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Samuel Hughes

@SCP_Hughes

13 Apr

Work of Donald McMorran (1904-65) and George Whitby (1916-73), perhaps the last architects of the 'classical survival' in postwar Britain. Here Cripps Hall of the University of Nottingham (1959) and Wood Street Police Station (1966).

Their masterpiece was the Central Criminal Court extension (finished 1972), to my knowledge the last major government building in the classical tradition in Europe. Many intriguing sources, including Dance's Old Bailey, Georgian mill architecture, and a dash of Louis Kahn.

The building was bombed by the IRA the year after its completion, but was so solidly built that it survived 'almost without a scratch' (visible in the upper left here).

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Samuel Hughes

@SCP_Hughes

12 Apr

After my rash claim that we have no premodernist high-rise in Europe, several excellent counterexamples have been raised. None of these buildings is perfect, but they are still important reference points today. Scott's Cambridge Library (1934) and Robertson's Shell Centre (1962).

Holden's Senate House (1937) and Wallander's and Callmander's Kungstornen (1924/5) in Stockholm.

McMorran and Whitby's Wood Street Police Station (1965) and the (alas notoriously ugly) Queen Anne's Mansions (1873).

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Samuel Hughes

@SCP_Hughes

10 Apr

Unlike Americans, Europeans have no precedents for high-rise design before modernism. It is thus with great interest that I observe several recent attempts at a vernacular skyscraper. Here before-and-after at Blackfriars Circus, by the ever-interesting Maccreanor Lavington.

Here Keybridge House, by Alliance and Morrison, and a proposed Maccreanor Lavington building on Old Kent Road.

I stress that I do not give any of these buildings my unqualified support, either architecturally or (especially) urbanistically. Nevertheless, they deserve attention: the right policy is to nourish encouraging tendencies, rather than making blanket condemnations.

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Samuel Hughes

@SCP_Hughes

10 Apr

I just learnt in Carol Willis's brilliant 'Form Follows Finance' why ceiling heights tended to fall in the 20C. The main reason is that natural lighting depends greatly on how high the windows are relative to the depth of the room, for the obvious reason that light falls.

Before the invention of fluorescent lighting, office space was apparently considered unrentable if it is was more than 25ft from a 12ft high window.

This is one reason why it is much easier to convert older office buildings to residential uses today: people will tolerate working in an office lit only with fluorescent strips, but they are intensely reluctant to live in a home without sunlight.

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Samuel Hughes

@SCP_Hughes

9 Apr

Work of JJ Burnet (1857-1938). Burnet was born in Glasgow and began his career working in a 'neo-Baroque' manner, as in the Athenaeum Theatre (left). His reputation was made, however, by his great classical design for the British Museum extension, finished in 1914 (right).

Burnet was one of several mostly Scottish architects who revived a stricter classical style in Edwardian Britain; the contrast here with Belcher's 1902 Town Hall for Colchester (left), more representative of existing English practice, shows the striking difference.

Burnet remained a fascinating architect in the interwar period, with work like Adelaide House (1925) and Glasgow University Memorial Chapel (1929).

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Samuel Hughes

@SCP_Hughes

8 Apr

The celebrated city of Shibam in Yemen, mostly 16C. Many sources claim it was built so high for 'defence'; this doesn't obviously explain why Shibam ended up higher than other premodern Eurasian cities with similar defensive needs, so I suspect there must be more to it.

The facades alternate between rows of larger windows, often with richly ornamented shutters, and rows of smaller ones. The two are often grouped with string courses and sometimes pilaster strips, recalling the superimposed implied giant orders of many Italian apartment buildings.

The smaller windows are naturally read as mezzanines, but it seems they are in fact clerestories, i.e. each floor has two rows of windows. This will disappoint YIMBYs, but they must be beautiful high-ceilinged rooms inside. Few photographs are available, but here is one.

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