CONTINUITY IN ARCHITECTURE

The 6th Modern Interiors Research Centre Conference was held at Kingston University last week. The focus was upon histories and heritage.

Among the interesting collection of papers was a description of the reconstruction of the Hotel de Ville in Paris. The speaker defined the difference between renovation and reconstruction as the same as that between a painting and it’s copy. This was followed by a detailed discussion of George III’s bed. Other topics included a description of the changes to Glasgow School of Art and the evolution of the Church of St Michael’s in Cropthorne, Wiltshire. Sally Stone, with her co-author, Graeme Brooker presented a paper that discussed the remodelling of contaminated buildings.

Fred Scott, the eminent interiors theorist presented the final keynote address, “The room, its demise and possible resurrection”. This was based upon research that he’d conducted with Robin Evans and it discussed how in the 18C, the interior and the exterior of a building could exist independently. Modernism, and with it the pursuit of transparency, has lead to this difference has becoming unobtainable: “The room has been evicted from the house”.

Artex supplied the pink champagne

Peter Guthrie is a freelance visualisation artist based in London. He produced these computer generated images of Carlo Scarpa’s Canova Museum in Possagno as a personal exercise for his portfolio.

Museo Canoviano, Possagno

Canova Museum Updated

…via Fabio Novembre.

CiA staffer Sally Stone has, along with her perennial collaborator Graeme Brooker and newbie Michael Coates, produced The Visual Dictionary of Interior Architecture and Design. It’s a cutely packaged book that is intended to inform and inspire. And, of course, the pictures are more prominent than the words. Except, strangely, on the cover.

More CiA books

CiA staffer Sally Stone and her co-author Graeme Brooker have just had their second book in the Basic Interior Architecture series published.

“Context & Environment” examines the ways in which elements based both inside and outside of the host building can influence and effect the interior space. The book proposes a method of interpretation, evaluation and utilisation of physical factors, such as light and orientation, the contextual issues of the urban form and the subject of sustainability, and their influences on the design of the interior and the remodelling of existing buildings.

Amazon link: Basics Interior Architecture: Context and Environment

Demolished on December 1st 2008, this house at 157 Harper Rd London was a
council flat filled with hot concentrated copper sulphate solution which was
allowed to cool before draining. Visitors had to wear wellingtons. It was
very blue. (artist: Roger Hiorns)

Seizure

Carlo Scarpa was commissioned to design the Olivetti Showroom in 1956 and the work was completed over the next couple of years. The site was awkward, long and thin, and at about four meters high, hardly able to support a second level. But it was also engaging, a corner position overlooking St Marks Square. Scarpa placed long wooden balconies along the long edges of the space, and these were accessed from a slightly off-centre stretched suspended marble staircase. Together these served to accentuate the length and height of the space, while also allowing the qualities of light and air to be gradually appreciated as the visitor moved from the entrance to the centre of the shop. The tiled floor appeared as if moving water and the display tables that were cantilevered from the windows seemed to float into the space.

Olivetti have long since left the premises and the shop now houses objet d’art. The decorative finishes are beginning to age, the plaster is stained, the bronze is tarnished and in places the marble has decayed, but the distinctive character and exquisite nature of the space is still very evident.

Architecture in the raw

Photographed just before its destruction in 1912 Manchester’s pre-Waterhouse Town Hall was the subject of study by students at the Manchester School of Architecture published in 1915.

Few buildings of this quality have ever been demolished except during a war. Empty of people, furniture, and paintings with flecks of debris on the uncovered floor we see its spaces in their purest form.

CiA recommend the Vilhelm Hammershøi exhibition at the Royal Academy, London. Hammershøi’s cool interiors and distinctive grey-themed palette have attracted considerable attention for their restrained elegance and quiet power. The calm surroundings of the Sackler Galleries are particularly suitable for this collection of intimate and obsessive examinations of interior spaces.

Royal Academy

Guardian.co.uk

This month’s issue of AD Magazine, Interior Atmospheres, contains an article by CiA staffer Sally Stone with her regular co-author Graeme Brooker. The piece, entitled “Off the Peg: The Bespoke Interiors of Ben Kelly” was based upon an interview with the designer and discusses the qualities of the interiors that he creates.

In response to our opening discussion about the general perception of interiors practice and education, Kelly introduces himself as ‘an old fashioned interior designer’. He describes the subject as something that has integrity far beyond just surface consideration and he regards it as something that is ‘very close to architecture, but its not architecture’, that actually has little to do with surface treatment, but has its basis in the manipulation and control of space. He explains that the starting point for any project is in the analysis and understanding of the unique qualities of the existing space, and suggests that there is a resonating element that springs from the original building that is crucial for the development of the project. This interpretive attitude can be traced back to the work of the well known interior architect, Carlo Scarpa, although of course with vastly different visual results.

‘When I get the plan then this is when the project begins. We sit around the table and discuss what it’s telling us, what’s possible, what can we keep and what has to go,’ says Kelly. The site-specific qualities of the existing building that can be teased out and repossessed in the transformation of a space are one of the major sources of atmosphere in his work. It is from these readings that the process of organisation and assembly can begin. Kelly could be accused of not really doing very much; the basic spaces are relatively unaltered, many of the finishes are pre-existing and the new bits are very much the same as the old. He makes it look too easy. But that is exactly the point – he liberates the existing, not just in the way the space is exposed and manipulated, but also, and most importantly, the manner in which the new elements, insertions and materials echo the existing qualities.

Ben Kelly Design

Pictures: (Top) Ben Kelly in his studio, photo by Graeme Brooker; (Bottom) article page featuring The Hacienda, Manchester (now destroyed).

This triple height chapel has been carved from the lower floors of a banal office block on Peter Street in Manchester. The large room or volume is surrounded by circulation space, through which shines natural light. The long light from the west shines directly into the chapel in the evening. At ground floor level, at the front of the building, the designers have manipulated the barely double height space to accommodate a reception and bookshop with a tiny reading room.

OMI Architects, Manchester 1998

St Paul’s Church and Community Centre, London England, Matthew Lloyd Architects, 2004

The church at Bow is a collection of assorted elements gathered together in one building. It is modestly gothic (1878) with a cylindrical three-storey bell tower, very large pointed windows and clerestory lights, and an open nave. The ceiling over the chancel is highly decorated, the gold ribs run into the cast-iron columns, which are positioned centrally in front of pilasters between the windows within the white painted walls. It appears that the brick walls of the nave were once also painted white, but these have been allowed to peel and fade. The pews are placed around the raised altar and the organ is positioned against a blocked-up arch.

Into this mixture Matthew Lloyd Architects have inserted a two-storey steel and timber structure. It is raised high into the vaulted ceiling of the church to leave the chancel and the nave free for worship. The front of this bold curved wooden structure is supported by four enormous white painted Y-shaped steel columns, which just stand among the pews. The rear is connected to a white rectangular box of a quite different nature, and contained within this is the meeting room and stairs to the gallery, gym, and community rooms at first and second levels. The building has been split three-dimensionally into two L-shaped sections. The church occupies the L at the front and ground level and the community use the L at the top and back of the building. The language of the new is quite different to that of the old, but then, each area is an assemblage of different styles, components and functions, the solution of which seems to work.

Photo by G.J. Brooker

On a recent visit to Venice, Continuity in Architecture noted the changes that have been made to Carlo Scarpa’s masterly interpretation of the Venetian Palazzo, the Querini Stampalia Foundation. These changes are apparent even before entering the building, Scarpa’s delicate bridge is no longer in use as the entrance, and instead the visitor accesses the building from around the corner. This does seem to destroy the careful sequence of entrance spaces, although this was difficult to ascertain as the meticulous foyer rooms with their moats are now exhibition spaces. When CIA visited, they were blacked out to contain a geometric installation of tiny lights. The recital room was lined with transparent plastic, another installation rather than a protective device we hope. But the elegant courtyard garden, containing the moving water, appeared intact.