And Collaboration in the Early House Projects of Stirling and Gowan Author(S): Mark Crinson Source: Architectural History, Vol

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Picturesque and Intransigent: 'Creative Tension' and Collaboration in the Early House Projects of Stirling and Gowan Author(s): Mark Crinson Source: Architectural History, Vol. 50 (2007), pp. 267-295 Published by: SAHGB Publications Limited Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40033855 . Accessed: 26/09/2014 12:51

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This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:51:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Picturesqueand Intransigent: 'CreativeTension' and Collaborationinthe Early HouseProjects of Stirling and Gowan byMARK CRINSON

Between1956 and 1963James Stirling and JamesGowan createda seminalbody of work,one thatseemed to challengethe overly-institutionalized state of contemporary modernism,and evento pointthe way to otheralternatives beyond it. Their buildings were quasi-brutalistand pre-postmodern,startlingly original in the contextof the worthyarchitecture of the welfarestate, yet able to draw on inter-warforms of continentalmodernism as wellas thearchitecture ofthe industrial city. The notoriously fractiousrelationship between the partnerswas an importantfactor in this achievement.Mark Girouardhas used the term'creative tension' to describethis relationship,deriving it froman interviewwith Michael Wilford, who workedas an architecturalassistant in thepartnership's last years and later(in 1971)himself became Stirling'spartner.1 This formulation may well relateto a colourfuland discordantnew architecturalidentity - a sometimesplayful, sometimes edgy combinationof angry youngmen, teddy boy architectsand awkward,blunt provincials shaking up thebig city- emergingin contrastto theanonymous public architect of thetime.2 Girouard uses 'creativetension' to label a photographof Stirlingand Gowan (Fig. 1): Stirling leanseasily to theside lookingwryly camerawards, while Gowan, absorbed and tense aroundthe mouth, looks down and outwardsto theright; between the two is a gap measuredout by the line of columns seen behind them. The contrast with a photograph reproducedlater in the same book, of Stirling and Wilfordsitting companionably across a table,seems to speakfor itself.3 In analyzingthe partnership between Stirling and Gowan,however, we need to be waryof several aspects of 'creative tension'. Obviously, focusing on itmight too easily glossover such issues as designdevelopment, the apportioning of responsibilities for a building,and theroles of clientsand planningauthorities (critical in Britainafter the 1947Town and CountryPlanning Act).4 More interestingly,'creative tension' seems implicitlycontrasted with a certain stereotypeof a good partnershipwithin

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Fig. 1. JamesStirling and JamesGowan, c. 2956 (Mark Girouard) architecturalhistory, one in which a mercurialand inspirationalpartner is complementedby a practicaland methodicalone.5 Against this model, Stirling and Gowan's 'creativetension' stands for a situationin whichboth partners make equal contributionsto thecreative side of thework but theirattitudes, working rhythms or charactersare ill-matched, and someof the creativity seemingly arises from the friction that results.The stereotypicallybalanced partnership,by implication,offers the correctiveor norm against the creativebut dysfunctionalone, and it is this conventionallybalanced partnership that is representedby Girouard' s image of Stirling and Wilford.Too oftenin thecommentary of historians and criticssome of the elements ofthe balanced partnership have been overlaidonto the Stirling and Gowanpractice, and the loser has been Gowan. Stirlingwould be treatedas the major designer, demotingGowan to a pragmaticproblem-solver or detailsman at best,regarding 'Stirling& Gowan' as merelya corporatetitle, or evenforgetting to mentionGowan at all.6The yearsfrom 1956 to 1963became a vestibuleopening onto the great career of Britain'snew Hawksmoor,in whichanything deemed of value in theworks produced in theseyears must be ascribedto Stirling.Such narratives in partreflect the needs of criticsin close sympathywith the ambitions of Stirling'slater career, and in partthe tropesof architecturalhistorians, particularly the need to find great mastersor transcendentbuildings whose subtle exegesis may reflect the historian's sensitivity but does not give enoughcredit either to the complexityof Stirling'scareer or to the

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:51:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PICTURESQUE AND INTRANSIGENT 269 dynamicsof the collaborationwith Gowan, let alone to the particularand broader contributionsthat Gowan made to thebuildings produced during the partnership. Theseproblems have been augmentedby Stirling'sown retrospectiveediting of his careerand managementof his fame.The LeicesterUniversity Engineering Building (1959-64)was thepartnership's most famous work and thelast to be finishedwithin the partnership.For Stirling, Leicester established the pattern of acclaim and criticismthat markedhis careerfrom that moment onwards. For Gowan,however, its completion was thebeginning of a muchquieter career as an architectand teacher,one putinto the shade by his ex-partner'sgreater fame. Stirling'strajectory was to be carefully publicizedand stage-managed,with a particularslant given to theyears of partnership withGowan. In 1974,for example, Stirling exhibited drawings at theHeinz Gallery, London,with little acknowledgment to his erstwhilepartner, elevating his own status further(or ironizingit?) by using'neat, brown antique British Museum lettering on creammounts'.7 Most importantly, in the early 1970s Stirling prepared a retrospective monographof his work,employing Leon Krierover many months to helphim redraw the early projectsand presentinghis work in the time-honouredformat of Le Corbusier's CEuvreComplete.8 James Stirling: Buildings & Projects1950-1974. (1975), or the 'BlackBook' as itwas quicklynicknamed, is demonstrablythe result of an editinghand thatplays fast and loosewith the historical record, diminishing the importance of some buildings,redrawing early designs so thatthey point more obviously forward to later work,sometimes emphasizing unbuilt designs at the expense of actually-erected buildings,and generallyobscuring the contribution of Gowan to thework. Genius, it wouldseem, cannot abide a partner. Finally,reconstructing the working practices of the partnership has also beenmade difficultas a resultof Stirling's destructive folly in theearly 1970s, when he threwaway almostall preliminarysketches or conceptualdrawings produced before and during the partnership,including those made by Gowan.9There are not,as a result,many drawingswith the processes of composition or ofdialogue between the partners made visible,although the exception here are thedrawings for the Leicester building, which seem to have survivedbecause Gowan gained possessionof manyof them.10The destructionof conceptual drawings may accord with a commentmade by ColinRowe, criticand friendof Stirling's, that Stirling was 'determinedto keephis architecture,or his conceptualstruggles, very conspicuously private';11 or it maybe thatthe nature of Gowan's contributionto the partnershipwas deliberatelyobscured. Without such drawings,and unable to reconstructwhat mighthave been said over the drawing board,the historian must turn to a rangeof other, more diverse resources. The argumentin what followsis threefold.First, as alreadyindicated, that in discussinga selectionof earlyhouse projects,built and unbuiltand including,with somelicence, the Churchill College competition designs (as housingfor students and fellows),Gowan's contributioncan be given more reliefwithout implying any diminutionof Stirling'soverall achievement. Second, that rather than a generalized 'creativetension' there was a particularformal dynamic between the two architects that has notbeen previouslyrecognized. This dynamicwas foundedupon an opposition betweenStirling's concern with bounded and balancedcompositions based on box-like forms,and Gowan'spreoccupation with picturesque groupings of various, sometimes

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:51:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 27o ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 50: 2007 disparate,parts. In this,as will emerge,the articlerevises accepted views of the partnershipand specificallytwo earlyand highlyinfluential theoretical accounts of Stirling'sarchitecture, neither of which were interested in whatGo wan had broughtto the partnershipor in how designshad actuallydeveloped and solutionsemerged; consequentlythese and similarwritings attributed to Stirlingformal innovations that properlybelonged to thedynamic between the partners. Third, and morespeculatively thearticle argues that it was theexperience of collaboration itself, and specificallythis formaldynamic, that enabled Stirling and Gowan to workthrough the modernism of theirtime, loosening its terms so thata reconsiderationof other- sometimesolder - stylesand typologiesmight be broughtback into play.12

HAM COMMON - THE DYNAMIC ESTABLISHED The partnershipwas formedaround a practicalproblem and a confluenceof interests, and theresult was a groupof flats that announced the arrival of the young partnership on the architecturalscene and that linked them,despite theirprotests, with the emergingBrutalist tendency in Britishmodernism.13 What has not been established before- and thisis centralto how thecreative collaboration functioned - is how the designof thisscheme of flatswas in largepart generated out of theneed to resolve contradictionsbetween the developer'sinterests and the local townplanners' legal responsibilities. In late 1955Stirling, then working as an assistantat theoffice of Lyons,Israel and Ellis,was givena commissionby Luke Manousso,a developerand the fatherof a studentwhom Stirlingwas helpingwith his finalyear work at the Architectural Association.The commissionwas to designseveral blocks of flatson a siteat Ham Commonin south-westLondon. Although this was Stirling'sfirst independent work, he was cavalierabout gaining the planning permission that was necessaryif his scheme was to be built.For a long,narrow site in thegardens of a largeGeorgian house, he designeda totalof thirty-twoflats in two terrace-likeblocks, the higherone with verticalwindows14 (Fig. 2). This firstscheme broadlyfollowed the formatthen developedwith great success by Eric Lyons& Partners,of whichthere were local examplesthat Manousso wanted to emulate,15where small estates of middle-class flats orhouses were set in flat-fronted terraced schemes around cul-de-sacs. At Ham, Stirling laid outthe flats with gardens on eitherside, windows looking out over the gardens of thesite to east and west,and a longpaved area linkingthe two accessroads at either end ofthe site. However, not enough space was givenfor the regulation-width access roadand thepavement was deemedinadequate for any emergency use byvehicles, and as a consequencethe schemewas rejectedby the local planners.16Stirling was now facedwith a problemthat he couldnot resolve. On theone hand,Manousso wanted a statutoryservice road runningright through the site, so thatthe local council,rather thanhimself as the developer,would be responsiblefor services and theupkeep of publicareas. On theother hand, day-lighting regulations demanded at leasta 60 degree anglefrom the top of the building to theedge of the site.17 It seemedthat the two-storey blockhad tobe positionedin itsnarrow part of the site in someway so as tosatisfy both requirements.The fit was simplytoo tight and Stirlingwas caughtin thetrap of his first

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:51:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PICTURESQUE AND INTRANSIGENT 271 assumptions.Hasty but slight revisions were made (Fig.3), convertingthe paved area intoa road,but again the plans were rejected.18 Atthe architectural office of Lyons, Israel and Ellis,where he had beenworking since thebeginning of 1953, Stirling had becomefriendly with another young assistant, James Gowan,who had beenthere since 1954. Both had Scottishancestry, they had sharedbut independentinterests in castles,vernacular housing and theindustrial buildings of the nineteenthcentury, and theywere both critical of the state of contemporary modernism. Stirlinghad braggedto Gowanabout the Ham commission,but was in somedisarray at thissecond rejection.19 Gowan encouraged him to keep going and Stirlingpassed him therejected scheme to look at. Evidently, Stirling had difficultyinmoving beyond slight shiftsand changesof emphasisin orderto facethe fundamental change his scheme neededif it was to proceed.It was clearlynecessary to have inputfrom someone who couldthink very differently about how to arrangethe required accommodation on this site.After a weekendof drawing,Gowan founda solution(Fig. 4). He removedthe access road runningpast the lowerflats and reshapedthese lower flats into two T- shapedlayouts, each ofwhich really consisted of two blocks placed at right-anglesto each otherand joinedby a deep entrancehall. These were positioned at eitherend of thenarrow neck of the site, leaving a largegarden area between them. As a resultthey could be servicedfrom either end so as to complywith refuse and fireregulations, insteadof requiring a serviceroad running the whole length of the site; and theshorter endsof the building were now nearthe edges of the site, so resolvingthe day-lighting problem.This 'Scheme A' ofJanuary 1956 was submittedat almostthe same timeas another,final variation on the terracedidea, 'SchemeB', whichhad one terraceof housesand one of flats.Scheme B (forwhich drawings do notsurvive) was rejected, againbecause the street layout and accesswere considered unsatisfactory.20 Thelayout made withGowan' s help, SchemeA, satisfiedboth the planners'and Manousso's concerns,and was givenconditional planning permission in mid-January.21 Most interestingin the acceptedscheme is the chemistrybetween each partner's formalpreoccupations and thesolution that was crystallizedto accommodateboth the developer'sneeds and thelocal planners'constraints. Stirling had startedwith long blocksof flats and an approachthat echoed the shape ofthe site, not dissimilar to the severalprevious attempts by otherarchitects to designflats for this site.22 Gowan had brokenand re-setone ofthese blocks into two more energetic compositions that looked backacross the length of the site. The formsof an onlyslightly modernized urbanism of terracesparallel to accessroads had thusbeen remadeinto housing forms that, in theirmodest way, suggested a morefluid relation to thespace oftheir site. A pattern had been establishedhere that would runthrough all of Stirlingand Gowan's early housingschemes. On thebasis ofthis solution, Stirling invited Gowan to join with him in formalizinga partnership. Workingintensely, and complementingeach other, within a monththe new partners elaboratedthe scheme, meeting the local planners'conditions and workingout all the majorfeatures of the flats that were to establishtheir name and makesuch an impact on the contemporaryarchitectural scene23 (Fig. 5). Footpathswere repositioned, setbacksarticulated the previously sheer fagades, the two identicalbut reversedtwo- storeyblocks were now laid out as tripartiteinterlocking compositions, and in the

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Fig. 6. JamesStirling and JamesGowan, Ham Commonflats, 1955~5& (Canadian Centrefor Architecture, Montreal) three-storeyblock the flats were staggered off a spinewall. Even the character of space and texturewas workedout in thisshort time: the solemnentrance halls withthe frissonof their concrete access bridges suspended in frontof glazed walls; the contrast betweenconcrete slabs and theyellow bricks with their deeply recessed pointing; and the abruptlycantilevered pre-cast concrete mantels and shelvesabove the exposed brickfireplaces.24 Broadly speaking, although designs passed stepwisebetween the partners,25Stirling took more responsibility for the three-storey block, developing it into a Georgianversion of Le Corbusier'sMaisons Jaoul (on whichhe had writtenin the previousyear)26 with inverted L-shaped windows derived from nineteenth-century warehouses,while Gowan opened up thelower blocks through a de Stijl-inspiredgame offloating planes, glazed walls and cubicvolumes. The 'hostileattitude to theoutside world'of Le Corbusier'sbrutalism,27 and theradical spatial gestures of de Stijlhouses, had been made over into an attemptto conversewith the contextsof historyand landscape(Fig. 6). Already,in this first commission, Stirling and Gowanhad established thetemporal frameworks that would overlapin therest of their work: the lost Utopian, or 'programmatic',visions of the 1920s;28 a tactileimmediacy speaking of the present; and deeperhistorical memories embodied in theiracute sense of theimmediate built contextbut checked by theirhesitancy about using reciprocal attributes of place.

WORKING PRACTICES OF COLLABORATION, AND THE 'HOUSE STUDIES' Stirlingand Gowan had few good modelsfor creative collaboration. They had met whileboth were working for the practice of Lyons, Israel and Ellis,although both had previousexperience of other practices.29 Known for its highly professional approach to thedesign of schoolbuildings and forits adaptabilityin keepingup withmodernist developments,Lyons, Israel and Ellis attractedmany talented young architects. The

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:51:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PICTURESQUE AND INTRANSIGENT 275 practicedid, however,operate rigid forms of collaborationand theytended to see designas 'a luxurywhich you did at weekendsor afterhours'.30 Although all three partnersdrew and theyhad an agreedpractice for developing a design,the broader rolesof thepartners were quite fixed and theyusually kept themselves quite remote fromthe assistants.31 By the early 1950s Lawrence Israel, for instance, played the role of thepragmatic partner, 'the brickwall againstwhich ideas werebounced',32 Edward Lyonstended to workin romanticisolation, while Tom Ellis, the youngest of the three, was the conceptualistand innovator,the one who kept trackof contemporary developments.Although assistants learnt much about workingdrawings and the practicalitiesof building, as a partnershipLyons, Israel and Elliswas moreof a negative exampleof collaboration and itsrigid design methods and 'tyrannical'office practices were unappealingto both Stirlingand Gowan,33even if othersmall but creative partnerships- like thatbetween Alan Colquhounand JohnMiller - would also springout ofthe office. Other models of collaboration might have been intuited,such as thatbetween Le Corbusierand hiscousin Pierre Jeanneret, but although both Gowan and Stirlingwere steeped in thevolumes of Le Corbusier's CEuvreComplete, not enough was known at this time about how the Corbusier-Jeanneretpartnership actually workedfor it to be seen as a model.(As ithappens, it was farmore like the stereotype of thegood partnershipoutlined earlier rather than the partnership of equal creative forcesthat Stirling and Gowanhad agreedon.)34 In fact,there was no obviousmodel for theStirling and Gowanpartnership to emulate.Like other young architects starting out together,a shared outlook and perhapsthe memory of student collaboration were more importantthan some established model of collaboration. Fromthe beginning the partnership was declaredas one ofequals, a sharedworking partnershipwith shared ideals: 'We were aiming for somethingsimilar at the beginning,reacting against the older generation, setting up a critiqueof what might be done - a reactionagainst boredom,plainness and the mechanicalnature of contemporaryrationalism, of social rationalism and daintywell-produced things.'35 As partof the arrangement, Gowan brought into the practice the house that he had already designedin Cowes on theIsle ofWight for his brother-in-law,an artist. This essay in Palladianmodernism might have takenits plan fromthe pages ofRudolf Wittkower's ArchitecturalPrinciples in the Age of Humanism (1949) and certainlypredated any possibleinput from Stirling36 (Fig. 7). It indicatessome of the architectural interests that Gowanwas to bringinto the partnership. A single-storeyhouse was setback from the road; its 'H'-shaped plan harbouredtwo courtyardsfor the artist'syoung family, establishinga sense of measured disclosure in relationto the landscape. The house used mathematicalproportions on itsplan and elevations,based on 5 footwide piersand a 10 footgrid, and the Golden Sectiondetermined its window proportions.These windowswere carried right up to theroof, stressing a verticalseparation of window area fromwall-as-pier and an abruptlack of transitionfrom wall to roofthat would carryinto many of thepartnership's later works. Epitomizing the frank revelation of materials,the kitchensink's plumbingwas prominentlyexposed, its pipe placed exactlycentral to thewindow in explicitdisplay of the 'as-found' industrial everyday. Withthe flats at Ham Commonand thehouse on theIsle ofWight mostly finished, thepartners turned to theproblem of how to devisea workingrelationship, or, at least,

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Fig. 7. JamesStirling and JamesGowan, house at Cowes,Isle ofWight, 1955-57 (Architectural Review, April1958) so theirlater statements suggest.37 The so-called 'house studies' were the result: a series ofdrawings of small houses supposedly undertaken to devisea workingmethod in the newlyformed partnership. But there is reasonto be scepticalabout the notion that these house studiesrepresent an experimentin thesharing and developingof ideas.38The house studieswere not some freestandingexercise but actuallythe preliminary work fora specificcommission, the Expandable House. Lateron theybecame separated from thatcommission in retrospectiveaccounts by the ex-partners,which exploited the seeminglack of resemblancebetween the final version and theearlier house studies. Less like mountaineersroped together,Stirling and Gowan had actuallyset out on differenttrails, one laterthan the other. Produced under pressure and to a commission, thehouse studies were all doneby Gowan, with his characteristic notations and graphic style,despite the factthat they have oftenbeen reproducedin laterpublications devotedonly to Stirling. In thespring of 1957Michael Middleton, the editor of House and Garden magazine, had askedStirling and Gowanto producedesigns for an ExpandableHouse 'foryoung marriedswhose ambitionoutruns their bank balance'.39With the deadlinea month away,Gowan, working over the weekends, produced the first tranche of design ideas,40 a prodigiousset of drawings of which three of the most worked-up sets were shown to Stirling,and it is thesethat have oftensince been reproduced(Figs 8, 9, 10 and 11). In thesestudies the houses are envisagedas concatenationsof variedvolumes: some formsbridge-over and straddleother forms or are stackedup as incrementally- projectingmasses; monopitch roofs hint both at vernacularsources and at abstract, centrifugalforces; core functions are held in a wing-nutvolume that dodges in and out of otherforms, or are buriedin a pile-upof rooms;ramps are thrustout or line up

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Fig. 8. JamesStirling and JamesGowan (drawingby James Gowan), house study, i%j (Deutsche ArchitekturMuseum, Frankfurt) alongsidethe house. The house studies are made of suggestivefragments and condensedallusions, once functionally-expressivevolumes simplified and abstracted so as to lose any of theiroriginal logic. Gowan laterwrote that the studieswere concernedwith showing 'how a familymight develop froma modestbeginning; a smalldomestic core containing kitchen, bathroom and stairway.Future additions were

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Fig. 9. JamesStirling and JamesGowan (drawingby James Gowan), house study, 1957 (DeutscheArchitektur Museum, Frankfurt)

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Fig. 10. JamesStirling and JamesGowan (drawingby James Gowan), house study, 1957 (Deutsche ArchitekturMuseum, Frankfurt) shuntedon to thiswith much energy and dramaticeffect and therewas a relaxed attitudetowards the use of a mish-mashof materials'.41 Thus in graphicterms, rather thanthrowing a unifyingveneer over his volumes,Gowan' s differently-angledand differently-spacedlines, with areas colouredred and yellow,further emphasized the separatenessof volumes,presenting the houses as amalgamsof differentmaterials, loose alliancesof pronouncedlydiscrete units.42 The articulationof surfacesin these housestudies implies that walls werenot to be treatedas load-bearingbut as applied, non-volumetricsurface material, and thishad importantimplications for Stirling and Gowan's laterwork. With their diversified masses, their additive, ad hocplanning and their'dynamic asymmetry',43 thehouse studies can thusbe seen as departingradically fromthe modernist obsession with the cube and itsdematerialization. YetStirling cleaved to thecube; for him, Gowan's ideas weretoo loosely picturesque and spontaneous.With the deadline looming,in an example of collaborationby concession,it was Stirling'sidea thatwas settledon and developed.Stirling had been thinkingin termsof a simplerexercise: drawing from the centralizedgeometry and standardizedconstruction of his so-called'stiff dom-ino housing' of 1951,44 taking the idea ofthe core containing the house's basic functions from Gowan's .studies, attaching

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Fig. 11. JamesStirling and JamesGowan (drawingby James Gowan), house study, i%j (Deutsche ArchitekturMuseum, Frankfurt) a multi-functionalroom, and buildingall themain structural walls at thefirst stage. Quadrantsof the same shape and size, with pre-fabricatedroof units, would be clampedbetween the core and thestructural walls as thefamily grew. When it reached maximumsize, the block was completed,and withit the nuclear family (Fig. 12). But as thechildren grew up and lefthome so thequadrants were successively let out to a new growingfamily. In theimages published in Houseand Garden the family members are linedup, likestatistical units in somemunicipal re-housing propaganda. The scheme mayowe somethingto the 'endless architecture' theories of the early 1950s, although its additionsare treatedas completinga whole envisagedfrom the start, rather than as

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Fig. 12. JamesStirling and JamesGowan (drawingby James Gowan), Expandable House, 1957. (DeutscheArchitektur Museum, Frankfurt) beingmodular units tacked on linearlyto the ends of a blockas RichardLlewellyn Davies had advocated.45 TheExpandable House, as it appearedin Houseand Garden, has a somewhatprosaic logicto it,even ifits roofsimply the characteristic pin-wheel circling movement that was tobe developedin laterprojects.46 Ifarchitecture represents models for living, then Gowan'shouse studies imagine the family unit as a loose confederation,each member havinga distinctcharacter but tied to a commonpurpose: they represent the extended or thepicturesque family. Stirling's family, however, is moreof a functionalgroup that expandssystematically with identical units simply being added to forma wholethat was alreadyimagined at itsoutset: the Expandable House representsthe nuclear family throughits growth,fragmentation and thenreplacement by anothergrowing nuclear family.47The play blocks of one familyhome are abstruseand characterful,their fragmentarysyntax is capableof inventive combination or of picturesque agglutination. Those of the otherare purposefuland homogeneousthings: modular products of a plannedfamily; an additive,flexible existenz minimum for the emergingconsumer society;'endlessness' turned in on itself.48But althoughtheir implications were not realizedin the ExpandableHouse, Gowan's house studieseffectively worked the modernistcube into something looser and morecapable of recombination.49 Some clarityis requiredabout what mightbe meantby theterm 'picturesque' in determiningGowan's contribution to thepartnership's house projects.The term'sfull rangeof uses in thepost-war period is beyondthe scope ofthis article to explore,but threemeanings are of particularrelevance here. One is 'picturesquemodernism', as advocatedby the Architectural Review and others.50This was theplacement of modernist volumesfor visual effect,evoking surprise and disclosureaccording to a geniusloci,

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:51:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 282 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 50: 2007 witha traditionof Britishlandscape theory behind it. Associated with the modernist mainstream,this understanding held littleinterest for Stirling and Gowan.A second and morespecific sense was thenotion of a functionalpicturesque, as describedby Colin Rowe and as attemptedby Stirlinghimself in several projectsbefore his partnershipwith Gowan. In his unbuiltWoolton House (1954) and VillageHousing project(1955), Stirling had adoptedvernacular forms and giventheir asymmetrical dispositiona functionalistrationale.51 The thirdmeaning of the picturesque is theone arguedin thisarticle for Gowan7 s contributionto thepartnership. Without implying thatall Gowan's contributionshad thisapproach, it can certainlybe foundin theworks discussedhere. Overtvernacular forms were not necessaryto this versionof the picturesqueand itsfunctionalism was moreplayful than dogmatic. Instead it combined an assertiverelation to thesituational context, a treatmentof partsof thecomplex as differentcollage elements, and theuse ofsurface effects that underlined the difference betweenthe constituent elements.

THE HOUSE IN THE CHILTERNS - MODERNISM EMPTIED Therewere failed collaborations within the partnership, where one or theother partner would shearoff and distancehimself from the work. The house at Whiteleafin the Chilternswas amongthese. Once morewhat was saved forposterity from this stands for somethingvery differentfrom what actuallyhappened. Stirling initially took responsibilityfor this commission,gained fromM. S. Kissa, a wealthyclothing manufacturerand friendof the partnership's previous client Luke Manousso.52 The first designs,in June1956, were fortwo houses because Kissa wantedto subdividethe extensiveplot. The largerhouse was envisagedas a long,flat-roofed block with two one-storeywings either side ofit (Fig.13), the whole arranged down the sloping site so thatit would not intrudeon views fromsurrounding amenities, and containinga sequence of garage,dining area, living area and terrace.The smallerhouse was conceivedas twoclosely-joined cubes housing a freely-plannedinterior (Fig. 14). Both houseshad bands of ceramicbrick of differentwidths and in fourcolours inset into a

Fig. 13. JamesStirling and JamesGowan, house in theChilterns (first scheme, design for larger house),June i%6 {Redrawnfrom microfilm images held by WycombeDistrict Council)

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Fig. 14. JamesStirling and JamesGowan, housein theChilterns (firstscheme, design for smallerhouse), June 1956 (Canadian Centre forArchitecture, Montreal) yellowbrick wall. Pre-cast beams spanned the internal spaces and projectedbeyond the outerwalls, and redbrick chimneys were attached to thesides of the houses, towering over and emphasizingthe flatroofs. These polychromaticdesigns, however, were rejectedby thelocal planningofficer, probably because thecolours used and theflat roofswere seen as out of keepingwith the characterof the locality53Stirling now dissuadedhis clientsfrom building the second smaller house on thesite,54 and argued fora three-storeyhouse with split levels, ignoring the fact that Kissa's wife had mobility problemsand wanteda single-storeyhouse.55 It was Gowanwho developedthis second designin September1956, with Stirling working largely on theelevations. Once again, as at Ham Common,Gowan brokeopen and rethoughtStirling's more rectilinear scheme.Having abandoned the extraordinary,Butterfieldian colours of the first scheme,the asymmetrical composition and prismaticvolumes of the secondscheme broughtabout a dynamicde Stijl effect,56with the house conceived as nearly autonomouscubic units spinning off from a centralstair (Fig. 15). The sitewas a grand escarpmentlooking down onto an extensiveplain and Gowan's signedperspective showshow thehouse would echo the landscapeas well as exaggerateits spiralling steepnessfurther by a line of steps cuttingdown one slope.57Gowan' s scheme presented,therefore, an entirelydifferent conception of the house's relationto its landscape,using the diagonalof stepsto establishand dramatizethe movementof syncopatedcubes above, and presentingdifferent stepped silhouettesto all four directions.Yet even thoughlocal brickwas envisagedand thehouse was now placed lowerdown the slope, this design too was refusedplanning permission as 'detrimental to theneeds of the locality',58 probably because it was now deemedto be overlyvisible fromthe nearby golf and cricketclubs.

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Fig. 15. JamesStirling and JamesGowan (drawingby James Gowan), house in theChilterns (second scheme),September 1956 (DeutscheArchitektur Museum, Frankfurt)

Thiswas how theChilterns house seemed to have been left. Neither three years later, whendesigns were published, nor in 1975,when Stirling published the project again in the Black Book,was thereany sign thata house had actuallybeen built.59In fact, however,with Gowan disenchantedbut with Manousso determinedto producea housefor his friend,Stirling had persistedwith the commission and developeda third design,which actuallygot built. Instead of lookingfor a compromisewith or developmentfrom Gowan' s scheme,he returnedto thelong two-storeyaffair of the firstdesign, stripped it ofits polychromy, used local redbrick, and toppedthe whole witha conventionalpantiled roof60 (Fig. 16). Withthis Stirling finally gained planning permission,but thevarious compromises produced a house thatmanaged to be both banaland quixoticin termsof contemporary architectural culture: in Gowan's wordsa 'railwaycrash thing', only distinguished from stock developers' housing by certain characteristicdetails61 (Fig. 17). Indeed, it is the abandonmentof everythingthat markedout thefirst two designs,while continuing with the demanded compromises

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Fig. 16. JamesStirling and JamesGowan, house in theChilterns (third scheme), November i%6 (Redrawnfrom microfilm images held by Wycombe District Council)

Fig. 17. JamesStirling and JamesGowan, house in theChilterns (third scheme as built),1956-5$ (Photo:Author)

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:51:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 286 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 50: 2007 thatmay distinguish the house almost despite itself. The utter pragmatism of Stirling's approach- in gettingthe house built while preserving for posterity only the radical earlierschemes - marksa pointwhere modernism could be treatedas an emptysign foravant-garde status, forms without content except as publicity,while the house as builtwas wipedfrom the record. Thisaccount of theearly house schemesindicates some of theformal dynamics of the Stirlingand Gowan partnership.It is oftenassumed, even by some of the partnership'searly assistants, that Stirling originated most of the projects.62 Assistants likeWilford, however, were only involved in thelater period of partnership, at mostfor a few projects,and thensometimes part-time. Gowan undoubtedlymade the first designsfor Churchill College, the Camberwellassembly hall, the house studies,the designfor steel mills in southWales, the house in Kensington,and the Leicester building;and theIsle of Wighthouse was entirelyhis work.Gowan commentsthat Stirlingactually had a problemwith initiating the design process.63 If thiswas so, then Stirling'slater practice, long after he had splitfrom Gowan, of using competing design groups withinthe officeto produce alternativedesigns from which Stirlingfirst selected,then edited and added to,may have been a devicethought up specificallyto deal withthis problem.64

CHURCHILL COLLEGE - A RETURN TO ORDER A photographhas recentlycome to lightof a conceptualdrawing by James Gowan for ChurchillCollege, Cambridge, a drawingprobably in thebatch that Stirling destroyed in themid-1970s65 (Fig. 18). Marked with Gowan' s annotations,the drawing represents a wayof thinking through a designfor the first stage of the competition in January 1959, whenStirling and Gowan were invitedalong withtwenty other practices to entera limitedcompetition for the new collegecampus, producing outline sketch designs of whatthey proposed.66 The drawingsupports Gowan's own testimonythat it is to him thatmust be attributedmany of the featuresthat made the partnership'sChurchill Collegedesign one of themost memorable and distinctivearchitectural images of its period:from the high wall, set on a raisedturf bank and containingramparts above studentrooms, that marks out a squareboundary for the college, to thefreestanding collegebuildings whose complex silhouettes project above the wall to suggesta walled town fromoutside. In this initialscheme, however, Gowan set the square-walled compoundoff against an asymmetricalentrance axis, placed buildings of very different shapesup againstthe edges of theimplied quarters and, in thesection drawn above, suggestedways of linkingthe outer cloister walls withthese inner buildings at first- floorlevel. The drawing also showsGowan thinking through some of the more playful aspectsof the scheme:a small black battlementedmonument was placed near the centreof the compound as ifto offsetthe light, idiosyncratic and informaleffects of the otherinner buildings. In effect,the traditionalcollege quadrangle was subjectedto somethinglike a veiledsatire here; the deliberately over-emphatic outer wall licensing theplay of shape and placementwithin it. In theirreport on thisfirst scheme, Gowan and Stirlingnoted that the character of theundergraduate rooms and setswould be 'signifiedby thebroken silhouette of roofterraces', and describedhow theirscheme

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Fig. 18. JamesStirling and ] antes Gowan,Churchill College (drawingby ] antesGowan for first stageof competition), January X959(Canadian Centrefor Architecture,Montreal) would use 'close juxtapositionof smoothand roughfinishes' such as through'a contrastof largeareas of smoothwhite stone and smallerareas of groovedpatterned concrete'.67Broken, picturesque outlines, combined with the contrasts of material that Gowanhad exploitedas earlyas thehouse studies,were to be themeans by whicha morelight-hearted, perhaps wilder, vision of undergraduatelife than the 'boring old Cambridgesets' was to be projected.68 Yet again, as the ChurchillCollege projectdeveloped it displayedthe creative dynamicof cube versus picturesque grouping that, this article has argued,runs through manyof the partnership's designs for housing. Consequently, ifthe final project for the second stage of the competitioncan be described in Colin Rowe's terms as 'Churchillian'in the sense of 'intransigentand verymemorable',69 this was partly because Stirlinghad pulled it back towardshis fundamentals,the progressof this designtherefore repeating the development from the house studiesto theExpandable House. Stirlingplayed a strongerrole in the submissionfor the secondstage of the competition,inJune 1959, after the competitors had beenwhittled down to four in April of thatyear. Stirling revised several elements of the scheme,perhaps because the 'finalists'had been encouragedto thinkmore about theirschemes as memorialsto WinstonChurchill70 (Fig. 19). Stirlingemphasized axiality by placingthe entrance centrally,used pathsto divideup theinternal space intofour equal parts,arranged the

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Fig. 19. JamesStirling and JamesGowan, ChurchillCollege (drawingfor second stageof competition), June1959 (Deutsche ArchitekturMuseum, Frankfurt) mainbuildings within each of thesequadrants, and restoredrespect for the college quadrangleby reiterating itin theheart of two of the internal buildings. These internal buildingswere now isolatedfrom the outer wall and mademore uniform at rooflevel, by thismeans diminishing the picturesque skyline; and thewhole design was givena heavier,more sombrely fortified and medievalair, like the castles and walledtowns that Stirlingillustrated together with the scheme in thesame year.71 As thepractice developed, the ideal of close co-operationwas testedby Stirling's teachingcommitments at Yale, firstin 1959,then regularlyeach year from1961. Accordingto Gowan,Stirling would come back and accepteverything that Gowan had done in the interim,with importantimplications for the CamberwellAssembly Buildingand theLeicester University Engineering Building, as well as the (unbuilt) designfor steel mills, which was entirelydone whileStirling was away.72The intense creativedynamic on which the partnershipwas foundedwas also occasionally dissipatedby the need to takeon assistantsas commissionsmultiplied.73 With Leicester thingssomehow held together, Gowan blocking out the first design then Stirling taking on thetower and Gowanthe workshop.74 Elsewhere, however, the pragmatic division of responsibilitiesbecame a dividingwall, withschemes going ahead withoutbeing jointlyagreed between the partners. Splitting up was inevitable.In someaccounts the cruxwas Stirling'sdislike for a house thatGowan had designedfor the furniture

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:51:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PICTURESQUE AND INTRANSIGENT 289 manufacturerChaim Schreiber in Hampstead,and possiblytoo his impatiencewith an earlyalternative design that Gowan had producedfor the Cambridge History Faculty Building,a projectthat had come intothe practicein the springof 1963;in others Gowanhad finallybecome disenchanted with what he saw as Stirling'sconcern with hisown reputation and hissins of omission in properlyacknowledging Gowan's role.75 The dissolutionof the partnership was formalizedon 11 November1963. While it was agreedthat both partners would continue to completethe Leicester project, two existing commissionswere dividedbetween them: Stirling got the PerrygroveOld Peoples' Home,and Gowanthe Children's Home in Putney,but both of these were completed underthe partnership's name. Other commissions were allocated to a singlepartner and appearedunder his namealone: Stirling acquired the Cambridge History Faculty Building,a blockof flats in Camden,and an eventuallylost commission for offices for theNew Statesman in Holborn;Gowan retained the housing at CreekRoad and Trafalgar Road in Greenwich,a block of flats in Edgware,warehouses in Dalston,and ofcourse theSchreiber House in Hampstead.76

CONCLUSION Theirregular montage of disparate volumes was theparticular contribution ofGowan to thepartnership's various house projects.It was thisaesthetic that either colluded or collidedwith Stirling's liking for the cube and itsextension or dematerialization.It was thereforeironic that it was exactlythis picturesque montage aesthetic that was seizedon by ManfredoTafuri and PeterEisenman, and bothof them saw it in linguisticterms as disturbingthe syntax of architectural composition. In his articlefirst published in 1974, Tafurisaw thisas characteristicof Stirling'senchanting if 'perfidious'contribution to architectureinthe 1960s and 1970s.For Tafuri, who never even mentions Gowan, Stirling was one ofthe leading architects 'brandishing as bannersthe fragments of a Utopiathey themselvescannot confront head-on'. Stirling worked 'salvage operations'on these fragments,creating a 'montageof architecturalmaterials ... extenuationof forms... controlledbricolage', leading to a 'renunciationof clear narrative'in favourof 'a successionof "events'". This was essentiallya linguisticprocess, 'reducing the architecturalobject to a syntaxin transformation',deforming the architectural language but never completelyshattering it.77 Similarly, and even more appositely,Peter Eisenman'sarticle on the'Destruction of the Box', also publishedin 1974,focused on the treatmentofwall planes and the picturesque composition of Leicester. The compositional approachwas entirelyattributed to Stirlingon the ratherflimsy basis thatthe same preoccupationcontinued in Stirling'swork after the partnership broke up.78 Eisenman recognizedthe eclectic assemblage of sourcesin theLeicester University Engineering Buildingand the way it startedfrom 'an essentiallymulti-volumetric composition', arguingthat Stirling 'takes the compositional attitude of Constructivism, rather than its vocabularyand bringsit into some sort of dialectic with the concept of the vertical plane in Le Corbusier'.The polemical intention behind this was based on 'distortingthe form ofthe iconic structure', not to critiquethe cube through some dematerialization ofit - whichhad obviouslybecome by thena standardmodernist routine - butto erodethe veryconception ofshape in favourof some deep syntacticstructure.79

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Fig. 20. JamesStirling and James Gowan (drawingby James Gowan),house study, 1957 (JamesGowan)

Clearly,both Tafuriand Eisenmanfound something extraordinary happening in termsof the handling of surfaces, the treatment of volumes as containedspaces, and the relationbetween volumes in Stirlingand Gowan7s buildings.This presentarticle's contention,essentially, is that the phenomenon that they observed actually emerged out ofcollaboration between the partners and as a resultof their working practices, rather thanbeing the peculiar possession of one architect. Lookingback at thehouse studiesin particular,their importance is notthe brave, optimisticwords about collaboration attached to themafterwards, but instead how, out ofthe turbulent and ultimatelydivisive experience of partnership, rejected ideas could re-emergelater. Lurching apparently wastefully between drastically different designs, thesehouse studies actually produced a usefulsurplus. In onehouse study, shown here in thisfirst sketch by Gowan (Fig. 20), can be seen not onlythe distinctive extruded rampsof the partnership'sPreston housing, but also thejaunty volumes and outer ramp of the littlelibrary designed for the second stage of the ChurchillCollege competition.Furthermore, there is in this drawing a piling up of the same heterogeneouscomponents that were later to makeLeicester famous: a podiumthat servesboth as platformto and as visuallink between a rangeof disparate solids; a ramp thatangles out fromthe main body; an entranceframed by thesupports of an upper unit;and thepin wheel effect of forms of similar shape radiating out from a solidbody. Furthermore,beyond this scheme built at Leicester,the abstractedfragments of Gowan's littledrawing contain the hybridseedlings that twenty years later would producethe combinationof iconographicfragments typical of Stirling'slater work,

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:51:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PICTURESQUE AND INTRANSIGENT 291 especiallyhis masterpiecethe Neue Staatsgaleriein Stuttgart(1977-83), in whichthe notionof the unitarymodernist building standing against the cityis replacedby a conceptionof the buildingas a city an architecturallandscape. Gowan's dynamic compositionsof dissimilar parts were grafted onto Stirling's earlier preference for cube- likestructures, enabling the rich contextualism that characterized Stirling's later career.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wouldespecially like to thankJames Go wan forseveral long interviews that he has givenme. Also,I am gratefulto Alan Colquhoun,Kit Evans, Tom and CaroleFrodsham, Mark Girouard, David Gray,Malcolm Higgs, Michael Lewis, Judi Loach, Eva Neumann,Howard Shubert, Ann- MarieSigouin, Lady MaryStirling and IngeWolf. This research would nothave been possible withoutthe financial support of the British Academy and theUniversity of Manchester.

PHOTOGRAPHIC CREDITS CourtesyMark Girouard: 1. LondonBorough of Richmond upon Thames:2, 3, 4 and 5. ArchitecturalReview (April 1958): 7. DeutscheArchitektur Museum, Frankfurt: 8, 9, 10,11, 12, 15 and 19. Fonds JamesStirling /Michael Wilford Archive, Collection Centre Canadien d'Architecture/ CanadianCentre for Architecture, Montreal: 6, 14 and 18. CourtesyJames Gowan: 20. Author'sphotograph: 17. Redrawnfrom microfilm images held by WycombeDistrict Council: 13 and 16.

NOTES - 1 The tensionwas creative':Michael Wilfordquoted in Mark Girouard,Big Jim TheLife and Workof James Stirling(London, 2000), p. 107. 2 'ErnestoRogers referredin an articleto Stirlingand Gowan as the "teddy boys of Englisharchitecture", to which Stirlingresponded by sendingErnesto a neatly-packed,rusty cut- throat razor': Malcolm Higgs, 'James "Bad Boy" Stirling:The Early Years', unpublished lecture given to the TwentiethCentury Society,27 November 2003. 3 Substantiatingits importance,this later photograph also appears as the final image in James Stirling, Michael Wilfordand Partners,Buildings and Projects1975-1992 (London, 1994),p. 308. - 4 On thisAct, see Mark Crinson and JulesLubbock, Architecture Artor Profession?Three Hundred Years of ArchitecturalEducation in Britain(Manchester, 1994), pp. 123-25. 5 This, of course,is a common trope in architecturalhistory. I like the entryin the BiographicalDictionary of IrishArchitects: Charles Lanyon was 'good looking, suave, extrovert,the supreme organizer,handling the business, settlingcontracts and guardinginterests', while William Lynn was 'ten years his junior,scholarly, modest,reticent, unworldly but shielded by Lanyon and freeto concentrateon designingexcellence'. 6 To take a few influentialexamples, in Colin Rowe's importantarticle 'The Blenheimof the WelfareState', Rowe successively erases Gowan from the work. He starts out with 'Stirling and Gowan', which later becomes 'Stirlingand his partner',and finally'Stirling's scheme': Colin Rowe, 'The Blenheimof the Welfare State' (1959), As / Was Saying:Recollections and MiscellaneousEssays, 3 vols (Cambridge,Mass., and London, 1996), 1,pp. 143-52. Rowe also paid Gowan scant notice in an importantintroductory essay: Colin Rowe, 'Introduction',in JamesStirling Buildings and Projects,ed. PeterArnell and Ted Bickford(London, 1984), pp. 10-27. In Alvin Boyarsky's article 'Stirling "Dimostrationi"',although much of the article is about the Leicester UniversityEngineering Building, Gowan's name goes completely unmentioned: Architectural

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Design,38 (1968), pp. 454-55. And, in a typicallater survey, Williams Curtis completely forgets Gowan in his discussion of Leicester:Modern Architecture Since 1900 (London, 1996),p. 534. The tendencyhas been to look at Stirling'slater buildings and assume that,because certainformal traits appear in them,he musthave been responsiblefor the same formaltraits in buildings produced duringthe partnershipwith Gowan. 7 ArchitectsJournal, 159, 1 May 1974,p. 930. 8 Girouard,Big Jim,pp. 186-87 anc^192~95- 9 Ibid., pp. 188 and 194-95. Stirlingexplained this to Gowan as necessarybecause of the 'lack of storage space': JamesGowan, interviewby author,4 January2006. 10 JohnMcKean has made a close analysis of the developmentof Leicesterbased on these drawings:John - McKean, LeicesterUniversity Engineering Building JamesStirling and JamesGowan (London, 1994),pp. 21-25. The originaldrawings are now in the possession of the Deutsche ArchitekturMuseum, Frankfurt(hereafter DAM). 11 Colin Rowe, 'Eulogy: JamesStirling', As I Was Saying,3, p. 346. This may complementMalcolm Higgs' observation that designs seemed to arrive fullyformed in the office,although his view may have been affectedby his positionas an architecturalassistant not privyto the design process:Malcolm Higgs, interview by author,31 October2005. 12 I have not included Stirlingand Gowan' s Prestonhousing scheme in thisarticle, although a close analysis of it would supportthe argumentmade here. For a broader treatmentof Preston,see my article'The Uses of Nostalgia: Stirlingand Gowan's PrestonHousing', Journalof the Society of Architectural Historians, 65:2 (June 2006), pp. 216-37. 13 See JamesStirling and JamesGowan, 'Afterthoughtson the Flats at Ham Common' (1959),republished in - Stirling Writingson Architecture,ed. RobertMaxwell (London, 1998),pp. 76-77. 14 Stirlingthought he could get these past the local plannerand thenchange them:James Gowan, interview by author,4 January2006. 15 James Stirling,'An Architect'sApproach to Architecture',Royal Instituteof BritishArchitects' Journal (hereafterRIBAJ), 72 (May 1965),p. 233. The local examples were the ParkleysEstate (1954-56),with 168 flats and a row of fivehouses of about the same date just to the northof them. 16 Planning Office,London Borough of Richmond upon Thames (hereafterLBR), microfilmeddrawings dated 3 November 1955,permission refused 2 December 1955. Permissionwas decided by the local planner and his Town PlanningCommittee. In the case of the house on the Isle of Wight,discussed later,the planner was backed by an Architects'Panel. 17 JamesGowan, interviewsby author,4 January2006 and 30 June2006. 18 LBR, microfilmeddrawings dated 3 December 1955; permissionrefused 15 December 1955. 19 It is possible thathe was also stressedby the extrawork; he had been making site visits to Ham during timehe was supposed to be givingto his work at Lyons Israel and Ellis and, accordingto Gowan, the strain was showing:James Gowan, interviewby author,4 January2006. 20 LBR, permissionapplied for1 January1956, and refused30 January1956. 21 LBR, microfilmeddrawings dated 3 January1956; conditionalpermission granted 12 January1956. 22 LBR, planningapplications dated 4 April 1955,19 May 1955,6 June1955, 7 June1955 and 17 June1955. In overall layout,Stirling's early schemes were similarto those previouslysubmitted by the architectAlexander Flinderon 7 June1955. 23 LBR, microfilmeddrawings dated 7 February1956; permission given withoutconditions 16 February1956. 24 LBR, microfilmedplans and elevations for two- and three-storeyflats submitted7 February1956 and approved 16 February1956. 25 'One did a bit,the otherdid a bit; the firstdeveloped that,the second took it on': JamesGowan quoted in McKean, Leicester,p. 18. 26 JamesStirling, 'From Garches to Jaoul',Architectural Review, 118 (September1955), pp. 145-51. - 27 KennethFrampton, Modern Architecture A CriticalHistory (London, 1985),p. 225. 28 Stirlingused the word 'programmatic'to describe a quality thathe felthad been missingin modernism since its firstgeneration: Black Notebook,in the possession of Lady Mary Stirling. 29 Gowan had previouslyworked as an assistantto BrianO'Rorke (1946-50),with Powell & Moya (1950-51), and with the New Town Corporation,Stevenage (1952-53). Between 1950 and 1953 Stirlinghad worked for the PlanningDepartment of the London CountyCouncil, forJames Cubitt & Partners,and forGollins Melvin & Ward.

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30 LyonsIsrael Ellis GrayBuildings and Projects1932-1983, ed. Alan Forsythand David Gray (London, 1988), p. 107. 31 Ibid., pp. 11-12 and 48. 32 David Gray,interview by author,17 October2005. 33 JamesGowan, interviewby author,4 January2006. Stirlingspoke of planning as 'never verymarvellous during the time I was there' and of how he 'never saw a concept drawing': Forsythand Gray,Lyons, pp. 204-05. 34 'Le Corbusier seems to have concentratedhis effortsinto dealing with clients and designing; Pierre Jeanneretsupplied the anchorof common sense and supervisedcontractors': William J. R. Curtis,Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms(London, 1986),p. 81. 35 JamesGowan, interviewby author,4 January2006. Stirlingmay well have wanted to presentthe image of Gowan as the workhorsepartner, the practicalman in the backgroundwith Stirlingas the performerand extrovert:Girouard, Big Jim,p. 89. 36 Finished designs were submitted to the local planning officerby 15 January1956: Planning Office, Newport Council, Isle of Wight.A plan of the Isle of Wighthouse was used more than twentyyears laterin Stirling's1977 revisionsto the Nolli plan of Rome: see Stirling,Wilford and Partners,Buildings and Projects, PP- 45-47- 37 Accordingto Gowan the studies 'were undertakento devise a workingmethod in the thennewly formed - partnership':Architectural Monographs 3 JamesGowan, ed. David Dunster (London, 1978),p. 55. 'We agreed the freeright to share drawings,to take one fromthe other'sboards and carryon with it.And we developed a rule as to how we'd end an argument.It would be decided by what suits the building': Gowan in McKean, Leicester,p. 15. 'These were a series of academic exercisesundertaken when the Stirling/Gowan partnership was formed,in order to establish a working method': James Stirling,Buildings and Projects1950-1974. (London, 1975), p. 42. Gowan has also emphasized how theirwork was arranged around the teachingthat both partnerswere doing so thatat least one of themwas always in the office:James Gowan, letterto author, 29 August 2006. 38 See McKean, Leicester,p. 15. Gowan has said thathis laterpublished statementson thehouse studies 'were meant to emphasize joint working in the contextof Stirling'slater disavowal of the partnership':James Gowan, interviewby author,7 July2006. 39 House and Garden,12 (April 1957),p. 67. 40 My accountof the process of designingthe house studies and Expandable House is based on an interview withJames Gowan, 4 January2006. 41 JamesGowan, Styleand Configuration(London, 1994),p. 62. 42 This device of differentlyshaded units,with theirhard, engraved line effect,was taken up in the 1958 scheme for Steel Mills in Wales, using cladding as a means of articulatingbut also binding togetherthe extremelylong frontage.It can also be seen in many of the early drawingsfor Leicester, and it may have had some role in the diversifiedconcrete ribbing of the prefabricatedunits in Stirling'sstudent housing forSt Andrews University(1964). 43 JamesGowan, interviewby author,7 July2006. 44 Stirling,Buildings and Projects,p. 6. 45 On endlessness see Richard Llewellyn Davies and John Weeks, 'Endless Architecture,Architectural AssociationJournal (July 1951), pp. 106-12. A more literalexample of 'endlessness' in Stirling'slater work is the SiemensAG scheme of 1969,which was conceived as having the potentialto expand in linearincrements. Closer to the Expandable House in its quadrant planning, establishinga structurefirst on which later elementscould be attached,was Stirling's1969 projectfor Mass Housing in Lima, Peru. 46 Not only the School Assembly Hall, Camberwell (1958), but also the design forthe NordrheinWestfalia Museum, Dusseldorf (1975), and even the Neue Staatsgalerie,Stuttgart (1977-83). 47 This goes somewhat against the idea that 'Stirlingis not interestedin social Utopias': Alan Colquhoun, 'Architectureas Continuous Text',Architecture New York,2 (September/October 1993), p. 18. 48 In the contextof influentialAmerican sociology emphasizing the growthof the nuclear family,Stirling's contributionto the Expandable House was more of the momentthan Gowan's precedinghouse studies: see - Simon Sadler,Archigram ArchitectureWithout Architecture (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2005), p. 37. 49 The built progenyof the finalpublished Expandable House is the School AssemblyHall in Camberwell, south London, which consists of threemonopitch roofs turning round a quarteredplot. Here again it was

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:51:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 294 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 50: 2007 Gowanwho started the design, this time because in autumn1959 Stirling was awayteaching at Yale. Gowan tookthe quadrants idea and fedinto it the banked castle motif so thatthe building would hug the ground on thelarge site. Gowan sent Stirling a copy of his initial design and Stirlingresponded by increasing the height ofthe roofs. Later, Stirling added embellishments, such as thecoping trim on thewalls, while Gowan detailed thewindows. A furthercollaborator in this instance was theengineer Frank Newby, who did the structure for theroof. Finally, after the clients expressed reservations, Gowan added the windows cut into the grass banks: JamesGowan, interview by author, 4January 2006. For the raised bank that is a strongfeature of this building and theChurchill College competition design, Gowan found sources not just in medievalcastles but also in FrankLloyd Wright's later houses: James Gowan, 'Notes on AmericanArchitecture', Perspecta, 7 (1961), pp. 77-82(p. 77). 50 See ReynerBanham, 'Revenge of the Picturesque',in ConcerningArchitecture, ed. JohnSummerson (London,1968). 51 See Crinson,'The Uses ofNostalgia', pp. 216-37(pp- 218-19). 52 Manoussoplayed a strongrole in seeingthis house throughto completionand he also commissioned Stirlingand Gowanto produce a sitelayout for a housingestate in Baddownear Maidenhead, again in 1956: JamesGowan, interview by author,30 June2006. This importance of Manoussoto thefledgling practice correctsGirouard's assertion that Manousso only employed Stirling and Gowanfor the Ham Commonflats: Girouard,Big Jim, p. 90. 53 BuildingControl Service, Wy combe District Council (hereafter WDC), letterfrom planning officer to Stirlingand Gowan,3 August1956. 54 WDC,letter from Stirling to localplanning officer, 14 September1956. 55 Gowanrecounts a similaraffair when Leslie Martin passed on a commissionfor a housein Cambridgefor anotherdisabled client. Stirling was sackedafter two weeks,specifically because of his insistenceon split levelsand slow ramps:James Gowan, interview by author,4 January2006. Gowan comments: 'confronted withthis dominating architect and thedominating Manousso, Kissa behaved as ifeveryone was doinghim a favour'(ibid.). 56 This seconddesign is dated 13 September1956: Canadian Centre for Architecture (hereafter CCA), DR2Ooo:oo42:o27:oo2:ooi-oo5.De Stijl architecture would have been familiar to Stirlingand Gowanfrom a numberof sources including the de Stijl journal itself, as wellas H. L. C. Jaffe'sde Stijl 1917-1927 (Amsterdam, 1956). y7 DAM,246-006-003. 58 WDC,microfilmed drawings dated 13 September1956, application made 25 September1956, application refused5 October1956. Both James Gowan and thepresent owners of thehouse have said thata local architectwho lived in hisarchitect-designed house nearby and whodisliked Stirling and Gowan'sproposals playeda rolein thesesuccessive refusals. 59 ArthurKorn, 'The Work of Stirling and Gowan',Architect and Building News, 214, 7 January1959, pp. 8-23 (pp. 19-21).Interestingly, Korn's articleset the patternfor later representations of this scheme,only publishingthe smaller house from the first scheme, and thesecond scheme. In hisBlack Book, Stirling simply wrotethat '[it] was rejectedby the local planning authority': Stirling, Buildings and Projects, p. 8. In thesame bookStirling also publishedthe smaller house design from the first scheme, again with no indicationof the sequenceof designs or anymention of a housebeing built: ibid., p. 43. 60 WDC, microfilmeddrawings signed 29 November1956, application for approval dated 19 December 1956,approval granted 11 January 1957. 61 JamesGowan, interview by author, 4 January2006. 62 See,for instance, Michael Wilford's statement in Girouard,Big Jim, p. 247. 63 JamesGowan, interview by author, 4 January2006. 64 See Girouard,Big Jim, p. 247. 65 CCA, DR 2000:0042:023:002. 66 The purposeof thedrawing was confirmedin conversationwith Gowan: James Gowan, interview by author,20 June2006. For the ChurchillCollege competition see Elain Harwood,'The ChurchillCollege Competitionand the SmithsonGeneration', in Twentieth-CenturyArchitecture and itsHistories, ed. Louise Campbell(London, 2000), pp. 37-56. 67 CCA,DRCON2ooo:oo2772o 'Churchill College - Reportand Outline Specification', infile marked 'Older Projects1950-60'.

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68 JamesGowan, interviewby author,20 June2006. 69 Rowe, 'Blenheim',p. 146. 70 ChurchillCollege Archives,CCAR/ 401/1/1, letterof 21 April 1959 fromthe Secretaryof the Churchill College TrustFund to the 'finalists'. 71 JamesStirling, "The functionaltradition" and expression',Perspecta, 6 (1959), pp. 88-97 (pp. 96-97). 72 JamesGowan, interviewby author,30 June2006. 73 McKean, Leicester,p. 17. Stirlingwas also seeking to set up a practicein the States: Girouard,Big Jim,p. 127. 74 McKean, Leicester,p. 25. 75 Girouard,Big Jim,p. 138; interviewwith David Gray,17 October 2005; interviewwith JamesGowan, 4 January2006. 76 CCA, DRCON20oo:oo27i720 'Deed of Dissolution of Partnership'.The deed also determinedwhat would happen about copyrighton drawings and access to them: 'The copyrightin all designs, drawings and buildings at any timemade or designed by the Partnershipshall [...] fromthe dissolutiondate belong to the Partnersas tenantsin common in equal shares.' All letters,documents, designs and drawingsrelating to the partnershipwere to be made available to the other partnerfor inspection and copying. However, these provisos on the practice's drawings would not prevent later disputes about one partnerpassing offthe other's drawings as his own ratherthan as joint work of the partnership.When Stirlingexhibited drawings at the Heinz Gallery in 1974, Gowan claimed thatStirling had omittedto mentionthat some were by him: ArchitectsJournal, 15 May 1974,p. 1062; ArchitectsJournal, 159, 29 May 1974,p. 1182. My view of thisincident is thatit is anotherdemonstration of how easy it was to minimizeGowan' s contribution.It is quite possible thatStirling was not to blame forthis, but rathera criticwho wrote of the 'strongbut fastidiousquality of Stirling'sdraughtsmanship' beside a drawing of ChurchillCollege that had been entirelyGowan' s work: RIBAJ,81 (April 1974), p. 11. The effectof the exchange of lettersand the adjustmentto the catalogue's attributionswas not so much to give greatercredit to Gowan but to make him appear only to be one among many otherdraughtsman employed by Stirling:RIBAJ, 81 (May 1974),p. 8; RIBAJ,81 (June1974), p. 2. 77 Manfredo Tafuri,'I/Architecture dans le Boudoir', The Sphere and the Labyrinth:Avant-Gardes and Architecturefrom Piranesi to the1970s (Cambridge,Mass., and London, 1990),pp. 267-71, originallypublished in Oppositions,3 (May 1974) pp. 37-62.. 78 PeterEisenman, 'Real and English:The Destructionof the Box F, Oppositions,4 (October 1974),p. 32, n. 1. Eisenman mentionsStirling's Sheffield University competition design (1953) as a forerunner,but he can only mean this forits treatmentof the implied wall planes as its compositionis still that of a single box, even if stretchedeither side of a centralcorridor. 79 Ibid., pp. 7, 9 and 20.

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