SIR LESLIE MARTIN, ARCHITECT (1908 – 2000)

Sir Leslie Martin

Sir Leslie Martin is mentioned elsewhere in the pages of this website, as the architect who designed the new, purpose built, Music Faculty building for Cambridge University, including the West Road Concert Hall, probably Cambridge’s most important concert venue. For this project (1977 – 1984) he was assisted by Colen Lumley and Ivor Richards. He was the first Professor of Architecture at the university, holding this position from 1956 to 1973.

West Road Concert Hall auditorium, completed in 1977

The following obituary of Sir Leslie Martin, written by Diana Rowntree, was published in The Guardian, Wednesday 2 August 2000

Sir Leslie Martin Outstanding architect who designed the and saw his craft in the context of time.

The architect Sir Leslie Martin, who has died aged 91, was formed by the arts and crafts tradition, and his buildings bear the stamp of meticulous detailing and beautiful finish. Yet he believed that new products and materials demanded new forms and new methods of building. "Architects," he wrote, "must respond to the old forms and materials and perceive their true intent in their own age, and then, remembering everything, start again. This is the essential intention of tradition."

He is best known for his work on the Royal Festival Hall in London, completed on time for the in 1951, and for several large projects in Oxford and Cambridge.

Martin grew up in , where he trained at the university school of architecture. He won commissions for private houses, mainly through contacts he had made while editing a Faber publication, Circle, which brought together views of the avant-garde in art, literature and the sciences.

In 1934, he became head of the new architecture school at Hull University, and married Sadie Speight, also an architect. Together, they designed Northwich Kindergarten, and, in 1938, wrote The Flat Book, a reference work on contemporary furniture, fabrics and household products.

Towards the end of the war, Martin became chief assistant architect to the LMS Railway, a creative centre of the hitherto unsung Modern Movement, whose rational, systematic and enlightened atmosphere must have been most congenial to him. From there, it was a natural progression to the London County Council, a centre of excellence at that time.

As deputy to the chief architect, Robert Matthew, Martin was immediately involved in plans for the Festival of Britain, and its one permanent building, the Royal Festival Hall. No challenge could have been more tempting - the hall would be the first public building in Britain of the emerging 20th century architecture. So, in 1948, Matthew and Martin embarked on a fast-track building programme that would have stretched the skill of high- tech practitioners even today.

Martin was not an able talent spotter, but he knew how to nurture it, and always gave credit where it was due. His collaborators were always named, and many launched upon successful careers. In 1953, he succeeded Matthew as chief architect to the LCC, and three years later was appointed to the chair of architecture at Cambridge University. He was a brilliant teacher, and believed that the purpose of education is to develop talents and stretch the mind.

Architecture, he thought, was best approached by learning to recognise problems, analysing their various parts, and then bringing everything together. "In architecture," he said, "there are no separate subjects. Architecture need not be an arid cacophony; it should be a conversation."

Martin was aware of spatial relationships on every scale; that buildings are not only the sum of the rooms within, but that they are also the bricks of which a town is built. His contribution to planning wisdom was that relationships in time must also be considered. Since land is becoming scarce, for example, we must take likely future needs into account.

He believed that we had lost the power to guide and shape the forms of our environment, and needed to regain this power. He also believed that a building design could not be fully tested until it was built. The existence of the building research station made this easier, but experience strengthened Martin's interest in encouraging research as a career for architects, and in the development of building types.

The success of College Hall, Leicester, confirmed this method and, as Martin's practice took root in Cambridge, Harvey Court, a residential building for Gonville and Caius College, provided a telling example of modern thinking on the hallowed quadrangle form. The same rational procedures produced the group of faculty libraries at Manor Road, Oxford, designed by Martin in collaboration with . On their arrival in Cambridge, Martin and his wife converted the King's Mill, Shelford, to provide their practice with an office and their family with a house above. The detailing and surprising spaces of this building - and of the art gallery at Kettle's Yard - showed the formidable theorist and shy, and therefore often intimidating, professor in a new light.

Meanwhile, Martin had also been consultant to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation almost from the time it acquired the old palace park in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon. In Calouste, he found a client whose perceptions of the relation between buildings and their environment matched his own.

His appointment, in 1978, as architect for the detailed design of the next building to be added to the complex in the park, the Centre for Modern Art, offered an opportunity, surely unique, to design a great complex of buildings for which he could rely upon perfect craftsmanship and, even more unusual, ample funding.

The results lived up to everyone's expectations. Today, the gallery rises from a moat, and overlooks a large amphitheatre. Children have a pavilion, where they can pursue their own art. The stepped section gives the even distribution and generous level of light that had become the practice's signature. That these are joyful buildings is no surprise.

One can study Martin's writings and buildings in detail, but you have to stand back to grasp his achievement. This erudite professor acted out, over six decades, the naive intention of his generation - to put the findings of science and reason to the service of society, and of architecture. By promoting teamwork and research into building types, then by building these types and testing their practicality, he and his students, and like- minded architects, created the means to confront the awful scale of modern buildings.

Martin was knighted in 1957. His wife died in 1992, and he is survived by their son and daughter.

John Leslie Martin, architect, born August 17 1908; died July 28 2000

As Diana Rowntree notes, the building for which Leslie Martin is best remembered is the Royal Festival Hall, built for the Festival of Britain and completed in 1951. The building is in the Modernist style and was designed by Leslie Martin, Robert Matthews and Peter Moro, all at that time young architects working for London City Council. The foundation stone was laid in 1949. There were substantial alterations to the building, including changes to the façade in 1964 and raised concrete walkways were added around the building in 1967/68. It became a Grade I Listed Building in 1988. However, the Royal Festival Hall was closed for extensive refurbishment in 2005 and reopened in 2007. During this refurbishment the interior of the building was extensively remodelled, in spite of opposition from conservationists. So all in all, it has seen extensive alteration since it was first built.

The Royal Festival Hall in 1951

An article by Andrew Saint, published on the website of the Cambridge University School of Architecture, describes Leslie Martin’s role in the development of the school as follows.

Modernism was marginal in the Cambridge school before the Second World War. . .

On the eve of the war the course was still as yet only for the three undergraduate years, about sixty students in all. A diploma exam could be taken two years after graduation, but as yet there was no actual diploma course. Research, commented a survey of schools, "tends to be looked down on," though "the Cambridge School, perhaps more than any other, has the potential resources required for that architectural research, in the broadest sense, which is so necessary if modern architecture is to develop". . .

During the Second World War the larger Bartlett School was evacuated from London to Cambridge and some joint teaching took place. Despite ambitious plans for the future, [the Cambridge School] found it hard to adapt to post-war conditions and the school declined. But outstanding students . . . still passed through. In 1946 a fine teacher and architect arrived in the shape of David Roberts (1911-82), who drew many good students into his Cambridge practice, as Hugh Hughes had done before him. Bicknell and Roberts were to be the backbone of the post-war generation of teachers who took it for granted that lecturers would build as well as teach. They regarded their offices as natural extensions to the classroom.

. . . A decisive change came with the arrival of Leslie Martin (1908-2000) as head of school and it's first professor in 1956. The appointment was a coup. Among the most prestigious modernists in the UK, Martin had confirmed his pre-war reputation as an avant-garde architect with the popular success of the Royal Festival Hall. His intellectual air suited Cambridge; he possessed a doctorate (then rare in British Architecture), he believed in reconciling science with art, and before the war he had headed the Hull School of Architecture. Martin combined teaching and research with an atelier-style practice run from his home in Great Shelford. He also had a nose for politics and exercised extraordinary patronage over major architectural jobs throughout the country, distributed on his advice among protégés and the many young architects whom he encouraged. Though often remote from the daily life of the school, Martin excelled as a memorable and perceptive studio critic. In 1958 he was one of the instigators of the Oxford Conference which led to the radical reform of British Architectural education.

The school now reorganised the undergraduate years into a full Cambridge 'tripos' (i.e. honours degree), the Diploma following on in 1960. The establishment of the two-year Diploma altered the school's centre of gravity, stimulating greater sophistication in the studio. In 1960 too history of art began to be taught as part of a seperate tripos course. Just then history seemed less relevant to the creation of architecture. Though it was still intensively taught to the architectural students, the methods of doing so had begun to diverge in tenor and scope from what art historians had inculcated. The divorce of the elements combined in the setting-up of the school began to be felt. Though the Scroope Terrace premises and library were still shared.

To house the increased activity an extension was added behind 1 Scroope Terrace in 1958-9, designed by Colin St John Wilson and Alex Hardy. Upstairs was for teaching, while below were a staff common room and four rooms for researchers. The brick-and-concrete idiom of the extension prefigured the 'Cambridge modernism' identified with Martin and his disciples, while flaunting it's own Corbusian pedigree. In cooler, Scandinavian guise it enjoyed a strong and long following in British architecture, running through from Martin's own Harvey Court for Caius College (1960-2), designed with Wilson and Patrick Hodgson, to such late examples as the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, by Barry Gasson, John Meunier and Brit Anderson (designed 1971, built later) and Wilson's British Library (1978-97). Perhaps the most polished specimen of this gentlemanly modernism in Cambridge is the eight-storey William Stone building at Peterhouse by Martin and Wilson (1963-4).

Teachers and researchers of different hues were drawn to the school in the Martin era. Colin Rowe was an assistant lecturer for some years from 1958; Peter Eisenman came to write a doctorate in 1960. The school pledged its commitment to a continuous relationship between research, teaching and practice by inaugurating the Centre for Land Use and Built Form Studies in 1967, under the direction of Lionel March but with early personal involvment from Leslie Martin. The Centre's original goal was to apply geometrical principles to ground coverage and building form, with better housing layouts foremost in mind. This work influenced the thinking of such architects as Richard MacCormac. Research topics proliferated, as computer studies started to impinge on architecture. In 1974, following Martin's retirement, the enlarged research team, by then located away from Scroope Terrace in Brooklands Avenue, was renamed the Martin Centre. Meanwhile in Scroope Terrace a full Department of History of Art was created to stand alongside the Department of Architecture in 1970, the two departments combining to form a Faculty of Architecture and History of Art. Under the guidance of Robin Middleton a joint Faculty Library now developed into the best such library in the UK.

. . . From the late 1960s there was growing variety and freedom in the studio teaching, occasionally culminating in unrest. It was still taken for granted that most of the lectureships would be taken by practitioner- teachers . . . but a growing separation between architectural schools and practice, with the former tending to cast themselves as self-sufficient powerhouses, was naturally felt in Cambridge.

It seems that, while Leslie Martin presided over the School of Architecture, teaching and practice of architecture became as closely integrated as they were ever going to be in Cambridge, and Martin himself completed a large number of major projects while he was Professor of Architecture at Cambridge. Among the buildings he designed are the following, in chronological order.

Royal Festival Hall 1951

His own house and studios, in a converted mill in Great Shelford, near Cambridge

Leicester University buildings, Leslie Martin with Trevor Dannatt 1957

Universty College Leicester was expanding rapidly after the end of the Second World War and seeking University status, it wanted to make a statement with its new buildings. Leslie Martin, by then a leading exponent of Modernism, was asked to create a master plan for the university’s building programme, which he did. He called in a number of leading Modernist architects of the time to design some of the buildings but one building complex he designed himself. This includes the Physics and Astronomy Building shown below. This contrasts with the high rise towers created by other architects involved, such as the Engineering Building by James Stirling, James Gowan and Frank Newby, and the Charles Wilson Building by Denys Lasdun. If there was a master plan it is difficult to see what it was.

The Physics and Astronomy Building at Leicester University, designed by Leslie Martin (1957)

Harvey Court, Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge 1960-62

Presumably by coincidence, another of Leslie Martin’s buildings, Harvey Court, built for Gonville and Caius College in West Road in Cambridge, also stands very near an equally distinctive building by James Stirling, the Cambridge University History Faculty building.

Harvey Court, Gonville and Caius College, West Road, Cambridge, Designed by Leslie Martin (1960 – 62)

Harvey Court, showing the central area with terracing

The St Cross Building, St Cross Road, Oxford Leslie Martin with Colin St John Wilson and Patrick Hodgkinson 1960 -64

The St Cross Building in Oxford is one of Leslie Martin’s more celebrated buildings. The St Cross Building is the home of the Oxford University Law Faculty, including the Bodleian Law Library, and the English Faculty and is a Grade II* listed building. Leslie Martin worked with and Colin St John Wilson (architect of the New British Library). Also a significant contributor to the project was Patrick Hodgkinson (principal architect of London's Brunswick Centre) who was then based at Leslie Martin's studio in Cambridge. Design and construction took place between 1960 and 1964.

The building is made up of three interlocking cubes of different sizes, with a central common area containing lecture theatres and rooms where the cubes overlap.

An aerial photograph of the St Cross Building (centre, with a pale green roof) in St Cross Road, Oxford

According to Geoffrey Tyack's Oxford: An Architectural Guide (1998),

Martin subscribed to Le Corbusier’s belief that “the plan is the generator [of form]”, and the form of the building is determined by the internal arrangement of differently sized boxes – placed at different levels and ingeniously interlocking with one another. The resulting agglomeration of massive cubic blocks is clad in buff brick – chosen, though this is not very apparent to the observer, to harmonize with the stone of the adjacent Holywell Manor and St Cross Church – and broken up by long strips of plate glass windows in metal frames: a favourite Corbusian mannerism. The most striking feature, though, is the monumental staircase, leading from St Cross Road to the English and Law Libraries on the top floor, and conjuring up subliminal images of the Odessa steps in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin – a film much admired in the 1960s.

The St Cross Buildng, Oxford (1960 – 64)

The St Cross Building, Oxford, seen from St Cross Road

The St Cross Buildng, Oxford, showing the staircase leading up to the Bodleian Law Library

The largest of the three cubes, straight ahead as one climbs the staircase, contains the glass-ceilinged and galleried central space of the Bodleian Law Library. The medium- sized cube contains the English Faculty Library, and the small cube (formerly the Economics and Statistics Library) is being redeveloped for Law and English. The internal finishes were all specified by the Martin studio. In Oxford Modern: a Guide to the New Architecture of the City and University (2001) Philip Opher notes that “[t]he building has been detailed with great care and exquisite taste, inspired by the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and Dutch building of the 1920s.” This is one of Leslie Martin’s most attractive buildings, far more so than his later Oxford building, now known as the Tinbergen Building, also in St Cross Road, which houses the Zoology and Experimental Psychology Departments of the University.

The interior of the Bodleian Law Library, St Cross Building, Oxford

The St Cross Buildng contains lecture and seminar rooms, as well as the Law and English Libraries, and faculty administrative offices. Lecturers do not have offices in the faculty building, but use their rooms in their college.

Middleton Hall, 1962 – 67

Sir Leslie Martin designed the master plan for the Hull University campus but the Middleton Hall, the university’s purpose built concert hall, is the only building on the campus that he designed.

The Mddleton Hall, University of Hull

The Mddleton Hall auditorium, University of Hull

William Stone Building, Peterhouse, Cambridge 1963-64

Also in the 1960s, and showing some features in common with the St Cross Building in Oxford, though of a very different form, the William Stone Building was designed by Leslie Martin as a hall of residence, for Peterhouse, Cambridge.

William Stone Buildng, Peterhouse, Cambridge

William Stone Building, Peterhouse, Cambridge

Kettle’s Yard Extension Leslie Martin with David Owers 1970

Kettle’s Yard is the creation of Jim Ede, who was the Curator of the Tate Gallery in the 1920s and 1930s and a private collector of contemporary art and beautiful natural objects. Between 1936 and 1957 he and his wife, Helen, who was a talented amateur musician, travelled abroad and during this time Jim ceased collecting. In 1958 the Ede’s moved to Cambridge. Failing to find the grand house the wanted to house their art collection, Jim Ede had purchased four derelict 19th century (Georgian) cottages in an area on Castle Hill known as “Kettle’s Yard” (the name of the family who had lived there). The cottages were renovated, remodelled and turned into the single House and the Gallery, by Jim Ede, working with the architect Rowland Aldridge, in 1957.

The House at Kettle’s Yard

The Kettle’s Yard website tells us that,

“At Kettle’s Yard Jim carefully positioned [the artworks in his collection] alongside furniture, glass, ceramics and natural objects, with the aim of creating a harmonic [sic] whole. His vision was of a place that should not be ‘an art gallery or museum, nor . . . simply a collection of works of art reflecting my taste or the taste of a given period. It is, rather, a continuing way of life from these last fifty years, in which stray objects, stones, glass, pictures, sculpture, in light and space, have been used to make manifest the underlying stability’.”

It is not completely clear what Jim Ede meant by “the underlying stability” but this seems to have to do with the harmony between the various artefacts and natural objects he had collected and the spaces and light in which they are viewed. One could, I think, feel that this harmony has something to do with the fact that the whole creation is a reflection of the taste of its author (and indeed of the taste of a particular period in time) but, be that as it may, the main point is that the arrangement of these objects in the spaces of the building and the play of light and shade on and around them is in itself an artistic creation.

Jim Ede had it in mind to open his house to university students. In 1954 he had envisaged creating 'a living place where works of art could be enjoyed . . . where young people could be at home unhampered by the greater austerity of the museum or public art gallery.'

Leslie Martin would become a contributor to that artistic creation. Settled once again, in the house at Kettle’s Yard, Jim Ede resumed his collecting and, after a time, found that he needed more space. In 1969 he commissioned an extension to the House from Sir Leslie Martin, then Professor of Architecture at Cambridge University, and the Extension was completed n 1970. The light and airy interconnected spaces of the Extension, lit mainly through skylights, with its subtle effects of light and shade perfectly captures, and indeed enhances the feeling of Jim Ede’s creation. Leslie Martin here shows his great sensitivity to all aspects of the context of the building he is designing. With reason, many architects regard this unpretentious building as one of the most important modern buildings in Cambridge.

The Extension to the House at Kettle’s Yard, seen from Northampton Street, designed by Sir Leslie Martin with David Owers (1969 – 70)

There were further small extensions by Martin and Owers in 1980 and 1984, and another large extension at the front, in Castle Street, by Bland Brown and Cole in 1994. The layout of the complex is shown n the ground plan below.

Ground plan of buildings comprising Kettle’s Yard today

Jim Ede donated Kettle’s Yard and his collection to the in 1966, but continued to live there until 1973. His arrangements have been preserved and the concerts that have always been an essential part of Kettle’s Yard are still continued. Nicholas Toller and a number of the other musicians who performed for the Chamber Musicians of Cambridge have performed at Kettle’s Yard.

Helen Burslem and Richard Brchall give a lunchtime concert at Kettle’s Yard

The original conversion of the Georgian cottages included a bridge that was built over the alleyway, at first floor level (as can be seen n the first photograph, above). It is at this level that the House is connected to the Extension. Some idea of the subtle and beautiful use of interconnecting spaces and effects of light and shade, in which Jim Ede’s collection of furniture, furnishings, works of art and natural objects is arranged to create “conversations” between the objects and between the objects and their surroundings, and to create a feeling of tranquillity and contemplation, is given by the images below.

The first floor landing in the Extension

The Art Library on the first floor of the Extension

Two ground floor spaces, separated by the staircase to the upper floor

An area of the ground floor of the Extension with an altar like display where objects create a “conversation”

The recital space on the ground floor

Oxford University Department of Zoology and Experimental Psychology Leslie Martin 1970

Leslie Martin also designed the building that houses the Oxford University Zoology and Experimental Psychology Departments. This building, which faces onto South Parks Road was later renamed the Tinbergen Building after Nobel prize-winning ethologist (animal behaviourist) Niko Tinbergen, who lectured at the University and died in 1988. The building was completed in 1970. Weathering has not been kind to it. This must have something to do with the materials used.

The back of the Tindbergen Building (OU Zoology and Experimental Psychology Departments) (1990)

The Oxford University Zoology and Experimental Psychology Departments, St Cross Road, Oxford Photo: David Baugh

A wide angle view of the Oxford University Zoology and Experimental Psychology Departments, St Cross Road, Oxford Photo: David Baugh

The Oxford University Zoology and Experimental Psychology Departments, St Cross Road, Oxford Photo: David Baugh

Weather had stained the buildng’s surfaces in a way that makes it look thoroughly grimy rather than simply weathered. It did look somewhat better when new, as can be seen from the photographs below, though this is not one of Leslie Martin’s best buildings.

The front of the Oxford University Zoology and Experimental Psychology Departments after completion in 1970

The back of the Oxford University Zoology and Experimental Psychology Departments after completion in 1970

Faculty of Music, West Rd, Cambridge, England, UK 1978-84 Leslie Martin with Colen Lumley & Ivor Richards

The Cambridge University Music Faculty building, including West Road Concert Hall has been discussed separately (see West Road, under Additional Information 2005 – 06, and Additional Information 2006 – 07).

Cambridge University Faculty of Music in West Road. The modern building on the right includes the West Road Concert Hall, and the Victorian building on the left (mostly hidden by the tree) housed the Music Faculty before the new building was constructed (1978 – 1984)

Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Renfrew Street (Now known as the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) Sir Leslie Martin with William Nimmo and Partners 1984 - 87

In 1962 the St Andrew's Halls in Glasgow had been destroyed by fire and Sir Leslie Martin was appointed Architect for both the new Academy building and the proposed new City Concert Hall. The Glasgow Royal Concert Hall was not completed until 1990. However the planned new Academy progressed more quickly.

The Robbins Report on the expansion of Higher Education in Britain was published in 1963 and, shortly afterwards, the Board of Governors of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama was invited by the Scottish Education Department to look for a site suitable for a new custom-built Academy.

The way became clear in 1978 for the Academy to acquire the site upon which its new building now stands and, in 1979, Glasgow District Council agreed to sell this site to the Governors. In September 1981 the Scottish Education Department approved the plans for the new Academy building and, in April 1983, The Right Honourable George Younger, then Secretary of State for Scotland, authorised the Governors to invite tenders for the construction of this building. On 27th September 1984 the foundation stone was laid by Dame Janet Baker, the President of the Academy, and on 23rd October 1985 The Right Honourable The Lord Provost of Glasgow, Dr Robert Gray, performed the 'topping out' ceremony. In 1987 the Academy moved to its new premises at 100 Renfrew Street, and the building was formally opened by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother on 9th March 1988.

Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Renfrew Street, Glasgow (1985)

The concert hall of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama

Perhaps more surprising in the context of Leslie Martin’s work is the Royal Scottish Academy’s New Athenaeum Theatre, also part of the Academy’s new building of 1987. The theatre replaced the old Athaeneum in Buchanan Street and is used for theatre and opera productions. Here Martin has produced an interesting modernist interpretation of the traditional theatre or opera house. The Theatre was renovated in 2010.

The RSAMD ‘s new Athenaeum Theatre, Renfrew Street, Glasgow

The new Athenaeum Theatre in Renfrew Street

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow Sir Leslie Martin 1990

Sir Leslie Martin was appointed as the architect for both for the new building for the RSAMD and for the proposed new City Concert Hall in 1962. The Glasgow Royal Concert Hall was completed when Glasgow became the European City of Culture for 1990.

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall opened 1990