Geoffrey H.Baker
The Architecture of James Stirling and His Partners James Gowan and Micheal Wilford
2011
Sir James Stirling was arguably the greatest British architect of the twentieth century. This book provides the most comprehensive critical survey of Stirling's work to date, charting the development of his ideas from his formative years, through his partnership with James Gowan, on to his period in practice as sole partner, and finally, his partnership with Michael Wilford. Using archival material, extensive interviews with his partners and others who worked for him, together with analytical examinations of key buildings, this detailed critical study explains his philosophy, working method and design strategy. In doing so, it sheds new light on the atelier structure of his office and who did what on his major buildings. Geoffrey Baker is the first to analyse in depth the articulation systems used in major projects undertaken by Stirling. In a discussion of his mature works, Baker explains how Stirling's work can be understood in terms of several interconnected ideas.
These include surrealism, historicism, myth and metaphor, inconsistency and ambiguity, bi-lateral symmetry, the garden, rusticity and arcadia, and the archetype, seen as the repository of the collective architectural memory. As well as discussing his interests and those who influenced Stirling, the book compares his oeuvre with that of the pioneers of modern architecture, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto and Le Corbusier.
This book charts a remarkable career, and offers invaluable insights not only into the masterly, timeless architecture, but also into the man himself: charismatic, irreverent, courageous, serious, sometimes rude, often stubborn, belligerent, yet gentle. He was endlessly inventive and deeply dedicated to his art, producing buildings that reflect all of the above, buildings that are magnificent and ultimately humane.
On Langham House Close
The flats may be regarded as 'humanized Brutalism' or modified Corbusier. In fact they are both, demonstrating, as Mark Girouard has pointed out, that Stirling's reaction to what was going on with him was always to produce something quite unlike anything that had been produced before:
There was this feeling in the air that here was Big Jim, this big man, somehow producing aggressive, extraordinary buildings that were sort of revolutionary; deliberately different reacting and protesting and giving you terrific aesthetic shock that could be described by the word brutalist. Then I went out to Ham Common and was absolutely amazed. There I saw, what seemed to me, these exquisite, reticent, beautifully scaled, delicate, totally inoffensive (in the nasty sense of the word), buildings which really were a pleasure and a delight to look at.
From his accounts of Le Corbusier's Jaoul Houses in the Architectural Review (where he compared them with the Villa at Garches) Stirling was at odds with the Jaoul Houses because their primitive character was 'out of tune with their Parisian environment'. The article makes it clear that somewhere along the line Le Corbusier had lost sight of his commitment to a Machine-Age rationale. Stirling points up the 'advanced' intentions of the Villa at Garches:
Utopian, it anticipates and participates in, the progress of twentieth century emancipation. A monument not to an age which is dead, but to a way of life that has not generally arrived, and a continuous reminder of the quality to which all architects must aspire if modern architecture is to retain its vitality.
Gowan planned the two storey blocks but their internal bridges were designed by Stirling. The use of precisely laid 'soft' London stock brick gave the flats an English look although recessed joints add to the precision Stirling felt was missing from the way bricks had been laid in the Jaoul houses. The bricks are rich in colour and texture. Explaining sources of Ham Common Stirling mentions 'the quality of vernacular buildings and the Liverpool warehouses, and in general by the great virtuosity of English nineteenth-century brick technology’.
In the design, functional needs are expressed rhythmically as in Stirling's terrace, living areas project forward and bedrooms are recessed. This push-pull rhythm, with more space given to the living area, allows a 'locking' effect in which a core of circulation connecting the bathrooms and kitchen areas creates a lateral 'plug' between adjacent blocks. The rhythmic effect of the plan is translated into elevations in which the concrete floor slabs, brick panels and window openings are also interlocked.
In Gowan's two storey blocks, circulation ‘locks' the three units, the internal bridge reinforcing the linear condition established by the spine wall, service areas being on the outer wall. The forward blocks are staggered, with a push-pull rhythm that echoes the terrace block but is cognizant of the linear condition. In each solution, terrace and two story units observe Gowan's core principle, established with his house studies.
Stirling designed the three storey terrace block initially with vertical windows to be harmonious with the existing house. Stirling 'striated the elevations with beams with tall windows sitting on that’, thinking this looked dull, Gowan reworked them, introducing the clerestory windows. 'Occasionally’, Gowan explains, 'to make it pleasurable, he got a nice coincidence where two façades meet and you get a three dimensional junction with a cantilever. There is a particularly nice junction that only happened at the back of the block - it only happened there; this revealed the structural role of the beam'.
Richard Rogers, a student of Gowan's at this time, spotted this on a visit to the site, and said it was what he liked best on the design. It gave him a buzz! Gowan recalls that ‘Rogers, who, like Stirling was dyslexic, used his eyes to good effect’. This was why, Gowan thought, he spotted the cantilever detail. On being told that Stirling was also dyslexic (Gowan wasn't aware of this) he felt 'this explained a lot, especially Stirling's reliance on visual communication (as opposed to reasoned discussion)’. Gowan was surprised how, each weekend, Stirling went through all the architectural magazines assiduously, never missing a thing, 'Stirling's education was through magazines, not theory or thought’.
Gowan explains that instead of looking for ideas in this way he (Gowan) would ‘arrogantly sit at the drawing board thinking- a slow process, and was scrupulous about not copying other people ideas’. In Gowan's view Stirling didn't like to think things out. He didn't like reasoned argument either, and when they argued, Stirling didn't fare well 'in a serious toe to toe about what needed to be done’. Gowan describes another argument about the need for a drip on a sill and how Stirling floored Gowan when he produced a photo of a Liverpool warehouse saying, 'there you are, no drip on that’. Gowan believes that Stirling admired his (Gowan's) thought process and claims that Stirling had no theory whatsoever. 'He was intuitive, not a strategist’.
Whilst working on Ham Common Gowan argued that 'surely we should have some principles?' to which Stirling replied 'what principles?' Gowan said ‘well maybe we should have some’. Confirming that he was an empiricist, Stirling rejoined: 'well maybe we'll get some as we work through the project’. That was how Stirling developed his ideas and stratagems, through direct experience. But Gowan has particularly happy memories of the time they spent together on Ham Common. 'It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty damn good'.
The flats at Ham Common represent what Stirling and Gowan's collaboration could achieve. They fulfilled the need for ‘a new bloody-minded style' (proponents of Brutalism felt this was a necessary reaction to the 'polite' Swedish modernism that had become fashionable in the fifties') in a way that was well mannered, despite its toughness, Neither anti-art nor anti-architecture, Ham Common put Brutalism in its place.
Stirling's distance from and resistance to the movement is clear in his rebuttal:
their use of materials “as found” was an already established attitude and the New Brutalism seemed to be: a well-intentioned but over patriotic attempt to elevate English architecture to an international status. But whatever the term might have initially meant it is clear from recent and repeated journalistic asides that it must have created in the public eye an image of pretentiousness, artiness and irresponsibility, and as such the continuation of its use can only be detrimental to modem architecture in this country.