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4079 Art 2 – Architecture
One of my greatest interests is architecture. I never considered being an architect since I could barely draw a straight-line. However, one of my great friends, Ian Donaldson, is an architect. Not only that, he designed one of my favourite buildings; which was the shopping complex inserted behind the Rows in Chester. It has one of the nicest coup de theatres, in that the multi-storey car park is built above it is slightly offset. This means that when you get into the lift in the centre of the car park you expect to get out of it in the ground floor car park - as is usually the case. In fact, the lift doors open onto the brilliantly lit atrium in the main shopping concourse.
The architecture I like most is modernist. My favourite architects are Le Courbusier and, in particular Mies van der Rohe. It was Le Courbusier who said ‘a house is a machine for living in’, and I've always taken that as the measure by which I judged the houses in which I have lived. Few of them have actually lived up to that, though the last two, in Milton Keynes, have started to come close to it. His ‘Unite d'Habitation’ in Marseille were ground breaking – but were plagiarized by lesser architects who didn’t understand what made them work.
On the other hand, I am not as keen on Frank Lloyd Wright, though I love his Taliesin West – built as a ruin.
Mies is my real favourite, however. He built the skyscrapers and, in particular, said ‘less is more’. Hs buildings are cut back to just the essence. Mind you, his essence -- especially in terms of Seagram building in New York -- is travertine, bronze and raw silk! The statements his buildings make is superb. The best place to see them is in Chicago where he taught at the university. But I remember going into one building, the National Gallery in Berlin, and immediately recognizing that it was designed by him. On the other hand, his buildings made no compromises; so the owner of the ‘Farnsworth House’, which floated above a meadow, hated it - as it was impossible to live in. His ground breaking Barcelona Pavilion had no space for exhibits – it was the exhibit!.
More recently, and rather more brutally, I love the work of Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano. I had some contact with Renzo Piano, since he designed portable building we used for IBM Exhibit. It cost a fortune, but it was a glorious expression of architecture with a wood laminate frame and Plexiglas pyramids which rested on this; a textbook lesson in how to cover the space. Mind you, dealing with such prima donnas is not easy. It arrived in England with the fire exits labelled -- in green -- as 'uscita'. Needless to say, those in charge of fire regulations took a dim view of this. It took a number of days of negotiations with Renzo Piano, who had the final say about any change the building, before he would allow the minor changes needed for even for these mandatory fire regulations
I, and Pat, tend to like any ancient buildings which are the best of their period. There is something that makes good architecture, of any period, stand out above all the contemporary buildings. As I said, I now like modernist buildings. I am quite amused by post-modernist buildings, which are almost decorated like fancy cakes, but somehow or other they don't have the raw power of the previous generation of modernist buildings.
IBM was great patron of architecture in general. In the UK its temporary building at Portsmouth received a national award. It was just a cube of glass. But I also like the work of various architect’s offices. In its time, before the Conservatives destroyed it, the Greater London Council Architects Department, put up some superb buildings. Equally, Skidmore Owens and Merrill (SOM) built some beautiful buildings; ranging from the Heinz headquarters on the outskirts of London to the library at Harvard. Gordon Bunschaft, its leading architect at the time, again managed to pare architecture down to its essence.
Little credit is given to it, but Milton Keynes is something of an architect's dream. It is true that most of the housing is -- as is standard throughout the United Kingdom -- the suburbia beloved of the building societies. The layout of Milton Keynes is though quite adventurous. My favourite book is, in fact, 'A Pattern Language' which lays down a set of rules by which town planning can be integrated with architecture. It almost describes an urban utopia -- and sometimes Milton Keynes comes close to this.
In particular, the bungalow where I now live is a hidden masterpiece in its own right; as is the whole estate at Marshworth.
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