10 minute read
Typologies crumble but buildings live on
1. The 14th-century Great
Kitchen is one of only two surviving medieval monastic kitchens of this type in England. With its distinctive octagonal ceiling and high ribvaulted ceiling, it is now the home of the Anglo-Saxon ‘Treasures of St Cuthbert’ display
2. St George’s Hall in
Liverpool, where Purcell helped re-open spaces that had been out of use for over 20 years
Ken Powell explores Purcell’s ongoing contribution to architectural typologies, from bunkers and hangars to cowsheds and cathedrals, focusing on a recent rise in work on town halls
‘If one looks back at any book on the history of Western architecture from the beginnings to the middle of the 18th century one will find that it is almost entirely made up of churches and castles and palaces.’ So wrote Nikolaus Pevsner in 1976. A multiplicity of new building types – railway stations, hotels, office blocks, market halls, banks and mills among them – emerged during the course of the 19th century. The categorisation of building types overlapped with the contemporary debate on style: a railway station should be ‘modern’ in style, the great theorist Gottfried Semper argued, a church Gothic.
Over the seven decades since Donovan Purcell established the practice, Purcell has worked on an extraordinary range of building types, including some – for example, an aircraft hangar or a Cold War bunker – that were unknown to the Victorians. The definition of an historic building is constantly changing – and repairing, renewing and repurposing existing buildings, in Britain and far beyond, alongside outstanding new design, remains at the core of Purcell’s workload.
The definition of a building type, as understood in the 19th century, is today fluid, not least because economic and social change have made the conversion of many existing buildings to entirely new uses the key to their survival. A police headquarters and jail in Hong Kong becomes an arts and heritage centre, for example, a printworks in Glasgow a stylish hotel, while Stowe House in Buckinghamshire – in use by Stowe School for nearly a century – is now open to the public, with the school the tenant of a charitable trust that has owned the house since 1997. Stowe House is, again, the focus of the great landscape park owned by the National Trust. In Bristol, the former general hospital, Grade-II listed, has been converted to apartments. The reinstatement of the octagonal dome that crowned the 1850s building until it was destroyed by Second World War bombs is a notable feature of the scheme. Alongside conversion and reuse, however, there is a reassessment of what the purpose of existing buildings is and how they need to adapt for a future that challenges established conceptions of building typologies.
Purcell began as a practice with the care of churches and cathedrals. It has looked after Ely Cathedral, one of the greatest medieval monuments in Europe, for over 50 years. A 10-year repair project was completed in 2000, ensuring the building’s survival. The central function of a cathedral has not changed since Ely was constructed: every day the Eucharist is celebrated, and morning and evening prayer said or sung. The Victorians repurposed long-neglected cathedrals as tourist sites and places for public worship, but cathedrals today have become not only visitor attractions but also buildings serving a wide community. Concerts, exhibitions and graduation ceremonies bring people to Ely from across East Anglia and beyond. Yet, until Purcell completed the new link to Lady Chapel, there were no lavatories for visitors – the Victorians would probably have thought their provision improper. A vision for re-equipping the cathedral for its wider role as a centre for cultural and community events informs the masterplan for its future development produced by Purcell.
The practice also has the care of other great medieval cathedrals. At Canterbury it has been responsible for an extensive scheme of repairs extending over two decades and other work, including a new floor for the nave incorporating underfloor heating. Durham Cathedral, the subject of an ongoing repair programme, has added a new dimension to its visitor experience with the Open Treasure project, financed by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and completed
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MORLEY VON STERNBERG
Phillip Davies, Chapter Clerk, Durham Cathedral 3 █ Restoration █ Alteration █ Repair
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in 2018. Precious Anglo-Saxon and medieval artefacts are spectacularly displayed in the former monks’ dormitory and the vaulted Great Kitchen, while a vaulted undercroft houses a new cathedral shop.
Ely, Canterbury and Durham have long been recognised as historic monuments of global significance. The 20th-century Roman Catholic cathedrals at Liverpool and Clifton in Bristol have only recently been acknowledged as key works of their period. At Clifton, a strikingly sculptural 1970s building, Purcell’s task was largely one of services renewal and re-roofing – after more than four decades the building is finally watertight. Similar issues have been addressed at Liverpool’s 1960s Metropolitan Cathedral where, again, the first stage in developing a strategy of conservation and repair was to produce an evaluation of significance to inform work on the fabric. A particular challenge was repairing the spectacular central lantern, in which stained glass by John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens is set within slender precast concrete ribs and bonded with epoxy resin, a typically innovative constructional strategy of the day.
If cathedrals are finding a new role in the 21st century, so too are those ‘secular cathedrals’ of the 19th century – the great town and public halls constructed in Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham and other industrial and commercial centres. Even when they were new, their roles and functions varied. Manchester’s, echoing the great cloth halls of the Middle Ages, was primarily a centre for local government, with a more modest assembly hall. Liverpool’s St George’s Hall, completed in the 1850s and one of the finest neoclassical buildings in Europe, had at its centre a vast hall of Roman splendour but uncertain purpose, along with a concert room and law courts. (The city already possessed a fine Georgian town hall.) The removal of the courts to a new building in 1984 led to a period in which the hall was effectively mothballed, closed to the public, lacking a purpose and in need of major repairs. Purcell’s £23 million restoration and regeneration project, completed in 2007, saw St George’s Hall reborn as a multifunctional venue, hosting concerts, conferences, receptions, weddings and many other events, with its running in the hands of a voluntary trust. In addition, a new visitor centre was created at basement level. St George’s Hall is now a focal point of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Manchester Town Hall, a Gothic Revival masterpiece by Alfred Waterhouse, opened in 1877 and remains the symbol of the city; it is the backcloth to Albert Square, where Mancunians gather to celebrate or, as in the wake of the 2017 terrorist attack, to mourn. Designed as the administrative and ceremonial centre of the then Manchester Corporation, it features formal reception rooms, an assembly hall (famous for its Ford Madox Brown murals), offices, a police station, registry office and coroner’s court.
The construction of a large but physically separate extension, designed by E Vincent Harris and completed in 1938, decanted many of the administrative functions of the town hall, including the Council Chamber, and provided, to some degree, a starting point for the reimagining of the building that informs Purcell’s response to the Our Town Hall project brief. ‘Our’ is in recognition by the City Council that the town hall belongs to the whole population of Manchester, and it is a fundamental principle that the project will deliver a lasting social and economic legacy for the city. Led by partners Jamie Coath and Nicola Hewes, the project began with an exhaustive study of the building, of its planning, construction, materials, services and contents (ranging from an exceptional collection of Victorian sculpture to tea cups and plates made to Waterhouse’s designs). A methodology for assessing the significance
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DYLAN PRITCHARD - OTH APPRENTICE
3. Waterhouse’s iconic and
ingenious triangular plan for Manchester Town Hall
4. The 10-year scheme will
restore the Grade-I listed landmark and create a civic building for its 21st-century community
5. A symbol of Manchester,
the worker bee is used symbolically here in a mosaic pattern for the town hall’s landing foyer
6. The glazed extension
enhances the operation and legibility of Maesteg Town Hall while retaining views of the existing fabric
7. As an extension to
the street, the new front-of-house facilities provide for a lively arts venue and vibrant community space
of the building was developed, extending beyond its architecture and role as a symbol of civic pride to a study of its construction techniques and the ideas that informed Waterhouse’s work, with its fine balance of technology and craftsmanship.
Issues of collective memory and the place of the town hall in the social history of Manchester feature strongly in the study. Public engagement, alongside consultation with statutory bodies and stakeholders, is a fundamental aspect of the project. The needs of existing users have been studied along with the potential for new uses, including those that are commercial and will form part of a long-term funding package.
The aim of Manchester City Council is to maintain the existing functions of the town hall while making it more of a visitor building – open to visitors and to the people of the city, fully accessible and with a new heritage centre as a key feature. Greatly increased provision for public events and meetings is part of the package, which will generate income, offset running costs and alleviate pressure on the public purse. The town hall will remain the heart of local government, housing the council’s leadership team and senior management. As an example of municipal enterprise on an ambitious scale, the project, due for completion in 2024, is in the spirit of the Victorians who constructed it. Alongside its restoration and renewal, a major reworking of Albert Square, with its Grade-II listed Prince Albert Monument (completed before its counterpart in London) is planned. In the 19th century, Manchester’s local authority provided the city’s water and gas supplies, ran its schools, health clinics, trams and many other services. The role of local authorities has contracted so maintaining large civic buildings may now seem a costly luxury.
Maesteg Town Hall in south Wales is modest alongside that of Manchester but remains the principal monument in this small industrial town. Completed in 1881 but radically remodelled and extended in 1913-14, the Grade-II listed building represents another strand in the typology of the town hall. Primarily a public hall and intended to host musical events and public meetings, it originally accommodated 1200 people (it now seats 500). Much of the funding was provided by local miners and a market hall occupied the lower ground floor. Municipal offices originally located there were subsequently moved into a purposebuilt office building.
By the 1960s, the town hall appeared doomed and demolition was seriously mooted. In due course, with demolition averted, Bridgend County Borough Council entrusted the management of the building to Awen Cultural Trust, which has brought it back to life as a lively arts and community resource. The building is, however, in need of major investment; overdue repairs to its fabric are an urgent priority and, beyond this, tired and inappropriately altered internal spaces need to be transformed.
In June 2018, the HLF committed funding to progress Purcell’s proposals for its regeneration. The core function of the town hall as a performance space will be reinforced, while the former market hall space on the lower ground floor, a library and local history research centre will introduce new activity into the building. To accommodate this, an extension to the existing fabric is vital – Purcell has conceived this as a highly transparent, dematerialised element through which the existing side elevation of the building can be clearly read. An equally ambitious and diverse range of uses is proposed in the practice’s most recent commission at Camden Town Hall, which adds commercial office accommodation and events spaces to this rich mix.
Converting historic buildings to new uses is now commonplace internationally: what is still recognisable as a church may be a house, a pub, a sports centre, an office or a concert hall. The thoughtful process of extending the use of an historic building, as at Ely, Stowe, Liverpool or Maesteg, is equally creative and even more challenging. Established typologies crumble but the buildings live on.
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