Architecture and Metaphor The Search For Post Modern Meaning
Alexander Crean 05423040
Architecture and Metaphor Trope or Thought The relationship between architecture and metaphor is well established. As a discipline the discourse of architecture is categorised by a particular affinity for metaphorical rhetoric in its analysis, articulation and interpretation. We seem compelled to employ an elaborate array of spiritual, corporal, organic, industrial, romantic and other metaphors from various disciplines to decode our physical environment. Perhaps uniquely, a practice which is grounded in the physical and the functional finds its debate most readily transferred to the realm of the figurative. This predisposition is present at every scale and in every forum from the personal tactile description of individual buildings to the broad theoretical categorisation of entire movements. When we wish to discuss or describe architecture we can escape neither the primacy nor the ubiquity of the metaphor, indeed it would seem that if one wishes to partake at all in the evolving architectural narrative one must become particularly adept at negotiating this type of parlance. There have been countless variations and iterations of metaphorical thought and analysis in architecture, with analogies ranging from organism to the machine. language to the body. Few would argue against the success and indeed the necessity of these approaches as a means of abstract articulation. Indeed often we find the two, architecture and its metaphor inseparable. However despite their success, these approaches share a particular conceptual view of the relationship that exists between architecture and its metaphor, that of the metaphorical ‘reading’. This notion suggests that architecture has within it an inherent meaning or truth and that this is revealed or illuminated through the ‘trope’ of the metaphor. It being considered a linguistic or poetic device that seeks to express a preconceived thought of an existing reality. The notion expressed by Braque that ‘reality only reveals itself when illuminated by a ray of poetry’ - 1. This approach suggests that there is an inherent ‘rightness’ to be achieved through an appropriate comparison or analysis, that there exists on the one hand an architecture in and of itself with its embodied meaning, and on the other the rhetoric which strives to achieve the most perfect articulation of this meaning , through the insightful application of metaphorical analysis. This is however i wish to argue a particularly reductive view of the relationship between architecture and metaphor, relegating its employ to that of a lens or frame, which belies a more complex and fundamental process at work. Rather I wish to explore the idea of metaphor as a cognitive process, which far from being the linguistic expression of literal mental thought, metaphor forms the conceptual basis through which we decipher and act within the physical world. That metaphor is a matter of thought and not just of language. And that its role in architecture is that of understanding not explanation. This is to say that the metaphors that abound in critical texts and open discussions on architecture, are not mere rhetorical flourish or verbal ornament seeking an articulation of an existing architectural understanding, but rather they are the process through which we comprehend the architecture itself, serving as linguistic evidence of this metaphorical process of the mind at work. This distinction, provides a valuable vantage on traditional architectural discourse. If the figurative language which we see concurrent with architecture can no longer be said to be independent of it, then no critique is idle or arbitrary. Each figurative allusion provides a tap to a deeper well of conceptual understanding. That as Weller Embler suggests ‘figurative language is home of many a deep seated, unexamined belief or attitude’ - 2.
This awareness of critical discourse as evidence of a dynamic cognitive process, and not the result of intellectual resolution allows a unique insight. We do not ‘connect’ an architecture with a particular metaphor once we feel we have understood it but rather the metaphors we employ are intrinsic to how we conceive of the architecture itself. And that the language we employ will have an immediate impact on our reality. That ‘language shapes both thought and our knowledge of reality’ - 3. This suggests that ultimately the constant rhetorical shifts over architecture’s narrative, represent not a repositioning of opinions around a static architecture but a fundamental conceptual restructuring of our understanding of the architecture itself. And that ultimately in order to conceive of architecture at all, we must speak of it. The work of Roland Barthes explores this symbiotic relationship between object meaning and language stating that ‘objects systems in general (food, clothing, architecture) never exist autonomously but become semiologies only by passing through the relay of language’ - 4. Here we see the notion of language as an integral part of a cognitive process, that it is not simply attributing meaning to an object but rather meaning emerges during our articulation. In this respect, it is the critical discussions on architecture as much as the architecture itself that affirms and asserts meaning in architecture. That as successful a compendium of the history of modern architecture would be in the accumulation of contemporary and historical rhetoric as in perhaps its drawings or photographs.
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1 - Jencks C citing Braque (1969) ‘Semiology & Architecture - Meaning in Architecture’ The Cresset Press pg 11 2- Schwartz G citing Embler W (1988) ‘Metaphor and Cognition’ The English Journal Vol 77 No 8 Dec pg 33 3- Jencks C citing Whorf (1969) ‘Semiology & Architecture - Meaning in Architecture’ pg 18 4- Seligmann K citing Barthes R(1977) ‘Architecture and Language’ Journal of Architectural Education Vol 30 No4 Apr pg 25 5- Drawing ‘The Sign Situation’ ^ Ibid pg 14
Linguistic Metaphor The prevailing and traditionally accepted view of metaphor is that of a purely poetic or literary action that metaphorical allusions are mere linguistic devices or decorative elements that elaborate or distort fundamental cognitive reasoning. However the work of cognitive linguistics by theorists such as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, stress the distinction that metaphor ‘emanates’ but does not ‘originate’ in language. That our figurative rhetoric exists as a result of the basic underlying metaphorical conceptual process, that ‘our ordinary conceptual system in which we both think and act is fundamentally metaphorical in nature’ - 1. Their work as well as research in various other fields assert the primacy of metaphor in understanding and examines how metaphor provides the conceptual basis through which we decipher and subsequently act within the physical world. That this process is present from the most basic of everyday activities to our most complex intellectual endeavours. That operations of metaphor permeate our very being, which surface and are made evident in language. The work of Paul Ricouer suggests that nearly all statements in language are in fact metaphorical ‘from the ‘primitive’ act of pointing to an object to profound utterances in science and poetry’ - 2. One of the many fundamental examples put forward by Lakoff and Johnson is the culturally held metaphorical comprehension of ‘Argument is War’ . Here we adopt both a metaphorical ‘conceptual framework’ and its ‘associated language’. Both these terms are significant, as to their implications for how our language has a direct and significant effect on our actions. The ‘associated language’, the expressions and phrases we employ to describe an argument, such as ‘attacking’ and ‘defending’ a position, ‘strategy’ and ‘tactic’, ‘opponent’ and ‘defendant’ even the ultimate concept of winning and losing are predicated on our understanding of the activity of war, despite the two being distinct and markedly separate activities, one verbal discourse and the other armed conflict. We adopt this particular language not because we find it suitable but because this is how we understand the concept of an argument on a fundamental level. We are culturally predisposed to this conceptual metaphor and are only capable of recognising a situation as an argument if it operates within it. The importance of the term ‘conceptual framework’ is the distinction it makes to prior notions of metaphor as something poetic or solely linguistic which operates about pre existing ‘truths’. The argument put forth by cognitive science and linguistics is that either culturally or individually by adopting a particular ‘metaphorical framework’ we proceed to define ‘truths’ or ‘reality’ as they align with that particular metaphor. In the case given above the aspects of argument which coincide with war are accentuated and those which do not are concealed. As such every metaphorical ‘framework’ is accompanied by a series of ‘entailments’ and ‘concealments’ defined by the overriding conceptual metaphor, and once we have entered into that framework it fundamentally structures both our language and perhaps more significantly our actions. As Weller Embler suggests we act in accordance with how we speak, that ‘our behaviour is a function of the words we use’ - 3. Culturally, by subscribing to a common metaphorical framework, we are able to communicate effectively with one another within its remit. However when we transpose this concept to the broader field of architectural discourse, we realise that the principles remain the same but their impact has a far greater resonance.
When we look to the significant architectural movements of the 20th century we find that they are defined by this very same conceptual ‘metaphorical framework’ and ‘associated language’. The proponents of the International Style justified their work through metaphors of ‘health’ and the ‘machine’, with its associated language of ‘rationality’, ‘cleanliness’, ‘logic’ and ‘objectivity’. Those who pioneered Brutalism championed an architecture as ‘sculpture’, espousing its virtues of ‘toughness’ and ‘honesty’ while Futurism brought with it its metaphors of ‘progression’ and ‘movement’ and a language of ‘dynamism’ ‘flexibility’ and ‘sleekness’. Each new foray in the historical narrative, brings with it a new rhetoric and imagery, and is essentially the process of asserting its ‘metaphorical framework’ over its predecessor. These metaphorical linguistic expressions are the manifestations of conceptual metaphors and consciously or not when we engage the associated language of a particular architectural school of thought we are fundamentally entering into its overriding metaphorical framework. And as with the example of ‘argument’ its ‘entailments’ and ‘concealments’ will structure our rhetoric, our responses and ultimately our reality. The implication here is that critical debates on architectural value, significance and import, the ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ of an architecture become heavily influenced by these linguistic metaphors. As a result often the very ‘meaning’ we attribute to any one particular movement is defined by its associated language. For in order to debate a particular architectural meaning we must first articulate it. As the writing of George Broadbent explores ‘when we speak of meaning in architecture we are concerned with language’ - 4, as such meaning is subject to the same incongruities, connotations and transformations as the language we use to articulate it. Language here is considered in Saussares sense, that of a social contract. Thus the overall understanding of any particular building or movement is dependant on the degree and clarity with which its language permeates its discourse and the majority of people subscribing to its use at a particular time. In this regard the idea of meaning in architecture is in many respects notional, meaning being reliant on a particular language and language being the result of a common social agreement. Thus ‘meaning’ in architecture becomes as changeable as its discourse, meaning as Barthes suggests being not a single truth but part of a social arrangement ‘meaning is a bargain struck between members of a social group - a social construct’ - 5. Thus in approaching abstract concepts of ‘meaning’ or ‘ideology’ in architecture we are engaging this fundamental metaphorical cognitive process with linguistic metaphors forming the manifestations of underlying conceptual metaphors . This process represents the extrinsic or applied ‘meaning’ which we attribute to architectural works, however parallel to this understanding is the intrinsic physical communication which we find within all architectural forms and which we comprehend through the use of physical metaphor.
1 - Lakoff G and Johnson M (1980) ‘Conceptual Metaphors in Everyday Language’ Journal of Philosophy Aug pg 16 2 - Coyne R citing Ricouer P ‘Metaphors in the Design Studio’ (1984) Journal of Architectural Education Vol 48 No2 Dec pg 113 3 - Schwartz G citing Embler W (1988) ‘Metaphor and Cognition’ The English Journal Vol 77 No 8 Dec pg 33 4- G Broadbent (1969) ‘Meaning into Architecture-Meaning in Architecture’ The Cresset Press pg 72 5- Jencks C citing Barthes (1969) ‘Semiology & Architecture - Meaning in Architecture’ The Cresset Press pg 17
Physical Metaphor Having established the metaphor as a fundamental cognitive process, we may gain further understanding of its relationship with architecture by exploring the base origins of metaphor as a conceptual system. The linguistic metaphor which we have examined allows us to express more abstract concepts (argument, time and indeed architectural ideology) in terms that are more easily and concretely understood. As such these metaphors find their roots in the physical world, ‘central metaphors are grounded in our physical experience’- 1. The understanding here being that the body and physical experience of space are our ultimate base point of reference upon which we construct our more abstract metaphorical conceits. Mapping our concrete experiences of physical space onto more recondite concepts in order to structure them more coherently. This embodied physical experience provides, as Rudolph Arnheim observed in his work, a communal base point of reference, ‘a universal foundation of human experience, the ground floor of mental structure’ - 2. A further understanding of the physical root of metaphor can be found in the study of Empathy Theory of Aesthetics and Visual Recognition. The research here attempts to illustrate how our experience of architecture and indeed all physical form is seldom that of static compositions of inanimate objects and structural components but rather that we experience form as having intrinsic often dynamic physical characteristics. That we will inevitably interpret a jagged line as meaning activity while a flat line will suggest a state of repose or inactivity is empirical evidence of this particular ingrained disposition. For Arnheim this expression formed an integral aspect of how we observe physical form ‘visual expression is an indispensable and indeed inescapable attribute of all architectural shapes’ - 3. The argument put forth by theorists such as Henrich Wolfflin in his writings is that it is in fact our own bodies which form the root of this understanding. And that ‘physical forms posses a character only because we ourselves posses a body’ - 4 .Thus in order to perceive physical forms at all we must experience them emphatically through our senses, drawing parallels between our own bodies, physical movement and the object itself. In this respect we understand physical architectural concepts such as balance, verticality, hierarchy, proportion and symmetry as they pertain to our own bodies. And that ‘our own bodily organisation is the form through which we apprehend’ - 5. The presence of this metaphorical process accounts for the extensive corporal language we employ when we are describing the physical attributes of buildings. We habitually use physical metaphors of columns ‘rising’, or stairs ‘climbing’ despite these characteristics being seemingly beyond the remit of purely inanimate structural elements. Our understanding of architectural form is once again reliant on a metaphorical framework, where our comprehension of the objects themselves is predicated on physical metaphor and the corporal conditions we find analogous with them. This theory establishes an underlying concept that ‘form is action’, iterating an understanding that we do not inhabit a static environment about which we orientate ourselves but that due to this process of empathic experience we perceive our environment as a series of dynamically interconnected forms. In his wok Rudolf Arnheim further elaborates on this premise illustrating through a series of examples of everyday and architectural forms how ‘almost any architectural setting is a highly complex constellation of spatial systems in which buildings of any shape create fields of forces around them’ - 6. Reinforcing the concept that architectural forms exert a perceptible force which we interpret physically through metaphors of our own bodies.
The Dynamics of Architectural Form - Rudolf Arnheim
The Dynamics of Architectural Form - R
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drawings by Paolo Portoghesi
Both these fields, the linguistic and the physical illustrate the existence of this ‘metaphorical framework’ of thought. They provide parallel evidence of the same human condition, to utilise metaphor as a means of establishing and interpreting ‘meaning’. The particular importance as it pertains to a study of architectural discourse is that architecture, as a discipline occupies a unique position at the convergence of both of these fields, the physical and the linguistic. Architecture as Rapson observed being both ‘high art and a highly precise social and physical science’ - 8. Thus a building will inevitably communicate to us immediately through its physicality, its shape and form evoking physical metaphors of corporal experience, and yet buildings are not mere objects, they are ideas concepts and visions, and for us to understand them culturally, historically or socially, we reach further into the realm of conceptual metaphor to discuss and understand them. The result of this dichotomy is that rather than identifying a ‘correct’ understanding of a single architectural meaning, an awareness of our metaphorical cognitive process and its workings, allows us to view the concept of ‘meaning’ in architecture as multivalent. That as W Whyte suggests meaning in architecture is never singular, a building’s conceptual communication is a complex myriad of meanings, ‘architecture then does not convey meaning, it conveys meanings’ - 9. What then can we ascertain, when we apply this understanding to a particular period in architectures history. When the question of meaning was at the forefront of the discussion. When there was an acute desire to either establish or preserve a distinct architectural ‘meaning’, but the language in which to do so could not be more disparate.
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1 - Deignan A (2005) ‘Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics’ John Benjamins Publishing pg 19 2 - Arnheim R (1977) ‘The Dynamics of Architectural From’ University of California Press pg 5 3 - ^ Ibid pg 248 4- Wolfflin H (1886) ‘Prolegoma to A Psychology of Architecture’ pg 151 5- ^ Ibid pg 157 6- Arnheim R (1977) ‘The Dynamics of Architectural From’ University of California Press pg 32 7- Paolo Portoghesi Drawings ^ Ibid pg 30 8- Whyte W citing Rapson (2006) ‘How Do Buildings Mean?’ History and Theory Vol 45 No 2 May pg 158 9- ^ Ibid pg 177 10- Steinberg S ‘Lines of Talk’ wordpress.com
The Post War Debate The architectural forum of Post War Britain was home to great contention and unrest, its discourse permeated by the palpable sense of impending revolution. In journals, radio broadcasts and open debates the persistent chant of established prewar formalist architects and critics, clashed with the tumultuous cries of a new war marked generation of ‘angry young architects’. Those who sought to ensure the status quo derided proponents of a new rising architecture they saw as creatively indulgent and irrelevant, a truly unwelcome intrusion which must be dispensed with, ‘the architect-artist is a pest who should be eradicated’ - 1. Whilst this same emergent generation sought to subvert an architectural landscape they saw as without character. Safe bland, lacking rhetorical power and speaking of an ‘Englishness’ with which which they could not identify, ‘modern architecture had been sold short in Britain’ - 2.
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Britain had turned to Modernism amid the enthusiasm of post war reconstruction, but what they had embraced was a more moderate gentle variant of the movement, not the heroic ‘breton brut’ of which Corbusier spoke but rather a comfortable simplicity a poor derivative of the Swedish contemporary school on which it was modelled. This dilute vernacular was viewed by the emergent generation of architects as anonymous functionalism, timid, sterile, and expressionless. The other face of the Modern Movement as seen in Britain at the time was that of the Festival of Britain (1951), however this espoused a picturesque, parochial aesthetic lost in the nostalgia of an English traditionalism, far removed from the rationalist imperative of the ‘heroic period’ of the 1920’s and 30’s. ‘The Festival of Britain seemed at best sentimental, at worst effete.’ - 5. Although such acute generational divide is common in architecture, what is particular to this period is the degree to which not only the architecture but also its rhetoric had become polarised. Critics such as Dr. Nicolaus Pevsner led journals like the Architectural Review writing continuously of the ‘Pioneers Of the Modern Movement’ who’s style was now threatened by a younger generation and what he called the ‘fantastical rantings of fantasts and freaks’ - 6. Whilst the magazine Architectural Design became a haven for this new avant-garde where younger critics such as Rayner Banham wrote of the previous generations ‘lack of rigour and clear thinking, with the romantic pasticheries of the Festival of Britain’ - 7. Both sides set firmly against one another, a seemingly unbreakable impasse was established. Neither side willing to concede or compromise on their views, both charged with a sense that they were defending not merely their own critical views but rather the idea, the integrity indeed the very future of modern architecture as they understood it.
And so it was against this backdrop of fervent debate that a generation of new architects, forged together by experience of war and ideas of revolution sought in the 1950’s to look beyond the trappings of ‘Little England’ and take control of the architectural narrative. Amongst the most prolific and active of this new generations numbers were James Stirling and Alison and Peter Smithson. Like revolutionaries certain in their beliefs they were the student heroes, positive that they represented the vanguard of architectural thought of the moment. Educated at the same time in England, Stirling in Liverpool, the Smithsons’ in Newcastle, with both Peter and James having seen active service before completing their architectural education, these young architects emerged battle hardened, mature and forged in their ideals for a new interpretation of modern architecture. Convinced of the desperate need of a new approach to be taken and of their ability to do so. Stirling spoke of the heroic, the idealistic charge of this new movement ‘I was left with a deep conviction of the moral rightness of the new architecture’ - 8. Whilst the Smithsons espoused a utilitarian, functional imperative ‘Our generation must try and produce evidence that men are at work’ - 9. What we see in both is the sense of urgency, to act and to demonstrate, to lead the charge out of the trenches. Both Stirling and the Smithsons were bound by the common appreciation of the leaders of the Pre War modern movement namely Le Corbusier and Mies Van Der Rohe, and a desire to exhume and reinterpret the principles of what was now being seen as architectures ‘heroic period’ of the 1920’s and 1930’s. To once again make a real, potent and modern architecture. Having achieved initial acclaim and success with their early works, the Smithsons with the Huntstanton School (1950-54) and Stirling and Gowan with the Flats at Ham Common (1955-58), both had begun to cut their teeth on a new hard edged explicit architecture attempting a re mapping of modernist ideals. And soon after these projects they were positioned concurrently during the period of 1959-1964 to produce what are now considered to be seminal buildings not only of the architects careers but of the age as well. The Smithsons’ Economist Building built to rehouse the cluster of offices to the The Economist Magazine, on the historic site of St. James Street in London. And Stirling’s Leicester Engineering Building a new facility for 250 students built in a small provincial campus, define this new direction of modern architecture in Britain. Born out of a common admiration of past masters with a concern for the explicit language of structure and the direct expression of materials and function, the two works are emblematic of an emerging new approach and sensitivity of the time.
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The images of the buildings suggest a similarity of form and expression, both engage the formal language of a raised podium elements, striking tower forms and an explicit orthogonal geometry, and certainly these congruities speak of the authors mutual admiration and deference to the architectural language of Pre War masters. And yet despite having learned and understood the same architectural vocabulary and precedent when we examine these buildings in detail it is difficult, near impossible to think that they are speaking the same language at all. Certainly they formed integral parts of this new architectural debate in England of the 1960’s but for many they represent the two most radical and opposite poles of the ongoing argument. Leicester suggesting the rediscovery of form and expression as a concern in its own right with the Economist representing a search for a more responsive functionalism. The significance of the works as landmarks about which the debate revolved is found manifest in the countless photographs, drawings and column inches devoted to the works by the architectural press at the time. In fact even in their critical discussion the buildings are at separate ends of a spectrum, with the Smithsons writing and speaking copiously about the principles behind their work which when seen in its built form speaks calmly, and stoically if at all. Whereas Stirling is infamous for his refusal to discuss his work, but in its physicality is a veritable tirade of information shouting volumes. What both works provide for our discussion is evidence and opportunity. Evidence of our fundamental need to speak about architecture in order to understand it and an opportunity to re examine that resultant rhetoric with an understanding of the physical and linguistic metaphorical processes at work. So what then is to be heard in the unusual conversation between a pragmatic economist and an expressive engineer?
1 - McKean J (1999) citing Richards ‘Pioneering British High Tech’ Phaidon Press pg 5 2- McKean J (1999) citing Maxwell ‘Pioneering British High Tech’ Phaidon Press pg 6 3 - Rochampton Development, Coxwold - Bullock N (2002) ‘Building the Post War World’ Routlage pg 91 4 - Rochampton Development Alton East ^Ibid 5- ^Ibid pg 18 6- Jencks C citing Pevsner (1969) ‘History as Myth - Meaning in Architecture’ The Cresset Press pg 251 7-Bullock N citing Banham (2002) ‘Building the Post War World’ Routlage pg 95 8-McKean J citing Stirling (1999) ‘Pioneering British High Tech’ Phaidon Press pg 6 9- ^ Ibid citing Smithsons’ 10- Leicester Engineering Axonometric ^ Ibid pg 49 11-The Economist Group Axonometric Smithson A & P (1982) ‘The Shift’ London Academy pg 105
Meaning in Form Through their influential lectures and writings the Smithsons’ espoused a clear doctrine of architectural thought. They were explicit with regard to the principles and intentions to be made manifest in their architecture, ’a building today is only interesting if it charges the space around it with connective possibilities’ - 1. Their rhetoric and few built works before 1959 were considered arresting, challenging and thoughtful. However in contrast, there is little about the Economist building itself that is overtly provocative. Compared to its verbose authors it appears architecturally inarticulate, when placed aside its more dynamic contemporary at Leicester mute even. Indeed critics of the time praised its ‘calm communication’-2 it was seen as ‘modest and well adjusted’ a ‘highly pragmatic solution’- 3. Certainly these descriptions do not readily conjure the image of an architectural masterpiece. However such readings are to do the work a disservice, to underplay a more dramatic process and dynamic interplay present in the work. The impact and relevance of the Economist resides is in the realm of Wolflinn and Arnheim, in the physical engagement and perceptual forces of space. The building speaks not through its plans and sections to desktop critics, but through manipulated movement, and the sequence of experiential spaces. The building is not so much seen as experienced. The cluster of buildings exists as an asymmetrical composition, the building programme divided into three components grouped around a raised central pedestrian plaza. a four storey irregular polygon bank building on St James’ Street, a main office tower of 15-storeys and at the rear of this an eight storey residential block. This particular approach of breaking the project into separate ‘quanta’ was derived from the Smithsons’s desire to build with and reinstate the essential character of the St. James district, with its 18th century pattern of alleyways, arcades and courtyards which provide pedestrian ways through the building blocks. The acropolis type formation providing a gesture to the city, emulating the urbanism of Louis Kahn ‘to find expression from the order of movement’ - 4 and the architects own notions of ‘the open city’. And it is through this same movement that the building finds its expression. What appears initially in plan as a controlled static composition is experienced as a charged landscape, where the seperate physical components influence and gain significance from their relation to the whole. The building entities gain deeper personalities from their siting to the plaza whilst this never appears as an enclosure unto itself but as a space in relation to the city. The whole assemblage exists as a dynamic arrangement of visual cues and changing vistas, leading the viewer from city to street to building. Constantly changing by virtue of ones transition through the spaces, it exists as an urban fragment allowing as the Smithsons themselves described ‘the man on the street to find his own secret way around the city’ - 5. And we find numerous accounts of the relationship of the architectural forms, their perceptual forces and their physical effects through critical writings of the work. In the preface to his review of the Economist Gordon Cullen (an unlikely advocate of the work of the Smithsons) echoes the work of Rudolph Arnheim stating ‘when shapes, planes, spaces and objects are put into relationship through a knowledge of visual structure then the atmosphere becomes charged’ -6. For him it is this interplay between ‘the group and its enclosure’ this spatial narrative through a ‘possessed landscape’ that is most revealing of the work.
The integrated stairs and ramp, at the entrance to the building cluster provide a subtle but significant gesture to the street providing both a degree of separation and invitation to the buildings interior. Once ascended the raised datum of the central plaza provides a moment of respite, ‘a pool of quietude’- 7. The change in level creating a division from the traffic noise and fumes, where the city is left at the site boundary. The plaza exists as an ante space in the city, open to it but removed from it. ‘A pocket in the city, a place to pause, a breathing space’ - 8. For the Smithsons it was a place to rearrange ones thoughts and sensibilities before entering the buildings themselves. This central space however also provides the ‘social loci’ of the scheme, infused by the cluster of programmes that open on to it. A place alive with personalities and inner life as Kenneth Framptom described ‘an ideal working community ring for the individual offices’ - 9. It is interesting to note that Reyner Banham himself a good friend of the Smithsons saw the creation of the plaza and indeed the deference shown by the scheme to the medieval street morphology as an unpleasant gesture. describing the plaza as ‘the lid of a large dust bin’ -10, with modernity swept beneath it. From the pedestrian plaza one becomes aware of the vistas which cut their way across the site, the position of the buildings and their chamfered corners allowing light, air, but most importantly views to permeate the site. The arcading and glazed ground floor of the towers allows the space of the plaza to flow and expand calmly and lucidly into the buildings interior. The herringbone pattern of the paving extending outwards from the axis of symmetry to the interior ground floor acting to ‘guide the visitor subliminally towards the building’ - 11.
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For Cullen and his contemporaries the Economist exists as the juxtaposition of the existing and the revealed view. All is movement and theatrics progressing from one stage to the next. We are constantly drawn through the site our movement delineated by the building elements, This experience is epitomised in Cullen’s own description ‘The main tower causes a narrowing of the piazza, and through this gap we enter the hidden space which contains the delicate residential block, recessive and quiet, whereas the banking hall of columns hangs suspended in the air right in the heart of the complex’ - 13. The project exists as a continuum where the characteristics of built forms are defined by how we encounter them. The work is considered as a ‘family’, the ‘dominant’ father figure of the office tower which controls the space, the ‘recluse’ residential block that sits to the rear and the ‘elegant’ bank building which greets us with its gesture to the street. This notion of the dramatic play of forms is further reinforced in Kenneth Framptons description and ‘theatrical interpretation’ of the perceptual sleight of hand that occurs in the central plaza. Here he describes how the change of scale between the main tower and its diminutive copy the residential block results in ‘a giant trompe d’oiel’, where the smaller toewr appears to move away from the observer as one approaches ‘with a consequent dramatic enlargement in the apparent space of the plaza’ - 14. Again we see how empirical experience of the building is that of bodily movement, space, ‘flows’, and ‘expands’, views ‘cleave’ and forms ‘shift’ and ‘reveal’ all conditions reliant and extrapolated through bodily experience. The entire complex is a discrete manipulative play of volumes. At the Economist we become acutely aware of the dynamics of form of which Arnheim spoke. Of the space between volumes, that ‘charged void’ which the Smithsons sought to create. The work a manipulation of the perceptual forces that physical forms exert and how we interact with them.
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16 1 - Scalbert I (1995) ‘Architecture is not made with the Brain’ AA Files Vol 30 Autumn pg 24 2 - Cullen G (1965) ‘The Economist Building’ Architecrural Review Vol 137 No 816 Feb pg 120 3 - Frampton K (1965) ‘The Economist & the Haupstadt’ Architectural Design Feb pg 61 4- Kahn L (1953) ‘Towards a Plan for Midtown Philadelphia’ Perspecta p 149 5- Smithson A & P (1982) ‘The Shift’ London Academy pg 105 6- Cullen G (1965) ‘The Economist Building’ Architecrural Review Vol 137 No 816 Feb pg 115 7- Wong L (1994) ‘Climate Register Four Works by Alison and Peter Smithson’ Architectural Association pg 40 8-^Ibid 9- Frampton K (1965) ‘The Economist & the Haupstadt’ Architectural Design Feb pg 62 10- Scalbert I (1995) ‘Architecture is not made with the Brain’ AA Files Vol 30 Autumn pg 18 11- ^ Ibid pg 24 12- Photograph Economist Plaza Wong L (1994) ‘Climate Register’ Architectural Association pg 34 13-Cullen G (1965) ‘The Economist Building’ Architecrural Review Vol 137 No 816 Feb pg 123 14- Frampton K (1965) ‘The Economist & the Haupstadt’ Architectural Design Feb pg 62 15-Photograph Smithson A & P (1982) ‘The Shift’ London Academy pg 109 16- Drawings Gordon Cullen (1965) ‘The Economist Building’ Architecrural Review Vol 137 No 816 Feb
Meaning in Form ’Don’t ask me Charlie its you that keeps seeing the battleship’ - 1 Stirlings wry response to critic Charles Jencks’ persistent questioning at the end of the RIBA’s ‘Architects Approach to Architecture’ lecture in 1975 epitomises the interplay that occurred between the Leicester Engineering Building and its critical interpreters. Unlike its more subtly subversive counterpart, the dynamic lines and expressive forms of Stirling’s creation at Leicester provoke a cavalcade of images and interpretations, its extrovert, fantastic geometric turns appearing to be all things to all men. And whereas at the Economist we are in no uncertain terms told almost instructed as to what we should see and experience, Stirling is enigmatic in abstaining from providing one image or principle underlying the work, confounding his critics and delighting his contemporaries. He seemed to revel in the interpretational guessing game that ensued in the critical forum, the desperate scramble to define the ‘oddity’ with which Stirling had presented them. With its inherent contradictions which could not be ignored. The building appears as an assemblage of clear, primary volumetric forms, each distinct in its articulation and dynamic, somehow individual yet tied to a whole. The entire composition seems held together in a curious tension, about to fall to pieces from on angle yet determinantly cohesive from the next. At once at rest and moving, a seemingly impossible balancing act. Its form is highly indicative of Wolflinn’s insights into how we perceive and project such characteristics onto physical forms, the project seems to delight in its ability to exploit this conceptual attribute of ours. Programmatically the brief for the new Engineering facility is distinctly functional as one might expect, two lecture theatres, four levels of research laboratories, open plan flexible workshops, and an office tower all intensively assembled on a small corner site. And yet its physical manifestation seems to push beyond such beginnings into something highly gestural almost artistic. Somehow simultaneously functional and expressive, logical but poetic. It is this unusual and particular dichotomy of form that seemed to both infuriate and delight its critics. Inspiring a seemingly impossibly disparate array of interpretations. For staunch opponents of the work such as Nikolaus Pevsner speaking in his lecture in 1966, entitled ‘Architecture of our Time’ Leicester represented the antithesis of the modern architecture, its form a chaos of ‘jutting out pieces’ and visual ‘explosions’ - 2, devoid of balance and logic it embodied an ‘unsustainable style’ having ‘so excessively high a pitch’ that it could not be maintained, an architecture on the brink of collapse. A visual cacophony. While his contemporaries such as Ian Brown saw it as a monster of parts, a tumultuous arrangement of irreconcilable pieces, describing architecture as having been ‘presented with its Frankenstein, amidst a concert of maidenish squeaks that have not yet died down’ - 3. But were some saw anarchy, an unsightly mess of disparate parts others such as Jarn Jacobus writing in 1966 just as readily and vehemently saw clarity, logic and ruthless functionalism at work. Describing it as ‘a functional building that looks functional, a factory for study’ - 4. Its form expressing an uncompromising devotion to its purpose. Jacobus saw the work as a masterful composition whereby each form represented the direct functional interpretation of specific programmatic requirements. And the overall combination of these elements as a vital nearly faultless solution which reconciled site, function and form. The provocative dynamic geometries not the result of indulgent personal temperament or architectural flourish but the most honest an unsentimental expression of the buildings internal workings. Displaying a refined and explicit functioning that would make the Smithsons themselves jealous. ‘The eye has already grasped intuitively the inner principles of operation’ - 5.
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And indeed the building is certainly explicit even didactic with regards its function, its form seeming to result from an almost literal manifestation of its operational diagram.The faceted crystal roof glazing at 45 provides even north lighting for the workshops, the dramatic splay of the podium dictated by a constrictive site, the venturi section of the laborotories glazing allowing immediate emergency cross ventilation, the height of the office tower to accomodate a hydraulic water tank and balance the two cantilevered theatres, the tapered ‘glacier’ of the toweres glazing reflecting and disecting the diminishing intensity of circulation, the pushed cantilever to the side of the workshop allowing machinery to be lifted inside, even the sloped detail at its base preventing cars from damaging the buildings exterior. Every physical element seems the direct result of a stipulated programmatic function.
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And yet for others still these very same functional forms cannot be dissacoiated from a deeper cultural complexity. Seeing the work not merely as a continuation or refinement of the pre-war European Functional Tradition but as having ‘a spiritual affinity’-7 linking it to the great Romantic American tradition of Wright and Kahn. For Kenneth Frampton Leicester is a work of a for more poetic nature, ‘a self contained dream’. For him the raised podium element, the splayed ramp and extensive translucent glazing are iconographic gestures suggestive of the romantic expressive tradition of architecture and buildings such as Wright’s Johnson Wax Building at Wisconsin. He suggests that its functional qualities although certainly present are only skin deep, expressed in the material articulation but that the forms themselves are far more gestural and expressionist, the real experience and understanding of the work being something more profound. For Frampton despite its utilitarian detailing the building remains ‘the embodiment of a dream, a dream with marine connotations’ - 8. His comment is particularly revealing in how the functional attributes, which Jacobus saw as so integral to the work are here reduced to mere connotations, that the building acknowledges and engages the articulation of the Marine or Engineering Aesthetic but only in a cursory way. That it is a skin, peripheral to the essence of the building. And although Frampton is rigorous in his analysis of the work his most convincing and communicative encapsulation is a thoroughly romantic physical metaphor. ‘The floodlit control tower floats over the sea of the park and over a sea of translucent ever-changing glass which at night becomes a long crystal of glowing light’ - 9.
This description sits in stark contrast with the previous analytical and functional understanding of the work, again the language and metaphors employed providing evidence of the duality present in the form of the building. For Peter Eisemmann too the work is very much of a symbolic suggestive nature, open to more elobarate imaginative associations, ‘the building is not a stylistic gesture but an iconic cueing device nothing to do with function everything to do with iconography’ - 10.
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It seems that at Leister we are met with dramatics and flourish which immediately retreat into practicality. One image instantly folding into another. Its form suggestive and duplicitous yet unchanging with its meaning entirely determined by the rhetoric used to articulate it. Physical metaphors abound, from a nautical reverie to a constructivist factory, and yet by virtue of our conceptual framework both appear valid and revealing of the work. With both the Economist and Leicester Engineering we see physical metaphors integral to an understanding of the works. What is perhaps most illuminating about the critical descriptions when placed along side each other is the degree to which expectations are reversed. What appears in the Economist as self explanatory, what Mies referred to as ‘the science of facts’, its meaning readable at the surface is only actually revealed as one enters and moves through the spaces. Our understanding is always from within the building where its subtle gestures become truly significant. Whereas at Leicester we are presented with a conglomerate of fantastical geometries and volumes, surely incredible spaces to experience. And yet its interpretation is somehow always at arms length, it is treated as a sort of architectural object seen from afar, but seldom entered. The Economist is emblematic of the work of Arnheim, the ever present perceptual force of physical space which we experience and negotiate first hand. Whereas Leicester Engineering speaks to the insights of Wolflinn, its varied forms experienced vicariously, as we project ourselves and images onto the building to understand it.
1 - Pawley M (1984) ‘Leicester Engineering : Building Revisits’ Architects Journal June 6 pg 48 2 - McKean J (1999) ‘Pioneering British High Tech’ Phaidon Press pg 41 3 - Pevsner N (1966) ‘The Anti-Pioneers’ The Listener Jan 5 4- Jacobus J (1964) ‘Engineering Building University Leicester’ Architectural Review April pg 254 5- ^ Ibid 6- Early Drawings - McKean J (1999) ‘Pioneering British High Tech’ Phaidon Press pg 24 7- Frampton K (1964) ‘Leicester University Engineering Laboratory’ Architectural Design Feb pg 62 8- ^ Ibid 9- ^ Ibid 10- Pawley M (1984) ‘Leicester Engineering : Building Revisits’ Architects Journal June 6 pg 48 11- Collage Nils Ole-Lund - McKean J (1999) ‘Pioneering British High Tech’ Phaidon Press pg 44
Meaning in Surface We have seen how the primary physical forms of both works are interpreted and understood, how we begin to approach and establish a visceral or intuitive comprehension of the projects meaning. However this base meaning is further influenced and augmented in both projects through their material articulation, their detailing and expression. At the Economist its seemingly placid forms belie a more dynamic play of spaces at work providing an interesting duality. In its material expression we also experience a curious tension, this time between the modern and the antiquated. The general volume and massing of the buildings is reminiscent of the character of the !8th century structures which populate St. James St. However its construction is a distinctly modern reinterpretation of Miesien formalism. The structural system for the project consists of reinforced concrete T-shaped columns, which operate on a consistent module of 10ft 6in applied to both the Office Tower and Bank Building. This module is derived from the basic dimensions of the two man office the typical working space for the journals employees. This initial module is adapted to 5ft 3in in the smaller residential block as a result of the change of accommodation, this progressive reduction and densification of the vertical dimensions makes explicit the urban hierarchy of the three buildings, emphasizing their uses and dimensions. The inevitability of the module system and our understanding of it contrasts with our reading of the more fluid gestures of the buildings from, its siting, and its distinctive chamfered edges. This creates ‘a tension between an inherited Miesian sense of order and a desire to respond to local conditions’- 1. The influence of Mies is seen again in the particular detailing of the structural frame and cladding systems. Here again the principles of the Pre War master are re examined and distilled, the Smithsons extracting only what is necessary through a process of reduction and refinement, striving for a truly integrated architecture. Whereas with Mies at the Seagram Building the curtain wall is independent of the structural frame behind, resulting in problems at the junction between the two, at the Economist there is no such detachment between frame cladding and services. Fenestration is fixed in the plane of the column attached to which are extruded aluminium channels which act as continuous vertical gutters. There is no ambiguity about what each element is doing and how it is performing. The Miesian qualities of mass and gravity are internalised, each piece rests at its most refined. This sense of empirical functionalism of decanting elements to their essence resulting in what Greenberg describes as ‘an architecture parlante where its argument derives from its making and not from its scenographic idea’ - 2. This consideration and integration is extended to every aspect of the project its highly sophisticated system of services, its flexible partitions, its built in office equipment and its pre fabricated pre packed escalators. At almost every turn the materials and their detailing project a desire for explicit functioning, for modernism and an industrialised vernacular which looks firmly to the future. However these elements sit alongside, a most significant final detail the Roach Bed Portland stone which clads the mullions, spandrels and the plaza floor. This white stone with its tiny embedded shell encrustations and indentations is the opposite of the modernist mute essence. It is subliminal, suggestive of latent experience linked to history, pattern the natural artefact. What the brutalist Henri Michaux called ‘life in the folds’ - 3. The material also carries with it more romantic connotations of antiquity. The stone which is used frequently in the facades of London’s churches imparts a level of gravitas and classical poise to the Economist. Redolent of the classical, the monumental even religious architectural works. ‘And in its making harks back in a more abstract sense to the great and highly glazed Suffolk churches, like Blythburgh and Southwold’ - 4.
The Smithsons themselves were more than aware of these historical and monumental implications describing that the cladding of the frame was executed in ‘more or less the way that the columns and entablatures are applied to the outside of the structural frame of a Roman amphitheatre’ - 5. Indeed when first constructed the material would absorb the soots from Londons fireplaces on its skin, and the deep staining from the pollutants as it passed along the rain channels would create a visual depth chronicling the structure’s timeline. Thus as with its physical form there exists a surface reading which at a glance suggests refinement, a strive for functional honesty derived soley from local conditions, and yet through closer analysis and descriptions of the work we see more idealogical, romantic conceits lying beneath this outward veneer. For Frampton writing in 1964 the material language of the Economist suggests a series of conflicting images ‘ a conflict of the material with the immaterial, the monumental with the flexible, the static with the dynamic, and the handmade with the products of mass production’ - 6 . The Economist embodies a curious dichotomy which we can simultaneously interpret its articulation through imagery of the industrial, the modern, the functional. Or conversely as the romantic, the classical, the antiquarian. It is both the particular nature of the work, and our metaphorical conceits, our integral need to understand one thing in terms of another that allow us to accumulate such varied interpretations.
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1 - Scalbert I (1995) ‘Architecture is not made with the Brain’ AA Files Vol 30 Autumn pg 21 2 - Greenberg S (1990) ‘The Economist Building Modernism in the Making’ Architects Journal Vol 21 Nov pg 55 3 - Scalbert I (1995) ‘Architecture is not made with the Brain’ AA Files Vol 30 Autumn pg 21 4- Greenberg S (1990) ‘The Economist Building Modernism in the Making’ Architects Journal Vol 21 Nov pg 58 5- ^ Ibid 6- Frampton K (1965) ‘The Economist & the Haupstadt’ Architectural Design Feb pg 62 7- Photograph Greenberg S (1990) ‘The Economist Building’ Architects Journal Vol 21 Nov 8- ^ Ibid
Meaning in Surface Whereas the Smithsons were engaged in a process of scientific distillation, carefully refining and subverting the ‘Machine’ aesthetic of the Modern Movement, at Leister Stirling was involved in something more akin to impromptu carpentry actively cutting it to pieces and reassembling it as he saw fit. Where the Smithsons were meticulous in their consideration of the skin Stirling displays a confident unsentimental attitude, changing materials, exposing junctions, altering specifications on site. Indeed Reyner Banham commented at the time on Stirlings employ of ‘such a casual unimpressed attitude to metal and glass - sacred materials of modern architecture’ - 1. For some critics such a laissez-faire attitude to constructional details was irreconcilable with the rigour and dynamics of the works physical form creating a detachment between mass and skin, form and surface. Resulting in ‘a thin skein of rationality’ - 2. From a distance Leicester presents a thorough almost aggressive functional aesthetic, its material language of patent glazing, engineering brick, faceted steel trusses exposed pipework and snorkel vents all integral elements of the functional tradition. For Kenneth Frampton writing in 1964 these elements provided ‘a compendium of early modern constructional development’ - 3 . The buildings articulation providing a catalogue of visual references to nineteenth century British functional tradition, connoting Paxton’s Crystal Palace or Brunel’s Paddington Station. The architect engaging a vocabulary of the ‘Engineering Aesthetic’- 4, suggesting the industrial architecture of warehouses, bridges, sheds, even water towers. And Indeed as with such structures all appears on the surface to be cohesive, integral, the direct articulation of function. However a closer examination towards these material details and their visual interpretation becomes far more elaborate. The structure for the entire building is of in-situ concrete either as a skeletal frame such as for the research laboratories or cast in larger mass sections for the more gestural volumes of the cantilevered lecture theatres. The clients requested that the building not be finished in fair faced concrete as a result the smaller framed areas are finished in red engineering brick. However this proved too expensive to be carried out throughout the project and so the larger volumes are veneered in cleated red tiles imported from Holland, to match the brick. This treatment results in the emergent notion of the ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ or ‘camoflauge’-5. That despite its functional apparel, the material articulation of the work is not devoutly functional, engaging in a subtle subversion of expectations. Although not immediately apparent, we gradually become aware of the material alteration and it has a curious affect on how we interpret the from of the building. The normal mass and solidity associated with brick is inverted, as its ‘thickness’ becomes visually thin due to the treatment of the tiles. As a result it reads not as depth or mass but as planar, extenuating the underlying forms it encapsulates.. Material serving to articulate surface rather represent structure. Whilst for some critics this approaches something near heresy, drapery not cladding, for Stirling it is resolute matter of factness, a perfectly logical, lateral and ultimately functional resolution to an architectural problem,‘ using materials out of context is one way of overcoming the problem of creating architecture out of low cost buildings. - 6.
There is a similarly duplicitius reading to the treatment of the glazing at Leicester, the reversal of normal conventions. The use of ply glass to the faceted workshop roofights and walls, allows diffuse light for the working spaces as well as being a sufficently durable and workable material to be roughly hewn and hand fit to the structural frame. However this practical use of opaque, translucent fibre glass panels also emparts the structure one of its most poetic attributes, its suggestive glowing crystal structure, ‘the unearthly glow from the milky prisms’ - 7. The glass skins at Leister are opaque or translucent as much as transparent. By day the workshops read as a milky silvery faceted surface, as solid elements with a sense of weight and thickness. For Stirling observed just as Corbusier had done at Maison Jaoul ‘the windows are no longer to be looked through but at’ - 8. But at night the glazed surfaces transform, becoming an essay in transparencies. The patent glazing of the circulation areas lit with the red glow of tungsten spot lamps sitting aside the cool low intense luminosity from the workshops with their ‘gentle ghostly light’. Again the use of the two types of glazing patent and ply glass, irrespective of their romantic effects is the result of design and cost considerations, the cheaper mill finished patent glazing offsetting the more expensive ply glass. At Leister Stirling has achieved what Banham called a sort of ‘un detailing’ somehow sidestepping the debate in which the Smithsons were so fully immersed. And yet its peculiar results, with its solid glass elements and paper thin brick skins seem ‘patently right in this context’. The same pragmatic opportunism approach to design, that gave the buildings its suggestive form also imparts its poetic articulation. And yet all is justifiable. The succinct result of a complete functional immersion in local conditions.
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1 - Pawley M citing Banham (1984) ‘Leicester Engineering : Building Revisits’ Architects Journal June 6 pg 46 2 - ^ Ibid 3 - Frampton K (1964) ‘Leicester University Engineering Laboratory’ Architectural Design Feb pg 62 4- ^ Ibid 5- Pawley M (1984) ‘Leicester Engineering : Building Revisits’ Architects Journal June 6 pg 45 6- McKean J citing Stirling (1999) ‘Pioneering British High Tech’ Phaidon Press pg 36 7-^Ibid McKean pg 27 8- ^ Ibid citing Stirling pg 36 9-Photograph ^ Ibid pg 27
Conclusion We may return now to the Post War debate itself, and how established critical views have framed both Leicester Engineering and the Economist within the overall architectural narrative. The work of the Smithsons has been typically understood as utilitarian at heart, that with the Economist they sought to create a ‘didactic building, a dry building - and deliberately so’-1, the result of the correct degree of immersion in a situation developed with a thoughtful pragmatism. The rediscovery of a functionalism that emerged solely from local conditions an architecture that as Irene Scalbert commented ‘does not embody aspirations beyond the conditions that brought it into being’ -2. However having examined the critical rhetoric that surrounds the building itself and with an understanding of the metaphorical implications and import of such discourses, what emerges is perhaps a far more aspirational architecture than to which its authors would have admitted. Despite their intentions to create an ‘architecture without rhetoric’, a building that was about manipulating the making, not ideas their work represents a much more ideological and symbolic statement. It is infused with personal beliefs in an ‘urban model’ its siting and massing expressing the Smithsons’ own notions of ‘the cluster city’, with ideas surfacing from previous work such as their competition entry for the Berlin Haupstadt. In its detailing and materiality we can see a desire for modernity a view to the future sitting alongside an awareness even a deference to the past, and certainly a knowledge of the symbolic implications of particular material details and formal gestures. Conversely Striling’s work has been typically chronicled as one of a much more heroic, and romantic nature concerned with form and expression, an intuitive even personal architecture. And yet when examined it appears that it is Leicester rather that the Economist that represents the ultimate product of its local environment and circumstance. It is concerned only with the here and now, leaving the present and future to adjust accordingly, or rather for us to continually do so through our critical interpretations. Its form is ruthlessly derived from explicit programmatic requirements specific to the project itself, and its detailing ‘peculiarities’ are the result of financial and circumstantial restraint. At each moment that it appears the architects hand is acting with an artistic indulgence, we see logic, and a relentlessly analytical eye controlling its strokes. And yet despite their disparities and incongruities both projects are linked by their role as crucial catalysts to the critical discourse of architecture. One project is a beginning and end unto itself unable to be replicated anywhere, the other is part of a continuum, with principles which can be emanated or reproduced. One a singular emphatic point the other an ongoing elaboration but both integral to the conversation.
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What is most important about these two works, is not their role as Post Modern icons or their influence on the Post War critical debate, but rather how they have in fact evolved past this same debate transcending those very arguments which bore their existence. What they represent, their true significance is evidence of our fundamental need to speak and articulate in order to conceive of an architecture, and approach its meaning. We often speak of the ‘legacy’ of such works, what they have imparted to us, and in fact this legacy never belongs to the building itself or even its authors, it belongs to us. It is what we create when we speak or write about them. We critically ‘re-evaluate’ or ‘situate’ these buildings constantly along the historical architectural narrative, setting them in context against what has gone before and what exists today. And it is not for the benefit of the works themselves, but for ourselves, as it is only in this way that we can establish ‘meaning’, to find for ourselves an understanding, however fleeting it may be. As Charles Jencks observed our view of history, just as our view of individual objects is metaphorical by nature ‘the history of history is in one very important sense nothing but the history of seeing certain objects in terms of other objects, and there is no historian, or hominid, who is capable of anything less’-5. We are bound by this fundamental need to speak in order to understand and works such as these in particular indulge us in this respect. As buildings themselves they exists as moments, brief periods in time where their design, their function and their occupation all coincided, beyond that they are physical events which we subsequently rationalise and interpret, dissect and evaluate. For buildings in and of themselves do not postulate, or theorise, they do not argue or disagree, people however do. To close I would like to refer to one reputed encounter between the authors of these two works themselves, in which an argument at a party between James Stirling and Alison Smithson was resolved in a characteristically immediate and non verbal fashion. Allegedly to end this particularly heated debate Stirling hoisted the large collar of one of Alison Smithson’s hand made garments up over her head, and in retaliation she threw her glass of wine over him. I would imagine that neither party spoke much personally about the event afterwards, and yet I suspect its impact survived for quite some time through the many creative re tellings by their contemporaries and on lookers.
1 - Greenberg S (1990) ‘The Economist Building Modernism in the Making’ Architects Journal Vol 21 Nov pg 53 2 - Scalbert I (1995) ‘Architecture is not made with the Brain’ AA Files Vol 30 Autumn pg 31 3 -Photograph McKean J (1999) ‘Pioneering British High Tech’ Phaidon Press pg 5 4- Photograph Smithson A & P (1982) ‘The Shift’ London Academy pg 15 5- Jencks C (1969) ‘History as Myth - Meaning in Architecture’ The Cresset Press pg 2
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