BLUEPRINT ISSUE 299 BLUEPRINTFebruary 2011 £5.50

THE LEADING MAGAZINE OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

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FEATURES

BLUEPRINT FEBRUARY 2011

36 48DIAMOND LIGHT SYNCHROTRONIn the countryside south ofOxford lies the Diamond LightSynchrotron. The project hasbecome a centre of excellence inBritish scientific research. Theremarkable building, 235m indiameter, is ring-fenced forfunding and will see £69 millioninvested in it over the comingyears. Tim Abrahams reports onthe existing facility and howplans to expand it will continueto synthesise the architecturewith the research it houses

his essay, Blueprint asked eightleading international architectshow encounters with Stirling’sbuildings and the man himselfhave influenced them and theirwork. With contributions fromRichard Meier, Odile Decq, KengoKuma, Peter Wilson, AntonioCardillo, Kjetil Thorsen, KerstenGeers and Pier Paolo Taburelli,the responses reveal Stirling’sinternational reputation and aninsight into how his work isinterpreted outside the UK

JAMES STIRLINGPritzker prize-winning JamesStirling was the architect behindBritain’s most famous post-warbuildings. The most prestigiousarchitecture prize in the countryis named after him, yet his workcontinues to divide opinion.Ahead of a major exhibition atTate Britain later this year,Anthony Vidler writes about thearchive and legacy of an architect who remainsBritian’s most important modern architect. Accompanying

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42 POSTLERFERGUSONMartin Postler and Ian Fergusonare best known in the UK for anarsenal of build-it-yourselfcardboard weapons. OwenPritchard meets the designersand finds that despite theirinfamy, the company hasambitions beyond the design ofsingle objects. Throughcollaboration with internationalclients, PostlerFerguson isfinding ways to operate in new markets by exporting theirskills and knowledge

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JAMES FRAZER STIRLING ISBRITAIN’S MOST CELEBRATED AND DIVISIVE ARCHITECT. AHEAD OF A MAJOR EXHIBITIONAT TATE BRITAIN, ANTHONY VIDLERAND A HOST OF ARCHITECTS FROMAROUND THE WORLD DISCUSSSTIRLING’S OWN INFLUENCES ANDTHE IMPACT OF HIS WORK

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ANTONINO CARDILLOITALYThe first time I came across the work ofJames Stirling was during my studies ofContemporary Architectural History. I stillcherish the memory of seeing a black andwhite photo of the engineering departmentat Leicester University built in 1959. Thehypnotic harmony – that was somehow outof balance – achieved by cantilevering thevolumes of the building, seemed to makereference to the Club Risakov by Russianavant-garde architect Kostantin Melnikov. Itgave me the impression Stirling wanted tocarry on writing the truncated history ofRussian avant-garde.

Particularly with the engineeringdepartment at Leicester University, Stirlingproduced a romantic vision of the curtainwalls and horizontal windows belonging tothe modernist vocabulary of materials. Thisability to critically combine these somehowobvious materials is a constant in his work.At a certain time on his creative path,though, Stirling swapped part of hismodernist vocabulary for more historical references.

This is evident in the Neue Staatsgaleriein Stuttgart, Germany. I always get theimpression that in this building Stirlingdidn’t manage to firmly control hisemerging architectural vocabulary. The lackof synthesis here is also spatial. I like tothink of this building as an abortedexperiment – part of a creative path thatwas abruptly interrupted by Stirling’ssudden death.

His engineering department at LeicesterUniversity, though, has a visionary power.It’s a building that’s able to communicatewith any other period in history – beyondthe period in which it was designed andconstructed. It’s a meta-historical building.

There is an intriguing similaritybetween Stirling’s work in Leicester and theTorre Velasca by BBPR in Milan, completedin 1958. Both projects were engaging withthe idea of modular structures andinterested in resolving the passage from anoctagonal base to a rectangular module.

work on prefabrication and housingattempted to bring both into the spatialforms that had proved so resilient asarmatures for the relation of public andprivate; his apparent turns to classicismand to the typological precedents ofinstitutions were not literal but abstractnotations of the history that theseinstitutions brought into the present; hisplays with colour were a not-too-subtlecountering to ‘white architecture.’

In all these shifts, the central unifierwas his ability to join and weldvolumetrically – an ability aided fromearly in his career by his recognition ofthe power of the axonometric projection –not only as representation but as a vehiclefor the process of design. It is this processthat the archive most clearly explains. Itdocuments the intense and difficult

development of buildings that – whenbuilt or drawn as projects – seem botheffortless and all too final.

For Stirling the development of an‘architecture’ was a continuous andcontinuing process. Even as one drawingor sketch led to another, so each building– apparently finite in itself – was anotherstage of the never-ending exploration ofspace and material, function andexpression by which (with not a little witand a great deal of ebullient pleasure), an‘architecture’ might be created

This is an extract from Anthony Vidler’sbook, James Frazer Stirling: Notes fromthe Archive. There will be an exhibition,James Stirling: Notes from the Archive atTate Britain, 5th April – 21st August 2011

Above: a plan of theWissenschaftszentrum in Berlin, a project byStirling, Wilford &Associates, 1979-87

Below: the Clore Galleryextension to Tate Britain,where a major exhibitionon Stirling will be heldlater this year

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