CONTINUITY IN ARCHITECTURE

CiA staffer Eamonn Canniffe’s 2007 book ‘Modern Architecture through Case Studies 1945 - 1990′ (with Peter Blundell Jones) has been published in Japanese Chinese. This new edition is available here.

Alvaro Siza - Quinta da Malagueira, Évora, Portugal (1977)

An edited extract from an interview conducted by Manchester School of Architecture doctoral candidate António Oliviera with the 2009 Royal Gold Medallist Alvaro Siza Vieira

AO: What were the principles underlying the Quinta da Malagueira project and what is the importance of vernacular architecture in this project?

AS: … Hidden in the centre of Malagueira there is a street, which was illegal construction in the 1940s. It is no accident that it is put in the very centre of the land where it could not be seen, to maintain the image. I must also point out that at that time, for example, levels of thermal insulation were notrequired; there was no regulation for that yet. So what moved the vernacular model of the courtyard house, which is not the only one in Alentejo, … is the one that is favourable to the budgetary restrictions and the creation of comfort, that is, the courtyard introduces a kind of transition; the climate in Alentejo is harsh, it is very hot and very cold, it also has large thermal variations, so that is an area of transition. The white paint, has also clearly to do with the environment of Évora, with the color of Évora, all white, …

AO: I find the Malagueira is a representative project almost of the Alentejo culture, I do not know if you agree with that?

AS: There are many reasons for each thing in architecture. I have also heard this sort of project being classified as neorationalist, for example, and of course nobody is working today without having the background, even if they deny it, of the evolution of architecture which is usually called rationalism. I do not think we can separate the reasons of architecture by this or that, I mean, there are many reasons combining, sometimes there is even the taste of the promoter, which is something that isn’t often mentioned, but which obviously has influence.

AO: I chose Malagueira for two reasons because on the one hand it has a very strong relationship with the place, with Évora, with the environment, with the ethos, and on the other hand it has almost a vision of the future, for example, because that one element that binds the whole, … I think these two aspects of relationship with the place, and demand for a relationship with the future are, in my view, essential.

AS: Yes, once again I agree, but there are several, but you mean the viaduct. One of the reasons for the viaduct, is really a relationship, it is no coincidence that under the viaduct there is a great pedestrian way and beside it there are cars, I do not like this thing pedestrians to one side, and cars to the other. By the way, in Évora when I got the job, the idea was to make some collective garages, and those narrow paths, between houses, were pedestrian, also because lots of cars was unthinkable in Malagueira, because that was really meant for poor people, and a quick change was not expected, which was a mistake to predict. But what is a fact is that it started, more cars began to appear, more cars, …and people created a very interesting rule, that in front of every house, there is an eight-meter stop for the owner and nobody else, and going along well with this rule, no one violating this rule, then the streets are too narrow for the cars, but there too, as there are no sidewalks, there are no accidents because the car driver cannot accelerate like a Formula 1, he has to drive slowly because otherwise he will scratch the car, hurt people … Oh the viaduct, the viaduct, well, about my saying that there is a parallel between cars and pedestrians, one of the reasons for the viaduct is that I knew from the start that there would be no money for infrastructure.

AO: The very simplicity of the materials of the viaduct?

AS: Out of the same rule not to bury drains, … a network gallery could be made and kill two birds with one stone, introducing a new scale waiting for the equipment, because as you know, there are distributed gaps in the plan, which are designed for equipment, a number of request of the town hall … Put simply no money ever came. What I could not imagine is that until now no money would come, and money still does not come.

AO: Architecture has such adversity outside architecture itself that…

AS: It is not always external, because sometimes it comes from professionals, obstruction by professionals themselves.

AO: The existential place has an important role in the outcome of your projects and works. Do you consider existentialism as thought important in the shape of architecture itself?

AS: Yes existentialism is something that is almost no longer spoken of, but it is not something that is gone, a thought that is not included in the way of thinking today, but I do not know what sense architecture is seeing, but what I find important in architecture, is the attention to how people live and how they want to live. The balance is always variable, ambiguous but it has always some lines of force, which we must try to understand, that is, one of the problems of architecture is the understanding of what is happening and what is happening is always persistence and innovation.

AO: Because the relationship with the site is part of sustainability?

AS: Yes, indeed, indeed…

AO: How do you see the future of architectural creation and its relationship with society.

AS: Well I see a black future, if the trend is to give major strength to every expertise, forgetting that journey I was talking about. If I am right, I may not be… (there is) the gap between the one who projects and the one who will be using the projected product. In all fields of architecture there are also new generations that are normally assimilating the huge increase of information that is coming, and (developing the) means to assimilate this information and I want to believe (in) that.

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

Further to Richard’s post below, more pictures of BDP’s Underley Hall projects from the early ’sixties.

Photoset

I recently visited Underley Hall near Kirby Lonsdale in Cumbria with Richard Brook of Manchester School of Architecture. This is Richard’s account of the visit:

Architects’ original model of the proposed Chapel at Underley Hall

Representatives of CiA and team-bau recently made a foray into Cumbria to investigate a little known chapel by BDP, built between 1964 and ’66 and annexed to a country mansion. The chapel was commissioned by the Lancaster diocese shortly after they took ownership in 1959 to run the estate as a junior seminary for the training of Catholic priests: St. Michael’s. Nikolas Pevsner in 1968 described the chapel as “easily the best recent ecclesiastical building in the country”. The site is now a residential school for young people with behavioural problems and as such may only be accessed by prior arrangement.

The principal building on the estate is the rather imposing Underley Hall, built over the footprint of a former house within an estate established since the Sixteenth Century. It was constructed after 1825 in a Jacobean Revival style for Alexander Nowell and designed by George Webster (see Notes at the foot of this post).

Drawing by Thomas Allom, engraved by J Thomas, 1830.
http://www.geog.port.ac.uk/webmap/thelakes/html/lgaz/lk12046.htm

Plan from Architecture North West. No.33, p.15, 1968

The 1960’s chapel sits to the east of the main hall, between it and the River Lune and was designed by William (Bill) White and John Sheridon, assisted by a full compliment of consultants from the progressive multi-disciplinary office of Building Design Partnership in Preston. A Victorian palm house was demolished to make way for the new addition.

The planning of the scheme and the distinctive cellular nature of its elements were informed by both designated programme and material selection. The demand for more side chapels than would be requisite in a parish church, delivered a strip of seven cells for private contemplative prayer to the rear of the main space. These can be accessed with no interruption to services and are subtly composed to reinforce solitude and composure. A mixture of long windows or roof lanterns either facilitate connection or separation from external stimuli, and a single step up within each chapel further promotes the isolative qualities of these spaces.

Budgetary restrictions meant that the material palette, whilst restrained does not bear the quality hallmarks of the building’s composition. Both the internal and external walls are constructed of concrete paving “split to reveal the colour and texture of the natural aggregate”. It was intended that this was complimentary to the stone of the existing hall, though perhaps a crisper, more reflective masonry would have provided a vivid but restrained contrast. The settling and movement properties of the concrete were effectively unknown and lead to the repeating ‘C’ shaped bays separated by full height windows. The floor is finished throughout in quarry tiles and fittings and linings are almost exclusively in stained softwood.

Most of the original fabric remains intact, though the sanctuary and nave spaces have been subdivided with temporary partitions into a store and gymnasium respectively. The simple confessionals, which sat beneath the visitor’s gallery, have also been dismantled. The roof construction is cleverly afforded an airy presence by the use of lanterns that occupy the spaces between the deep trusses and cast a soft light to the side and rear walls. Above the Sanctuary is another huge roof lantern that would have undoubtedly drawn focus to the altar. Externally this is expressed as a rather squat slate-hung tower.

The connection to the existing hall is by a glazed corridor, described as a cloister, but not perhaps evoking the monastic spirit that one would traditionally associate with the term. Where the new and old meet, it is, however, a neat junction composed of cleanly engineered timber components that visually frame and stretch the event of threshold transition.

An element of the scheme unknown to either of the visiting parties was waiting beyond the breadth of a corridor, once inside the original building. Contemporary to the chapel was a small dining room created from the infill of an internal courtyard. The space had been recently stripped back to reveal that all of the finishes were intact, original wall and floor linings and a beautifully engineered truss system, composed of slender timber sections and tension rods to facilitate a continuous band of clerestory glazing and carry a roof lantern. The quality of the diffused light even on such a grey day was soft and calming and the muted palette of the rest of the fittings gave the space an appropriately ethereal time capsule quality.

A quick sojourn across the playing fields for a more distant contextual appreciation revealed two things; one, that the light that day was particularly bad for photography and two, that our initial sentiment, with regard the lack of contrast between the old and the new buildings, was somehow proven. The lack of a powerful direct light source didn’t permit the formal interplay that shadow would promote in the reading of the two forms and perhaps would justify a material with stronger reflective characteristics.

One final surprise still lay in store, a Waring and Gillow table with a ‘new’ Formica top. Considerably more jarring a collision than any intervention by BDP.

All text and photographs copyright Richard Brook 2009

Notes

“1825 15 January. The foundation stone of the new Underley Hall was laid a few days ago by the owner Alexander Nowell, esq. It is nearly on the site of the old house and Mr. Webster of Kendal is the architect.”
From: ‘Supplementary Records: Kirkby Lonsdale’, Records relating to the Barony of Kendale: volume 3 (1926), pp. 278-291. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=49383

“Born in 1797 George Webster was the son of mason turned architect Francis Webster of Kendal. In 1818, at the age of 21, George Webster designed his first independent country house, Read Hall in Lancashire and work commenced on his design for Underley Hall in 1825.” http://www.whittingtonvillage.fsnet.co.uk/html_pages/whittington_hall/whittington_hall.html

see also: Taylor, A., The Websters of Kendal, Cumberland + Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, 2004. ed. Martin, J.

Call for Papers for a session at the First International Meeting of the European Architectural History Network, Guimaraes, Portugal, June 17-20, 2010.

The Figure in the Grotto: Materialisation and embodiment in the Renaissance

In renaissance Italy the garden represented a space of mediation between nature and culture. Within this liminal context the body appeared in a specific guise, figures ambiguously seen as both animated material emerging from nature, and conversely the petrifying figures of culture. The context of the garden, a very overt locus of private reverie, encouraged the experimentation with meaning through form that was deemed to have insufficient decorum for the public realm. Figures of the antique and mythical past were used to create a psychologically provocative setting for the indulging of fantasy away from the cares of ecclesiastical or civic office. In particular the appropriation of herms, half architectural element and half statue, as ambiguous figures in the populating of grottoes, were exploited as members to define, and even on occasion support, the other and originary world of the garden. Their presence provided literal embodiments that were invested with interpretative meaning. Constructed of marble, mosaic, tufa, and stucco the nymphaea spatialised the painted grotteschi uncovered in early archaeological explorations of ancient villa sites, with their phantasmagoric juxtapositions of architectural elements and mythical creatures. The scale transformation, from a fictive realm to an architectural one, inevitably involved a coarsening of the detail and the illusionistic exploration of material possibilities. The intellectual meaning expressed was therefore obscured by the immediacy of sensation and novelty, which served as a mask to the ancient ethos evoked through the form, decoration and location of such spaces. In such situations the human and the natural were treated as one phenomenon, tied into a corporeal expression that sought to make the intangible expressively apparent. They stand as manifestations of the mediating role of architecture as human intervention in, and vulnerability to, the elemental forces of nature.

Papers are invited which explore specific examples of the genre (such as the nymphaeum of Villa Giulia and the Casino of Pius IV in Rome, the Grotto of Buontalenti in the Boboli Gardens in Florence, or the nymphaeum of the Villa Barbaro at Maser) or which exploit the expressive range of architectural grotesques, as column, as pilaster, as sculpture and as decorative ornament, to define the space or figure the surface.

Send paper proposals to Eamonn Canniffe E.Canniffe@mmu.ac.uk
Manchester School of Architecture, Manchester Metropolitan University, Faculty of Art and Design,
Chatham Building, Cavendish Street, Manchester M15 6BR, United Kingdom. Tel +44 (0)161 247 6956 / Fax +44 (0)161 247 6810.

The full programme for all sessions is available at www.eahn.org

James Robertson, doctoral candidate at the Manchester School of Architecture and Rome Scholar in Architecture, is participating with fellow Fine Arts Scholars in the group exhibition at the British School at Rome 14-21 March. James’s contribution will feature his research on Jack Coia.

See Notes from Rome and Compare & Contrast

James Robertson, the Rome Scholar in Architecture, is approximately half way through his period at the British School at Rome. His research on the ecclesiastical architecture of Jack Coia has revealed many parallels in the twentieth century churches of Rome. James writes

“I have been getting together a fairly comprehensive list of churches contemporary with Coia, and up to about 20 years earlier, as some of these earlier Italian buildings seem to have some similarities to those by Coia. There seem to be several distinct groups, or types of church, starting with a kind of brick neo-Romanesque, through to the neo-Classical, semi-rationalist / fascist, full-blown rationalist and then a group which does not seem to fit properly into any of the above! There is one in this group by a rather obscure architectural historian called Bruno Maria Appolonj-Ghetti. He designed a church in Rome called Ss. Martiri Canadesi, which Fellini used in his film ‘La Dolce Vita’.”

The church interior, then recently completed, is used in the film as the setting for an encounter between Marcello and his intellectual friend Steiner, who plays Bach’s Toccata and Fugue on the church organ.

James is also researching at the Scots College, searching for evidence of the influence of Rome-trained clergy on the architectural direction of the Archdiocese of Glasgow and their commissioning of Coia.

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

Eamonn Canniffe has been invited to present his recent book “The Politics of the Piazza” at the prestigious De Bosis Colloquium in Italian Studies at Harvard University Department of Romance Languages and Literatures during the Spring Semester 2009.

The Politics of the Piazza: Look inside

Eamonn Canniffe has written a new book entitled “The Politics of the Piazza: the history and meaning of the Italian square”. The book, which has been published by Ashgate has been described by Professor Nicholas Temple of Lincoln School of Architecture as making

an important contribution to our understanding of the changing political landscapes that have influenced public space in Italy. The study succeeds in both being a chronological survey, demonstrating a breadth of knowledge of critical developments from ancient Rome to the present, and a series of insightful case-studies.

The Politics of the Piazza: The History and Meaning of the Italian Square (Amazon link)

The end of the academic year and the commencement of research time (that’s summer to the uninitiated!) was marked at the Manchester School of Architecture by a research presentation by Prue Chiles of the University of Sheffield School of Architecture. Prue is the Director of the Bureau of Design Research, an office which seeks to bridge the divide between practice and research which often characterises the academic architectural environment. BDR activity covers three main areas, New Futures, Learning Environments and Strategic and Community-led Regeneration, and their work exposes students of architecture to live projects with clients and communities, the progress of which are documented in academic publication. As their website says:

We bring ideas and research methodologies and apply them successfully in the real world. Our interest in processes, not just results, means that we can share ways of doing things, and work out why landmark projects succeed - and how to learn from them. We use art and design practices to enable people to think spatially and to help groups to create shared visions.

Visit the site at BDR