a new armature-represented by balsa wood- inserted into the existing fabric-represented by plaster- in such a way so as to support, protect and extend the historic fabric.  

I remember being really quite excited by this approach at the time, I thought it was brave and necessary.  As Edwin Heathcote notes in his write up of the project, not enough of the english modern approach to extending the country's historic fabric attempts to commune with it, to measure ourselves against it, to give us the opportunity of taking our place within the unfolding history of human experience.  WWM's proposals for Astley Castle promised much in that regard but they haven't 'quite' delivered.  

First off, the inserted new armature is not as homogenous as that balsa wood and plaster model suggested it would be, but this is going a bit too far.  The armature is formed of  foreign brick (well chosen I might add) sharp concrete and -problematically I might add- engineered wood in the form of Glulam and various combinations of softwood and laminated Oak.  The brick-supplied by legendary manufacturer Petrsen Tegl- is a typically long and flat continental variety whose colour compliments the weathered sandstone of the existing ruin and whose flat profile allows the new construction to get 'up close and personal with the old'.  At the same time the flush mortar joints give the new brick elements a confident presence so that the new is not simply overwhelmed by the wrinkly, crevassed history of the old, even if by 'stepping forward to be counted' in this way, they are ultimately outdone by the adjacent weathered craftsmanship of bygone centuries.  

Having used such a beautiful brick so extensively however, one may be forgiven for thinking it strange that more use has  not been made of the vault and the arch, perhaps in the way that Kahn showed us how to.  Instead of vaults we have concrete lintels which it has to be said -if a full and frank discussion with the past is to be had - are a truer reflection of modern syntactical sensibility than vaults and arches.  Having said that though the type of lintol we are treated to seems a rather inadequate thing, strangely subdued. Again the details supplied tell us the reason why since these are 'biscuit' type lintols much of whose active bulk is hidden from view.  The overall effect is to render the new construction very much like drapery or tapestry, an impression reinforced by the textile quality of the brick, the way the brick turns into a carpet in the outdoor dining room and the way certain details render the construction 'weightless'.  I'm thinking particularly of the large opening (or parting) immediately to the left of the fireplace in the outdoor dinng room, supported seemingly impossibly off the centre of a large window opening.  Such details reveal a desire to 'tread lightly' on history which is perhaps entirely appropriate in this day and age, confidence in our contemporary architectural production not being what it was.  We'd have to go back to the time of Spence's Coventry Cathedral to find it at an all time high, and to the kiboshing of ABK's competition winning National Gallery proposal by Prince Charles, to pinpoint the start of it's decline.  Even Alexander, eventually had to listen to his troops, end the campaign and turn for home, but the subtlety and ambiguity of the approach adopted here by WWM is beguiling.  

And so to the timber, exposed roof structure and joinery elements- all of which are executed in various types of engineered rather than natural  wood, so subsequently there is no 'real' grain and no aspirant prenatal form (Kahn might've asked if it knows what it wants to be).  It might as well be..well... Er...Balsa wood.  It is however difficult to see how the roof in particular could have been executed in oak or something similar without being prohibitively costly.  But the 'unfinished' aesthetic WWM have chosen an 'unfinished' for these wood elements doesn't help matters, a deliberate 'provisionalism', done certainly intending to complement the ruined state of the host structure and perhaps even to celebrate it, but like McLaughlin's clipped on mullions this is a step too far down the road of artifice for me and smacks a little of wilfulness.  Take the stair for example.  Rather than make a sophisticated parody of an unfinished stair why not actually 'design' a timber stair as a beautiful form (like you get in stately homes..hint) and then let the centuries do their own work rather than try to usurp the right of time?  But perhaps honing the engineered wood into such complex forms is the only way to make it 'sing'?  Maybe this kind of treatment is what the relatively anodyne exposed timber roof structure is missing, (it almost seems to be just once removed from being in need of plasterboard and skim)? Hmmm.  But it's  the extra-tall windows that bother me most, particularly when seen in the same breadth as the exquisite weathered stone tracery of the ruin.  

A series of characterless custard picture frames clumsily attired with a fig-leaf lead skirt.  Taken out of the context of this historic ruin, the materials; brick, concrete and blonde timber if not ordinary are certainly unspectacular.  Think WWM's own Amnesty International Headquarters in Shoreditch and you'd be on the right track; ordinary raised to the level of the extraordinary.  One wonders if there a veiled champagne-socialist imperative to democratise this ancient stately residence; to surreptitiously undermine its exclusivity through a studied unfussiness ?  Is this why Heathcote in spite of himself likes it so much?  If this is so then this is a mistake.  Mies knew that architecture had to be essentially apolitical: 'we refuse to recognise problems of form, but only problems of building' he said, but the same could be said of the 'big picture problems of politics'.  If architects want to change the world they should perhaps take to the streets or vote like everyone else, or even write but they should never imagine that their work can change the world should they?  Well Alexander, Bramante even Mies and certainly Lambert would disagree with me here.  In response I would only say remind them of their own approaches, indicated at the beginning of this piece; 'brick by carefully placed brick with courage, will and conviction'.  Striving after God/Greatness through details.  Then Alexander, Bramante, Lambert and especially Mies would see what Im driving at.

If these details aren't constructed champagne socialism though, then they (the lead skirt and the ceiling joists included) are the solved 'problems of building' par excellence, which perhaps leads us to think that Mies contradicted himself when made that statement until we remember that he also said: 

'Means must be subsidiary to ends and to our desire for dignity and value'

P.S

Alexander may have been an inveterate dreamer, hankering after the glory of Achilles  but he would have achieve nothing without first being perhaps the greatest military general and strategist in history.  Phyllis Lambert may have dreamed about the beauty of The Renaissance but she would not have got near it without the kind of tooth and nail fighting that saw her stubbornly insist on  10 foot high ceilings so that she could bargain for the 9 foot ones that she and Mies actually wanted. Details.  Greatness.

The Top Ten Fictional Mentors (In order of 'Bad*ness) [*Bad is used here in the sense of 'extremely impressive']

10 Bruce Wayne

There are three incarnations of Bruce Wayne as mentor.  The earliest is the slightly over-earnest, grey spandex wearing, slightly overbearing 'father figure' of the 1960's 'BIFF', 'THWACK' really really camp Batman and Robin series.

Next we have the brilliant bitter, old and twisted (physically and emotionally) retired Batman / Bruce Wayne of the Brilliant futuristic animated series 'Batman of the Future' where the old goat has passed on 'cape and cowl' to teenager terry McGinnis while he 'runs 'tings' from the Bat Cave.  McGinnis has to balance being Batman with homework, babysitting and keeping his girlfriend happy.

Finally, we have the semi-retired Batman of the recent movie 'The Dark Knight Rises' where Bruce Wayne/Batman is as much inspired/motivated by the young police officer John Blake (who's figured out his secret identity) as the other way around, and who leaves Blake 'The Batman' in his will.

My personal fav? Bitter, old, twisted and animated!

9. Obi Wan Kenobi

Being responsible for the training of both Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker- the two most significant figures in the Star Wars saga -gets Obi Wan on this list, even though he messed up royally with Anakin.  Played to brilliant effect by Alec Guinness and Ewan McGregor '....You were the chosen one.......!!!!'


8. Lord Matsumoto Moritsugu

Ken Watanabe's portrayal of this inspiring old world samurai warrior-poet earned him an Oscar nomination and almost made us forgive one of Tom Cruise's most annoying performances in an otherwise utterly forgettable movie.  It was brilliant the way Watanabe radiated calm from his Buddhist temple in the Samurai village.

7. Master Yoda

He's trained Jedi for over 900 years, need I say more?  Slightly ridiculous CGI version of his younger self in the later Star Wars films.  Check out Tartokofsy's brilliant animated version of him in the excellent animated 'Clone Wars' (as opposed to the CGI ' Clone Wars').

6. Ducard / Ras Al Gul

Batman's Mentor turned enemy-when Bruce Wayne declined to share in Ducard's expansion of revenge for his wife's murder, into a misanthropic murderous campaign against everyone everywhere who might not be very nice.  Captain Ahab would be proud.  A hard, bitter and twisted taskmaster.  I bet he was bullied at school.  A note, Bruce Wayne/Batman's enemies are always versions of himself.  There are who he may have become had he failed to keep the lust for revenge at bay.

5. Colonel Kurtz 

 Marlon Brando in an iconic performance.  How many mentors do you know who decapitate their victims while quoting TS Eliot?  By the time Willard realises that Kurtz is 'mentoring' him, from a distance, through his file, it's too late!!!  He is to Moritsugu what Darth Vader is to Luke Skywalker.

4.Mr Miyagi

He's Mr Miyagi.  He's fat Coca Cola in a glass bottle.  Everyone else on this list is Coca Cola in a plastic bottle (diet, zero, etc..etc..) or Sainsbury's / Morrisons 'cola drink'.


3. Pai Mei

All of the mentors up until now have been real 'baad-aasses' who nevertheless retained a kind of humility or emotional vulnerability and there is an understanding that this is in fact part of their strength.  Not this guy.  Tarantino's sadistic task master is 'Baad' and he knows he's 'Baad' (he even has the same shoes and socks as Michael Jackon).  It's Darwinian.  He's at the top of the food chain and he knows it.  Reminds me of my old 11+plus tutor Mrs Koshi.

2. Li Mu Bai

The legendary swordsman who just wants to give up thrashing bad guys and live the quiet life with equally Michelle Yeoh (don't we all).  However he is drawn to the precocious and rare martial arts talent of Zhang Ziyi's 'Jen'.  Amazing sequence where he gives Jen (who is no mug) a fencing lesson with a tree branch (while she uses his legendary antique sword 'The Green Destiny').  He subdues her with the stick.  Later on in the film he moonwalks on water proving that he really is Michael Jackson 'Baad'.

1. Master Toda

He is referred to at certain points in Yamada's subtle melodrama 'The Hidden Blade'.  It's the end of the 'Samurai way', the West is encroaching on Japan.  Master Toda, legendary fencing master has apparently seen the writing on the wall and given up his Samurai status to become a farmer (for which he is mocked).  Towards the end of the film, he makes a 5 minute appearance as Kategiri (the film's main protagonist) seeks out his old fencing teacher for one last lesson as he has to fight someone whom he is not confident of beating.  Kategiri arrives on Toda's farm to see the old man tilling some soil.  He asks for help.  The old man picks up the Kendo training sword used for practice and selects a bit of bamboo lying on the ground for himself (he only has the one Kendo sword) and obliges.  I would trade all the other films on this list for the 5 minutes that Master Toda is on camera in this movie.  The film is also the most profound on this list

'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.

AR's 'Big Rethink', letter to Editor, Feb 2012 - Full text

Dear Madam,

The AR's 'Big Rethink' is a welcome change from the coffee table nature of many of it's past building studies. However, Peter Buchanan's article has come too late to have any meaningful effect, and even after the same points have been raised by contributors to other periodicals. This is due more to the timing of the AR's new direction than any fault on Buchanan's part.

Where the Buchanan article has perhaps trumped other similar offerings, is in the severity and urgency of it's tone and in the direct -albeit qualified- criticism of named practices; a dubious honour, but Buchanan has probably only written what has already been said at dinner parties, cafes and lecture theatres across the UK at least, over the past few years.

The targets of Buchanan's ire are notable by their almost complete absence from contemporary architectural theoretical discourse; they are the architectural equivalent of the Football world's 'Galacticos'; great names of the past who have become victims of their own successes and who are not likely now, to suffer significantly from negative criticism. There are many other architects who are just as guilty of the 'sins of the starchitect', or at least would be , given the choice between growing their practice off the back of a large prestigious job and turning such a job down for ethical reasons. There is a reason why Peter Zumthor is unique.



David Beckham, Figo, Ronaldo & Zidane were well past it by the time they joined the 'even more past it' Raul to form the 'Galacticos' at Real Madrid FC. Football's equivalent of the 'Justic League'.

No, I fear that there is more to the malaise which presently afflicts architecture than the simple cult of the starchitect. Ultimately we must as architects and theorists admit our powerlessness in the face of larger forces. Modernism was the child of the Industrial Revolution, leading to an unprecedented break in the continuing evolution of craft techniques that had always underpinned architecture, but which had never been properly acknowledged.

This meant that the technical and cultural failures of many of the products of Modernism were probably inevitable.

But what happened subsequently was certainly not inevitable. The fact that architects and theorists never learned from those initial mistakes and continued to assert in their lectures, publications and commentaries- with ever more delusional vehemence - the autonomy of the heroic artiste-architect, led to the repetition of the same cultural and technical failures as before.

In fact it has only been in the last 10 -15 years that the architectural profession, at least in the UK, has begun to see building production in a more interdisciplinary light. This has only occurred because the profession's delusions regarding it's independence have led other actors - contractors, QS's and clients - to lose patience with it and to develop ways of procuring buildings that rely ever less on architects. They will not tolerate another repeat of the failures of Modernism.

If architects and theorists had learned the initial lessons and had developed a Postmodernism that was more responsive to societal needs -such as Peter Buchanan has enunciated - and less self-indulgent, then we may well not have been where we are now as a profession.

Personally I'm interested in how and why this happened. How did the soothe-sayers and the kings (theorists /critics and the architects they taught) get it so wrong? Buchanan talks of Eisenman having gotten away with it for all these years but, like Rogers and Bernie Madoff (to draw parallels with another more immediately significant crisis for a moment) he is an easy target and is not alone in his guilt.

However, it must also be acknowledged that there are some people who, like Nouriel Roubini, can feel satisfied that they at least, have been doing justice to their vocations as opposed to milking them.

In the mid-nineties, when I started training, and when the building boom that has just ended was about to get into full swing, Kenneth Frampton was way ahead of the game with his 'Studies in Tectonic Culture'.

In Switzerland, Sergison Bates architects have just completed yet another 'cheap plain building with quiet unobtrusive dignity', the type which Buchanan has rightly identified as being tragically beyond the reach of most architects, but which Sergison Bates seem to have mastered. It says much about the current state of affairs in this country that practices like theirs seem more welcome on the continent than in the UK.

In the 1970's (when I was born) the unfashionable Robert & Brenda Vale carried out their autonomous house project and concluded that the continuing growth of cities (and the economic growth that underpins it) is not compatible with sustainable development. Increasingly, it's looking as if they were right but few in the profession have really taken them seriously.

Alas for the AR, Buchanan and others like them, because the horse bolted a long long time ago.

Sincerely

Michael Badu

Michael Badu Architecture, London

True Lies

Phidias, Vitruvius, Alberti, Palladio, Schinkel, Mies, Chipperfield? So is the unbroken chain from now into the past that charts one of the main stylistic tributaries in the continuous flow that is architecture, or should I say, western architecture.

Impressive isn't it.

Mirroring this is the unbroken chain that links present day Eurocentricsm to it's democratic inheritance, or so this seems at first until one looks a little more closely. I don't know why but the 'shallow banks' of this 'second stream' lose their definition more readily under scrutiny. Maybe it's because there are no 'images' as such of democracy in ancient Greece. Ancient Rome we know from TV and movies was a blood thirsty affair quite a lot of the time. Alberti's Italian provinces were places of inequality, corruption, insincerity and intrigue. Germany was unfortunate enough to learn the hard lesson for itself and the rest of Europe that there is a thin line between Nationalism and Fascism, but quite a while before that much of Georgian England was being built from the proceeds of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

Not quite as impressive as it's architectural corollary.

But lets scrutinize the architectural side of things.

Phidias' Parthenon with it's Doric Orders carved out of stone is where it all began, and it's a beginning as mystical as the meaning of Stone Henge. Many explanations have been put forward as to the meaning of the form of this most archetypal of architectonic constructs. Scholars such as Kenneth Frampton suggest it is representative of timber construction, being it's 'petrified form'. Some still allude to it's almost 'divine' status as the revealed law of architecture. For perhaps many more people, the fact that it was the produced by the Ancient Greeks is reason enough to place it on a pedestal.

Whatever it's importance/foundation, Classical language as contained in the ruins of the Parthenon is where it all began. It was however a false beginning because we now know that the structure in it's pristine condition would have been painted bright colours. This however was a fact unknown to the Romans and to the Renaissance architects, so they misinterpreted the 'divine law' and set us all down the wrong path.


However, during the last 500 years or so we have never looked at the architecture that was spawned by that ruin and thought "There is something missing", or "bit drab ain't it?". No, on the contrary, we have accepted and celebrated the bare hewn stone clad buildings that have resulted, enjoying the heightened awareness of the carving, massing, modelling and form that a lack of colour gives.


We now could not tolerate colourful classical architecture, so used to the lie have we become, but does this matter?

Should it bother us that our conceptions of beauty are built on such shakey ground? Through the accidental text of Vitruvius and the creative archaeology of Alberti came apparently solid foundations on which to build. The real work in this regard was done by Alberti , living at a time when courtiers and scholars were as adept at counterfeiting history as modern day bankers are at creating money out of thin air, Alberti's commentary on Vitruvius shored up any 'cracks' that might have been noticed later on so that the likes of Palladio and then Schinkel would be none the wiser. The blind spot created by the belief in Europe's inherent supremacy over all other continents, which itself was fuelled by a belief in the unassailable authority of the Ancient Greeks and Europe's sole birthright to this legacy, has always been essential to guaranteeing the successful effect of the skilfully wrought artifice.

By the time we get to Mies, who was inspired by the dignity, austerity, and intrinsic order of Schinkel's buildings (how dignified and orderly would colourful versions be?), the methodology employed by Alberti (of exhaustively measuring and recording raw primary data, such as the dimensions of capitals, and architraves) to establish the authority of precedents is a distant memory. We had now entered the arena of the image.


One arresting image was enough to make one's argument, and this is a legacy which is still very much with us. Mies used photo-montage and hand rendering to great effect in order to convince a wider audience of the 'rightness of his designs'. He then executed one, the Barcelona Pavilion, a building with no function, nothing more than a full size 3-D image, but what an image and what an argument! It was this building that eventually catapulted him to worldwide fame. What is notable about the effect of this building is that very few people saw it first hand. It was known by most only in photographic form.


The photography promised much. It promised simple, perhaps even cheap, elegant architecture. Easy solutions such as those that were being happened upon in the scientific and industrial world. It promised nothing less than that man had finally reached the end of the journey that started in the Renaissance, the heritage bequeathed by Aristotle, Plato and the rest. Man had finally become the measure.

So why today does David Chipperfield, for example, employ an altogether more compromised (if elegant) version of the modern masters lexicon? Why is he in the minority in taking the batten from Mies, why is there not more consensus?


Well, the rot set in not long after Mies built his first building. He himself elaborated the great constructional gymnastics that had to be employed to achieve his aesthetic, particularly in America. His Buildings, though elegant were not the cheapest and were not the most comfortable to live in, as Dr Edith Farnsworth, or any School of Architecture professor will testify.


A generation of people have experienced the reality of the built works of the great modern masters at closer quarters than the captured image had once allowed, and the result has been building codes, regulations and standards (hallelujah). For most, Mies's buildings survive as servants to our history lessons rather than as forerunners to the bright future we should have attained by now.

The World Wars that interrupted Mies's career, also put paid to any notion of Man having reached the apogee of his evolution, and so robbed Mies's aesthetic of one of it's main supports.

Perhaps in the end, you need to have solid foundations.


http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6430519.ece