prince’s got taste
Francesca Romana Dell’Aglio
Underneath the process of the construction of a building another story can be unravelled: the one whose protagonists are the people whose will lead to its realisation, the story of the political –and sometimes royal– influences. A building can thus act as a reminder of a series of dynamics that involve both crowds and power. Over the 70s and 80s England, after having found a flourishing national style recognised by Reyner Banham as Brutalism, witnessed a striking ideological setback endorsed by the sudden appearance of the architectural brilliancy of HRH Prince of Wales. From the Barbican Estates to Pundbury Village. But moreover it is obscure how the Prince managed to be so influential on the public taste, but this can potentially be a parallel story. Everything starts when Prince Charles begun to trumpet his ‘postcard vision’ (Mikuriya 2011) of Britain. This happened officially in 1984 during the 150th anniversary of the Royal Institute of British Architect, where he was invited to give a speech on architecture. He decided to focus specifically on the second competition on the Hampton site designated to become the addition of the existent National Gallery. That was the Thatcherism period, years when public funding was hard to obtain and private developers had to work together with architects on a proposal for the extension, which turned to become object of the public judgment during an exhibition hosted by the National Gallery itself in 1982. Besides an initial enthusiasm of both the Trustees and the public, different uncomfortable words were used to describe the participant’s proposals, from “inappropriate” to “divorced in style, texture, and spirit form Wilkin’s building” until the final ferocity of the royal critic: “a municipal fire station, complete with a sort of tower that contains the siren. […] a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend”. Those words were so pivotal that the competition turned into a fiasco. This episode not simply determined a failure of a young architectural office, Ahrends Burton and Koralek, but “after all Prince Charles had become the main architectural critic the architects had to satisfy” (Mikuriya 2011). Following this failure another competition was opened in 1985, together with the announcement of the generous donation from the Sainsbury brothers. After one year of architect’s hunt, the winning proposal was the one designed by American architects Denise Scott-Brown and Robert Venturi. Surely this time the result appears decorous and devoted to Her Royal Highness’ list of “Ten Principle of Architecture”, published not long time before the official opening of the Sainsbury Wing in his remarkable bestseller A Vision of Britain. But one thing seems certain, none of the committee, nevertheless the Prince himself, grasped the ironic move of the American couple, they didn’t capture the inner gesture of that building, which though remaining apparently faithful to the neoclassical look of the Wilkins’ façade, critically pointed out a resume of their previous theories on billboards and signs –evidently obscure to many. But let’s try for a moment to analyse what was happening somewhere else. Paris, which between 1971 and 1977 was facing the construction of one of the most revolutionary building of the XX century, the Beabourg, later renamed after the passed away Président George Pompidou. A city which have already accepted the regularization of the XIX urban planning by the hand of Baron Georges Hausmann, a city where a century before experienced the revolution –be aware that this is the same word used by the Prince of Wales to define his battle against modernism– is here ready to host, without fear, the most modern building of that time. The Beabourg, though at the beginning seen with hostility, was then a successful urban outcome. This is the revolution, here we face the swinging 60s ideas of Archigram and Cedric Price together with the intelligent capture of that hard political time, as the architect Richard Rogers remarked in an interview: “the façade on the building, if you look more carefully, was very much about the riots and very much about Vietnam. We wanted to make a building that was clearly of our period, which caught the zeitgeist of the now” (Rogers 2014) Paris confirms once more his nature of ‘city of choc’, the one that Benjamin referred to in his Arcades, against the nature of a city like London, which always avoided trauma in favour of a continuity between epochs. The Prince of Wales did not stop his climb towards the reach of the suitable architecture. After establishing a School in 1986, The Prince of Wales Institution of Architecture, devoted to teach traditional craft and drawing, he created a magazine, Perspective on Architecture in 1994; until the latest materialisation of his ideology in the West Sussex village of Poundbury –realised together with another conservative master Leon Krier. Those theoretical attempt of Prince Charles remain unsuccessful, which is not surprising if we consider that his royal status is what gave him free speech. A final but pleasurable demonstration of how his ideas are deficient outside of a commercial context. I wonder why he didn’t bother to give his precious advice for the temporary ramp built in the north façade of his beloved Saint Paul Cathedral, maybe he was too committed to unconstitutionally shut down Richard Rogers proposal for Chelsea Barracks.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Mikuriya 2011 Frances H. Mikuriya, Duchy Unoriginal: Prince of Wales and Architecture, Architectural Association Thesis, London 2011 Rogers 2014 Deezen Book of Interviews, London 2014 Articles from ‘The Guardian’: Robert Booth, Prince Charles’s meddling in planning ‘unconstitutional’, says Richard Rogers, 15th June 2009 Robert Booth, Richard Rogers: ‘Prince Charles wrecked my Chelsea project’, 16th June 2009 Rowan Moore, The shape of Britain to come…as designed by Pronce Charles, 24th June 2011