Leslie Martin:

1908-2000

The prominence and length of the obituaries that appeared last August in all of the United Kingdom's major national newspapers and professional journals were a testament to Leslie Martin's achievements and influence - and that from The Times is reproduced here. However, such inevitably compressed accounts invariably omit or only hint at some theirsubject's most significant work. Those on Martin were no exception to this rule. Accordingly, we here present not so much an obituary as a celebration of this architect who did so much to create 'a coherent culture of research'. The Times obituary is followed by contributions from three former Cambridge students: Lionel March, Richard MacCormac and Dean Hawkes. March, who collaborated with Leslie Martin on so much of his most influential research, reflects on this aspect of his work; MacCormac writes on Martin's buildings and the ideas behind them; and Hawkes considers his legacy to the indivisible trinity of education, practice and research. John Meunier, himself a member of Martin's teaching staff at Cambridge, writes on his role as a model and mentor to the many staff and graduates of that period who went on to senior academic positions elsewhere. remembers Martin's effective support the difficultyears of political Next, three architects who owed and energetic championing of his dictatorship. much to Leslie Martin's insight, young practice. Next, Jeremy Lewison, writing support and inspiration write about Leslie Martin was in great demand as about Circle, introduces us to yet this aspect of his work. Jorn Utzon an advisor and consultantto other another group of people whom recalls his support both before and universities and organizations and Leslie Martin supported - artists and, after the saga of the Sydney Opera acted fortheCulbenkian Foundation in in particular, . Circle, House; Manuel de Sola-Morales, the Lisbon for many years. Mario Kriiger, which only appeared once, had an director of the urban research head of the architecture school at the influence far beyond the numbers laboratory which provided the University of Coimbra, writes about actually sold. theoretical basis for Barcelona's Martin's long-standing links with The last word goes to a 'user' of one resurgence, writes of his admiration the Iberian peninsula, his work there of Leslie Martin's buildings, the Royal for Martin's work; and Richard Rogers and his support for architects in Festival Hall, London. Bernard Levin's

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eulogy was written in 1976, on the University) and a thoughtful unusual interest, that Martin first 25th anniversary of the Hall's opening. architectural philosopher and showed his talent for the This, arguably the most successful patron. Because his judgment was exposition of architectural ideas - and best loved postwar public building widely trusted, he was often asked clarifying to innumerable in the United Kingdom, was the one to recommend architects for new meetings, public as well as of which, in later life, Martin spoke projects, and many of the younger professional, aspects of the with the greatest pride. He had generation owe their start in the building's design ranging from hoped to be present at the 50th profession to his knowledgeable acoustics to the Festival Hall's part anniversary of its opening this coming patronage. in the future replanning of the year. John Leslie Martin was the son of South Bank. Sadie Speight, Leslie's wife, is hardly an architect. He studied at In 1953 Martin succeeded mentioned in these contributions - but University School of Matthew as architect to the LCC, is remembered with great affection by Architecture, qualifying in 1930, where he carried on his former students, colleagues and friends. and in that year winning the Soane predecessor's pioneering work of She was, in her own right, a highly Medallion. He began his transforming the public authority talented architect and designerand was architectural career as a teacher, architectural office into a place acknowledged by Leslie in the first at Manchester University and where the young and ambitious introduction to his book. Buildings and then, from 1934, as head of the architect could find worthwhile Ideas 1933-83: from the Studio of Leslie School of Architecture at Hull. opportunities. But he remained for Martin and his Associates, for 'her own During this time he edited, with his only three more years before very special contribution to my work wife, a book on the elements of accepting the chair of architecture throughout the whole of my domestic interior design entitled at Cambridge, which he occupied professional career'. The Flat Book (1939) and, with Ben from 1956 until he reached retiring PETER CAROLIN Nicholson and Naum Gabo, Circle, a age in 1972, when he was made Seei.eoderp.291 symposium of essays on the arts Professor Emeritus. (1937, reissued 1971). Circle Martin's work at Cambridge was illustrated his intense interest in richly productive. He found the Professor Sir Leslie Martin: and sympathetic feeling for School of Architecture a place of Outstanding designer and teacher abstract art, which was dominant very little account and built it up who built the Festival Hall, revived throughout his life. He maintained into one of the leading schools in the study of architecture in friendships with painters and the country, with an emphasis - Cambridge and redeveloped sculptors of this persuasion and following his own personal bent - Kuwait lived surrounded by examples of on analytical and scientific Sir Leslie Martin made a dramatic their work, chosen with rare planning and the programmes of entry on the modern architectural discrimination. research such an emphasis scene with the , In 1939 Martin was appointed demands. timed to open with the Festival of principal assistant architect to the At Cambridge he restricted his Britain in June 1951. The problem London, Midland and Scottish private architectural practice to in the brief appeared to be Railway, a post he occupied work that he could personally insoluble - a vast amount of throughout the war. Here he made supervise. Most of it was for his own accommodation for too small a site his first major contribution to the and other universities. His first - until Martin had the brilliant idea improvement of public building at Cambridge was Harvey of raising the auditorium above architectural practice, setting up a Court (i960), a residential building ground level, so removing an development group within the LMS for Gonville and Caius College, obstacle to the detailed planning of office for the study of prefabricated which evoked great interest within what turned out to be a great work railway stations. This was the first the architectural profession when of architecture. Everything fell into of many such development groups, it was completed, especially for its place: the entrance was which in the following years played expressive formal vigour. It was underneath it, the form of its an important role in the followed by another residential massive structure daringly architectural work of government building, for Peterhouse (1964); a expressed, and views of the river ministries and local authorities. group of specialist libraries at beyond revealed. His design was Martin's office erected several Oxford in the same year; the large instantly acclaimed for its prototype stations based on the but not so successful pathology originality and imagination. research of his development group, building near the Parks, also at During his career Martin but his long-term programme of Oxford; and by buildings for achieved an unusually influential station rebuilding was frustrated Leicester and Hull. For the last two position in the architectural by the war and by railway universities Martin served as world. Although he never reorganization. planning consultant, though he practised on a large scale, each of When, in 1948, the London resigned from his consultancy his buildings was distinct and County Council decided to build at Leicester when the university widely noticed by his colleagues the Royal Festival Hall, the late Sir acted against his advice when because each one unfailingly Robert Matthew, then architect to commissioning one of the exemplified his rigorous sense of the council, chose Martin to occupy buildings in the central science architectural discipline and his a new post of deputy architect with area. He nevertheless continued fastidious taste. special responsibility for this to advise on the choice of architects In addition to being a notable important building. Under for its subsequent buildings, designer, Martin was an Matthew, Martin led the team of which was typical of his outstanding educator (especially architects that designed the Festival magnanimity and his devotion to during the years when he held the Hall, and it was while in charge of standards. chair of architecture at Cambridge this project, which aroused At this time he was in demand as obituary arq • V0I4 • no 4 • 2000 297 a planning consultant in a bigger the RIBA council, 1952-58, and was generation, just as Herrera had in world than that of the universities, vice-president, 1955-57. his time and place, and and two of his projects became He was a member of the Royal Churriguera had in his. The stylistic highly controversial: that for the Fine Art Commission from 1958 to differences between a white relief of replanning of the area around 1972. He was consultant to the Ben Nicholson and an assemblage Whitehall and Parliament Square, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation at of capitals and panels in a and that for the rebuilding of the Lisbon, 1959-69, and lectured at Churrigueresque pilaster are British Museum Library. The report Harvard (1966) and Princeton (1974), apparent on the surface, but Leslie on the former, published in 1965, and was visiting professor at Yale in Martin sought to appreciate, contained some enlightened 1973-74. Of his many academic and beyond mere appearances, the proposals, such as those for professional awards, the most enduring principles which each rerouting the traffic so as to leave notable was the Royal Gold Medal exhibited. Parliament Square as a pedestrian in 1973. He was knighted in 1957. Unquestionably, the roots of the setting for Westminster Abbey, but After his retirement from the very Englishness of his modernism it was too ambitious and Cambridge chair, Martin continued were to be found in the English free comprehensive to have much to live in, and practise from, the school - Lutyens, Lethaby, Voysey, in chance of execution. Furthermore, many-storeyed watermill at Great particular - whose houses were the proposals for Whitehall, Shelford which he had converted celebrated by Hermann Muthesius' involving the destruction of many for his own use, and which was Dos Englische Hous (1904-05). It was of the existing buildings, including itself an admirable illustration of the rational quality of the designs Sir Gilbert Scott's Foreign Office, his architectural discernment and that appealed to Muthesius, a were in conflict with the growing his imaginative handling of space. rationality that was inclusive and interest in architectural In 1978 he and his wife moved to which did not exclude romantic conservation and the modern another house in the same village, tendencies. For Leslie Martin: preference for a mixed this one converted from a group of The architectural ideas of my environment. old barns, with equal flair and generation drew on these two streams Martin's British Museum sensitivity. The work that came his (romanticism and rationalism) and, proposals similarly came up way in the 1970s was mostly in the by merging them, developed a new against a strongly expressed anxiety Middle East. code.' about disturbing an established In 1934 he married Sadie Speight, Lethaby talked of magic and environment, and were eventually a fellow student at the Manchester architecture, but also spoke of the abandoned in favour of a new architectural school. She continued need for 'systematic research into library building on the northern for some time to work as a designer, the possibilities', and of a instead of the southern edge of and her drive and enthusiasm had 'constructive' approach to London University's Bloomsbury a strong influence on Martin's architectural theory: a precinct. This was designed by career. She died in 1992, but he is 'consequence of a lack of any Colin St. John Wilson, who had survived by their son and daughter. agreed theory is the absence of a been Martin's collaborator in the positive and reasonable basis for original library plan, as well as his Professor Sir Leslie Martin, RA, design, criticism, education or associate in several earlier projects. architect, was born on 17 August 1908. understanding: we "carry on" in a In 1967, when he had completed He died on 28 July aged 91. chaos of whims and pretences... By his replanning scheme for © The Times, 1 August 2000 "constructive" more is implied Whitehall, Martin was approached than is usually meant by for advice on the development of "construction"... It means an Kuwait City. Until then the Kuwaitis 'Setting out the possibilities': attempt to find frank, reasonable had been badly served by some Leslie Martin and the advancement and inventive solutions of modern other Europeans, and it was due to of architectural knowledge problems in a developing search for Martin that the names of Educated in architecture at the organic and perfect building forms remarkably fine architects were , Leslie and methods.' brought into the picture, namely Martin gained his PhD in 193G. The Again, Leslie Martin: the Danes Jorn Utzon (of Sydney title of his thesis was 'The position '/Universities] would expect and have Opera House fame), who won the of Jose de Churriguera in the a right to expect that knowledge will competition for the parliament development of Spanish baroque be guided and developed by building, and Arne Jacobsen, architecture'. Four years earlier, his principles: that is by theory. Research architect for the Central Bank, and MA thesis was entitled 'Juan de is the tool by which theory is advanced. Without it teaching can the Finn Reima Pietila, for the Herrera 1530-1597' - Herrera who have no direction and thought no Foreign Office. The work of these carried through Toledo's 14 and others, and their subsequent cutting edge.' courtyard plan for the Escorial, influence, turned the architectural initiated an academy of quality of the city around, and Curiously, The Art of Building a Home mathematical studies in Segovia, for this much credit must go to (1902) does not figure in Muthesius, Martin. and founded a school of nor do its authors, Unwin and architecture in Madrid. It was rare Parker. In the course of his Leslie Martin took a doctorate at for an architect of his generation to subsequent career, Unwin bucked Manchester University and received pursue academic research at this conventional wisdom in honorary degrees from that level. But then Leslie Martin was a demonstrating the effectiveness of university, Leicester and Hull. He truly rare individual. One of the low-rise housing and of was also an honorary fellow of Jesus most committed members of a quadrangular layouts; of seeing College, Cambridge. He was circle of European 'constructive' open space as the figure against a awarded the RIBA distinction in painters, sculptors, and architects, ground of building, not the town planning in 1956, served on he promoted the 'art now' of his building as figure on an open 298 arq • V0I4 • no 4 • 2000 obituary

experiment. Within the LCC, some Road. The official vision of the architects - a 'left-wing' cell - redevelopment foresaw the use of objected to high-rise housing this building type in Whitehall derived from continental models. itself. Their objections had been Leslie Martin was not prepared to formalized independently by go along with the conventional Walter Segal Home and Environment wisdom. It was clear that an (i943)- intensification of use in the With Leslie Martin's coming to Whitehall area would bring greater Cambridge University, the traffic loads to what was already architecture programme became one of the busiest nodes in London. an honours degree and research Colin Buchanan, who had just degrees could be awarded. Sandy published Traffic in Towns, 1963, was a The Fresnel square diagram. Each annulus 1 appointed traffic consultant. has the same area as the central square Wilson, who had seen combat at Roehampton, joined the faculty. Without prejudice, Leslie Martin Among the first doctoral students examined the options. The factors ground; and by observing some of were David Croghan and David involved were many. What the spatial consequences implied Davies. Both examined housing appeared to be the most significant by the Fresnel diagram [see a]. issues. Croghan designed and built were incorporated into a Concluding a speculative study of the artificial sky-dome and studied mathematical model. Architects at the Foundling Estate area in lighting for the type of housing that time did not use computers London, Leslie Martin echoes the patterns that Segal had proposed, and the computation of the model earlier concerns of Unwin: as well as courtyard houses. was carried through by the quantity surveyor, Philip Dunstone. 'We can leave things as they are and Meanwhile, Leslie Martin and Several thousand options were call development organic growth, or Sandy Wilson were making generated, but it became clear that we can accept a new theoretical proposals, to the St. Pancras framework as an outline of the some form of courtyard authorities in London, for high- arrangement would perform as general rules of the game and work density low-rise housing in which a towards this. We shall know that the well as any. The published proposal novel sectional design was showed buildings, no higher than land we need is there if we use it projected. In the new school, effectively. We can modify the the existing fabrics, which would research and practice were in not dominate Westminster Abbey, theoretical/rome to respect historic tandem. areas and elaborate as we build. And the Palace of Westminster and I joined the first class of Leslie other historic monuments in the we shall also know that the Martin's tenure as Professor of precinct. Further elaborated, a overlapping needs of living in an area Architecture. Christopher galleria section was suggested for have been seen as a whole and that Alexander' was in the same class. the principal Ministries ranged there will be new possibilities and We both had migrated from the along open courts (Martin, 19G5) choices for the future.' Mathematical Tripos. The top [seeb]. During the Second World War, student of our class - a double-first Leslie Martin had worked for the - was Nicholas Wood. On I came back to a Cambridge 3 London, Midland and Scottish completion of my studies, I where Nicholas Bullock, Peter 5 Railway (LMS). As he told it, there followed Christopher Alexander to Dickens," and Philip Steadman, was little actual building, but the Joint Center for Urban Studies, supported by a Gulbenkian grant, much reflective research and Harvard and MIT. When Alexander were working on an architectural speculative prototyping in moved to Berkeley, I was the only re-examination of university preparation for the inevitable architect at the Center with the planning policies. At the same period of reconstruction and exception of Kevin Lynch. The place time, Patrick Hodgkinson's* modernization. seemed to be dominated by lawyers, Foundling Estate proposal was on Before Leslie Martin joined the economists and political scientists. the drawing board, a proposal that London County Council, housing Much of the research employed effectively spread out horizontally was the responsibility not of the computer methods and models. the concept of unite'd'habitation. All architects, but the surveyors. As I Leslie Martin cut my American of these investigations and projects recollect my conversations with stay short by inviting me to involved consideration of urban context and transportation Leslie, it was J. M. Richards of The participate on the Whitehall plan. systems. Practical issues called for Architectural Review who had He also recruited Jeremy Taylor, more understanding, for free campaigned vigorously for the who had just completed his PhD responsibility to be transferred to speculation, and for studied under his guidance. The research. the architects. Leslie told me that a government had built three model condition of this transfer was to be high-rise office towers over a low- I had reported to Leslie Martin on a year of research into the rise podium nearby in Horseferry my multidisciplinary experiences feasibility of different housing solutions. He had in mind the kind of research he had been involved in for the LMS. But, the urgency was such that the research year vanished in a flurry of design activity. Roehampton was the most notable result in which several housing types - slabs, point blocks, terraces - were mixed in a live b Whitehall project. Galleria and courtyard system, showing daylight penetration to offices obituary arq • voU • no4 • 2000 299 at the Hai-vard/MIT Joint Center, then would the practical (especially and soon the idea of the Centre for computational) tools become Land Use and Built Form Studies available to practice. This was the (LUBFS) emerged: the housing ongoing practice-research- study, the university study and the development-practice cycle that office study shared this common Leslie Martin nurtured. question - what building forms The Greater London Council, would be most appropriate to during the 1960s, was still pursuing accommodate particular uses on high-rise housing. A notable case given sites? Land use was a was at Stewart's Road, Wandsworth, planner's term, built form an just south of Battersea Power architect's. The new Centre would Station. Here the executive attempt to occupy the, then, no- architect had produced a scheme man's land between planning and EJDPDP with four 22-storey towers. The architecture. Dean Hawkes7 had project was a technological case joined David Croghan as a technical study: their first steel residential assistant in the artificial sky-dome. structures, with glass-reinforced He moved over to join Philip Tabor8 plastic cladding. The beautiful in the office study. With Marcial scale-model had received approval Echenique's' move from Sandy from all the appropriate GLC Wilson's office, the urban committees. The last step required dimension was embraced and a the architect to take the scheme to balance between the interests of the central government to qualify planners and architects, such as for the subsidy under the 'housing Unwin had envisaged, was achieved. yardstick' regulations - a standard An early outcome of our research which underwrote high-rise was a paper which Leslie Martin structures by recognizing the and I published in Cambridge d An array of built forms as isolated blocks. additional costs of building high Research, 'Land Use and Built Black, building. Light grey, open space. Grey, (in particular, foundations and Forms', 1966. It established the roads and sidewalks elevators). notion that high-rise building was Behind the desk at the Ministry not the outcome of land shortage, of Local Government and Housing but of particular relationships was Dr David Davies, now a civil between site and building volume. servant. He was not prepared to The same volume, distributed support the scheme. The assistant differently, could be laid out in low- architect was Nicholas Wood. He rise arrangements; or, if the height described the moment. 'I laid the was maintained, in large park-like four towers on their side. They settings. The mathematical model could be arranged around the we used necessarily simplified the perimeter of the site as low-rise situation, but new computational terraces. The open space in the models make more realistic centre was as big as Parliament assessments possible. Such Square.' Nicholas Wood replaced computational modelling might the former executive architect. The well refute the original Martin- scheme developed in three- and March conclusions for specific four-storey dwellings around a parameters. As Leslie Martin common open area. The GLC himself wrote:'... the situation is mustered their 'research' always changing, and the e The same building volume arranged around department to challenge the courtyards. Building depth is half of that in c assumptions of each generation proposal on sociological grounds. will be challenged, elaborated The person who conducted the or developed by the next. This is investigation was another as a result of Leslie Martin waiving the process that gives us the Cambridge graduate, John Bunney. the usual design requirements. capacity to meet new problems. The authority did not get the Each generation develops its own As the theoretical work of LUBFS negative answer they required. At code of understanding' [see c, d attracted attention, clients sought each step, an individual, conversant and e]. practical applications. Leslie through teaching and research Martin listened to Ed Hoskins and with the studies at Cambridge, At this point Leslie Martin and I me when we described a proposal frustrated conventional wisdom, visited the Centre for Urban Studies to separate research from and lent support to a new, evolving in London. We discussed details development, the university from a code. with the Centre's young Assistant- commercial consultancy, and gave Director, the mathematician Alan us his full support in setting up This is what Leslie Martin stood Wilson." The result of our meeting Applied Research of Cambridge. for: having regard for the actual, was substantial funding to Practice gave rise to general research into the possible; having establish LUBFS. Students in the questions which university awareness of current formulae, architectural programme became research might address. But consider other, novel options; interested in the research activities. university research was too knowing how to satisfy existing Ed Hoskins" was the first student to tentative and untested to transfer needs, seek out potential present a computer program as his to practice without further, opportunities; being cognizant of architectural thesis at Cambridge considered development. Only evaluative norms, be prepared 300 arq • V0I4 • no 4 • 2000 obituary

critically to introduce new modes without writing about his ideas. subsequently became so influential of assessment. Leslie Martin's No architect of his generation in research, originated in the modern architect generates sustained a more consistent monastic origin of the Cambridge original designs, not from 'a chaos intention to relate theory to the College court and its earliest of whims and pretences', but procedure and outcome of design. application was for women's Halls through knowledge 'guided by The buildings from his studio of Residence at the University of principles, that is by theory'. therefore invite an evaluation, not Leicester (1956) designed in Leslie Martin would have been just of their intrinsic quality but of collaboration with Trevor Dannatt. proud of his successors who, the extent to which they fulfilled The Leicester project was the working with the community and and promoted theoretical beginning of an enquiry into the its representatives, have engaged in intentions. Martin makes clear in characteristics of student 'setting out the possibilities' for Buildings and Ideas (Cambridge residences that achieved its most Cambridge Futures." The University Press, 1983) that he powerful and paradoxical involvement of the Department of inherited both the objectives and realization in Harvey Court for Architecture in this exercise the methodologies of the European Caius College, Cambridge (1958). An parallels the academic and modern movement. In particular initial design study adopted a dual professional leadership shown by his understanding of Corbusier aspect split-level arrangement of the Sola-Morales brothers in rooms associated with the half 13 and his concept of the 'object type' Barcelona. Full circle. precipitated his quest for the landings of a dog-leg stair which How privileged I was - so many of underlying organizing principles could hardly be bettered in terms us were - to have such a generous which characterize a building type. of the ratios of circulation to usable space and external wall-to-floor and open-minded mentor. But at the same time he admired area. LIONEL MARCH Corbusier's very different and But also latent in this study was arguably conflicting aspiration to Lionel March is Professor of Architecture the idea of a stepped section design within the purely abstract and Computation at the University of inherited from an unrealized geometric discipline of primary California, Los Angeles scheme for King's College in the city solids - the cube and rectangular centre, where, ingeniously, the Notes volume. Martin also had roots in inside of the stepped court was for 1. Emeritus Professor of Architecture, the English Free Style and in the . Architect students and the resulting formal disciplines of the Beaux Arts perimeter undercroft for outward- of the British Library. and Lutyens' later work which may 2. Professor of Environmental Design, facing retailing. Without the urban be seen as equivalents to context, it was this proposition University of California, Berkeley. Corbusier's contrasting modes of that prevailed. The tiers of rooms, 3. Senior Lecturer and Head of the composition. surrounding an acropolis-like Department of Architecture, Although he will always be raised place, which recalls Aalto's University of Cambridge. associated with the masterful raised court at Sayna tsalo, set back 4. Reader in Sociology, University of realization of the Royal Festival over a peristyle of gigantic brick Sussex. Hall, Martin perceived his major piers within which the peripheral 5. Professor of the Built Environment, projects as those undertaken in the cloister and stairs are suspended. University College London. Great Shelford studio from the Not only is most of the ground 6. Emeritus Professor of Architecture 1950s onwards while he was and Urbanism, University of Bath. floor of this building uninhabited Cambridge professor. This was the but in the single-aspect stepped 7. Professor of Architectural Design, studio of like minds' which University of Cardiff. section, habitable rooms take up stimulated the intellectual 8. Senior Lecturer, University College only about half of the available London. infrastructure of the University's volume. Yet for me, this is one of 9. Professor of Land Use and Transport School of Architecture. This was the great twentieth-century Studies, University of Cambridge. where a powerful, volumetrically buildings [see f). The organizing 10. Vice-Chancellor and Professor of complex and distinct architectural idea is not pragmatic but an Urban and Regional Geography, language developed, in the context extraordinary formal and University of Leeds. of academic and institutional intellectual proposition within 11. Venture capitalist and founding commissions, which combined which a hierarchy of circulation is Managing Director of Applied traditional and new materials in a composed [seeg]. Research of Cambridge. peculiar and influential conflation 12. Cambridge Futures, University of of modernism and the 'materiality' Cambridge Department of of the arts and crafts movement. Architecture, 1999. In Buildings and Ideas Martin set 13. Professor Manuel de Sola-Morales out to describe three principal was Director of the Laboratorio de building types in the studios' Urbanismo, Escuela Tecnica output - university residential Superior de Arquitectura de buildings, libraries and auditoria, Barcelona, and was responsible for and to find in each an underlying the publication of March, L., Martin, order. L. and Echenique, M. La Estructura del In university residential Espacio Urbano, Editorial Gustavo buildings this was to be found in Gili, Barcelona, 1975. the relationships between clusters of rooms around stairs and Buildings, ideas and the aesthetic corridors and the embodiment of sense community in site layout. The Writing about Leslie Martin's adoption of the court form, which architecture cannot be done underlies several projects and obituary arq • V0I4 • no 4 • 2000 301

g Harvey Court. An extraordinary formal and intellectual proposition 1L_

JLLT 1 li 1 n_,. i Manor Road Libraries. Crucial pattern recognition

j Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Another raised plinth and giant order

Yet, even if it is difficult to be raised first floor plinth which gives raised plinth giving public access to wholly convinced that the access to the English and Law auditoria serviced at ground level organizing principle of Harvey libraries from monumental flights by surrounding ancillary Court is generic to student of steps. But here the plinth accommodation underlies the accommodation, the architectural provides for secondary functions much larger and more ambitious language it developed, the which surround the two ground Royal Scottish Academy of Music immediate sense of constructional floor lecture theatres in a and Drama in Glasgow which also order conveyed by the brick piers, relationship which imitates the reworked the giant order of Harvey the raised place as a circulation pattern of the reading rooms and Court to produce an extraordinary device and the central volume book stacks above [see i]. This kind urban presence [see j]. Although surrounded by repetitive cellular of pattern recognition, comparable without the sectional complexity of spaces was highly influential in to Kahn's idea of'served and the Scottish project, the Cambridge future designs for other building servant' space, is crucial to a design Music School also exemplified the types. procedure which here creates idea of auditorium as large volume Martin shared with Aalto the continuity of vertical circulation surrounded by a periphery of sense of analogy between and the coincidence of long and ancillary accommodation architecture and landscape, an short span structures above one disengaged in this case, by small insight which Aalto revealed in his another. courts and concourses. description of designing the The third building type, the So, a series of buildings, Viipuri Library. We see this in the auditorium, which Martin consisting of libraries, lecture reading rooms in the Manor Road explored for its typical theatres and auditoria share Libraries at Oxford (1959) as raised characteristics is recognizably organizational characteristics daylit plateaux around which other similar in its relationship with which give each building a kind of territories are clustered. The form surrounding ancillary topography consisting of a main of these libraries is immediately accommodation to that between volume, or volumes, emerging out intelligible because of the sequence reading rooms and book stacks in of surrounding lower buildings of entrance, toplit reading room, libraries, and courts and the rooms which might exhibit the deceptive book stacks and perimeter carrells. that surround them in university modesty of the Cambridge Music Here the idea of the generic residential accommodation. School or the supremely controlled organizing principle applicable to Middleton Hall, at the University complexity of the Oxford Libraries. the different scale of each of the of Hull (1967), again employs the To the end of his career, Martin three libraries is very persuasive strategy of the raised plinth from continued to develop his and, in fact, proved highly which the auditorium is entered architectural language, notably in influential. and within which it is embedded, the project for the Arts Faculty for The building is a tour de force surrounded at the lower level by Bristol University and his compositionally [see h]. Like Harvey foyers, exhibition areas, art gallery marvellous gallery for the Court, it is built over and around a and chapel. This strategy of the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon 302 arq • V0I4 • no 4 • 2000 obituary

and his quest for underlying role of science and new technology principle created the springboard in forging a new architecture. In for the prodigious research the special issue of The Architectural undertaken by the Martin Centre. Review, which was devoted to the Leslie Martin was reluctant to be RPH, J. M. Richards (1951) declared drawn into discussing aesthetics the building to be, and symbolism from which one '... something without precedent in might deduce that he shared, with this country and with very little less sophisticated thinkers, the idea precedent elsewhere: a modern that architectural form is somehow building - modern in the sense of an inevitable 'expression' of owing allegiance to no other age but function. He was an artist and his ours-which is also monumental' quest for the generic and the commitment to the idea of But, in this case, the definition of a recognition of pattern was itself architecture existing in essential 'modern' building went beyond aesthetically motivated. The unity with both the arts and the questions of composition or aesthetic sense was not separate sciences. material and enlisted the potential but intrinsic to his whole '...in adopting a principle similar to of the emerging science of procedure and is visible in the that which has by common consent architectural acoustics from the eloquence of what he built. proved universal in the abstract art of outset of the design process. The RICHARD MACCORMAC architecture, non-figurative painting independent acoustic consultant and sculpture does not necessarily Richard MacCormac practises in London Hope Bagenal was supported by sacrifice its "human" appeal. But it and is a Past President of the RIBA William Allen and Peter Parkin may be true to say that it avoids the from the Building Research Station, "personal" element in order to make 1. Colin St. John Wilson and Patrick thus establishing and symbolizing its "human" appeal more profound, Hodgkinson, Douglas Lanham, the connection between significant and that it has abandoned "realism" Colen Lumley, David Owers and Ivor architectural practice and the only in its effort to get a firmer hold Richards. resources of institutional scientific on "reality itself. In this respect it is research. important to recognize that the Following his resignation from 'Only connect..." building of a new "reality" is a task the headship of the Hull school in The working life of Leslie Martin not confined to modern art alone. It is 1939, Leslie had no direct spanned, as he himself defined it in a matter of common knowledge that involvement in education until, in his book Buildings and Ideas (Martin, in science, the world of "appearances" 1956, he was elected as the first 1983), from 1933 to 1983. In other .... has been abandoned. In science as Professor of Architecture at words, precisely over the critical in art, "appearance" has been Cambridge [see 1]. There, in parallel period in which the tenets of jettisoned in favour of a world with a 'golden age' of practice, in international modernism came to discovered only through the which he and his collaborators Britain and exerted a crucial penetration of appearances.' produced a sequence of buildings influence upon both the theory It is this powerful sense of the of international standing, he and the practice of architecture. In connections between things, and embarked upon a fundamental re- attempting to identify the nature of the ability to encompass both art examination of the nature of his legacy, I propose to examine the and science, that characterized his architectural education which was part he played in the arenas of work throughout his career. to have wide implications. Central education and practice and, in At the Royal Festival Hall (RFH), to this was his determination to particular, to show how he saw Martin and his team were guarantee the status of research as the instrument for the responsible for one of the first architecture as a valid academic development of both. major buildings of the twentieth discipline. It was here where he At the very beginning of his century which actually realized turned his attention to the career Martin combined practice modernism's rhetoric about the question of theory. and teaching, following his appointment as Head of the School of Architecture at Hull in 1934. This was the period during which he built a number of notable houses and the delightful nursery school at Northwich [see k]. While he was still at Hull, he collaborated in the publication of Circle: international journal of constructive art, in joint editorship with Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo (Martin, Nicholson and Gabo, 1937). In his own essay, 'The state of transition' - among those by Mondrian, Le Corbusier, , Henry Moore, J. D. Bernal the crystallographer and historian of science, Breuer, Neutra, Giedion, Gropius, Massine and Moholy-Nagy - Martin made an emphatic statement of his obituary arq -vol4 • no 4 • 2000 303

A key event was the R.I.B.A. studies. It is not intended to show Conference on Architectural successful ends but rather a Education, held at Oxford in 1958. developing means.' Leslie Martin wrote the report on DEAN HAWKES the conference and, in a now often Dean Hawkes is Professor of quoted passage, he insisted that Architectural Design at the University of effective teaching must rest upon Cardiff the articulation of coherent theory. Theory is the body of principles that Notes explains and interrelates all the/acts 1. 'Only connect...' is the epigraph of of a subject. Research is the too! by architectural or building science E. M. Forster's novel Howards End, which theory is advanced. Without it, and that, in its fundamentals, the described, by Oliver Stallybrass in teaching can have no direction and work at Cambridge, his introduction to the Penguin thought no cutting edge.' (Martin, '... condensed as a love of architecture edition, as, 'a novel much concerned 1958) ... [that there should be] no artificial with the relationships, and the This, however, begs the question opposition between the invention of possibility of reconciliation, about the nature of that 'theory'. architectural form and the rational between pairs of opposites: the analysis of what had been invented... prose and the passion, the seen and What is theory in the field of the unseen, the practical mind and architecture? At that time, when (That] practical reason led on to the intellectual, the outer life and the principles of scientific speculative reason without a break.' the inner'. rationalism were influential in (Maxwell, 1996) Martin's contribution to the many fields of critical study, it was, References perhaps, inevitable that the model advancement of architectural Bullock, N., Dickens, P. and Steadman, of theory and, hence, of research in education, through the creation of P. (1968). A theoretical Basis for architecture would look to the a coherent culture of research, University Planning, Land Use and paradigms of science. It was the must be counted as one of his Built Form Studies, University of scientific model that informed greatest achievements, to be set Cambridge. much of the early research in the alongside his built works. Its Croghan, David (1964). 'The design of Cambridge school. The influence has been felt, directly and an artificial sky', The Architects' construction of a large artificial sky indirectly, in schools throughout Journal, 22 July 1964. (Croghan, 1964) opened up the Britain and further afield. The Martin, J. L., Nicholson, Ben, Gabo. N. opportunity to carry out schools are now the source of (1937). Circle: international journal of theoretical studies into the numerous publications and the constructive art, Faber and Faber, relationship between daylighting majority of teachers bring the London. Martin, Leslie (1958). 'Report on the and the design of housing layouts. benefits of their personal scholarship into the studio and the Oxford Conference', RJBAJournal, In addition specific investigations June 1958. were made to assist the daylighting lecture room. As a consequence the education of architects has Martin, Leslie (1967). 'Architects' design of numerous buildings approach to architecture', RJBA [see m], designed by Martin and by improved out of all recognition. Journal, May 1967, pp.191-200. But what must be understood is others, in a continuation of the Martin, Leslie (1983). Buildings and kind of collaboration in acoustics that his vision was vitally informed Ideas, 1933-1983, Cambridge with the Building Research Station by the breadth of his personal University Press, Cambridge. at the Royal Festival Hall. Outside culture and, crucially, by the Maxwell, Robert (1996). Foreword to the field of what is now called insights which came from his work Dean Hawkes, The Environmental architectural science, the discipline in practice. This, implicitly, but Tradition, E. & F. N. Spon, London. of systematic method was central to directly, defined the academic Richards, J. M. (1951). The Royal the first major publication of the agenda. In his mind practice, Festival Hall, The Architectural Review, Centre for Land Use and Built Form education and research were fused June 1951. Studies, which Martin created at into a seamless whole, cross- Cambridge in 1967. A Theoretical fertilizing each other, and he Basis for University Planning (Bullock, sought constantly to demonstrate A model and a mentor with an Dickens and Steadman, 1968) that point. infectious vision proposed a logical framework for It was significant that, when in What was it that made Sir Leslie decision making in the planning 1967 Leslie gave a lecture in the Martin a model and a mentor for so and design of universities to serve R.I.B.A.'s series 'Architects' many of us who went on to be the programme of university approach to architecture' (Martin, heads of schools and colleges expansion which was then under 1967), he chose to emphasize the around the world? way in Britain. process, the research, that lay First, and perhaps most But, while this early research behind the production of his importantly, was the sense of a observed, and undoubtedly designs, not merely to present a 'noble calling'. Not for us has been benefited from the discipline of the sequence of images. the scepticism so often expressed in scientific model, Martin's constant '... as we increasingly rely on... academia about administration. If concern was to make connections [images] we are left with an being the head of a school of between these studies and the architecture that moves towards a architecture was a job that Leslie broad themes of architecture, not to marginal activity incapable of taking could embrace at the peak of his make architecture itself'scientific'. itsproperand centralplace in setting career, then it was certainly worthy Robert Maxwell has observed that out alternative choices and methods of our aspirations. And we had Martin's approach was founded of attack on our environment. The learnt from him that it was a upon the belief that architecture work that I now want to describe may position from which one could has a separate existence from be regarded simply as a series 0/ leverage some influence, within 304 arq • V0I4 • no 4 • 2000 obituary

the university, the community, the Making architecture a joy and art The doyen - influential, generous profession, and, particularly, the for others and European academic discipline of I liked Leslie Martin immensely At a time when accepted wisdom is architecture. because he did something no other inclined to point an accusing finger Second, was his vision of architect I know of did in the same at the architecture of the Architecture as an intellectual and way. immediate postwar period, Sir creative field which integrated In his role as a client advisor, he Leslie Martin must be singled out as science and art; in which disciplined carefully selected architects and, one of its finest exponents. Martin rationality could open the doors to having introduced the parties to was without doubt the doyen of fresh ideas. In this I am sure he was each other, he supported the postwar British architecture and influenced by his Russian architect throughout the entire left his stamp on the architecture Constructivist friends, Naum Gabo project. He was advisor to the state department of the London County and Antoine Pevsner. He shared in of Kuwait and it was evident at my Council which was by far the most the passion of his generation for an very first meeting with the Minister outstanding department of its kind architecture that would contribute for Public Works that the Minister in Europe. The radical designs for to the development of a better had complete confidence in schools, housing schemes and world. It is that infectious vision for whatever Leslie Martin said. So all public buildings generated under which many of us feel ourselves to my work in Kuwait was done with a his aegis were an inspiration for be continuing stewards. client who never questioned young architecture students. In Arising from that was his anything concerning my ability. particular, the Royal Festival Hall commitment not only to the Such was the personal authority stands out as a timeless example of creation of'built form' Leslie Martin gave people. He acted his elegant and intelligent designs. (architecture) but also 'land use' in the same way for Pietila and the An outstanding educator, Martin (planning). The Centre for Land Use other architects who, in that was also a generous patron and and Built Form Studies, later to be rapidly developing country, were always made time for young renamed in his honour, made it creating examples of modern architects who came to his door clear that a school should do more buildings which could serve as seeking advice. When Su Rogers and than teach. The discovery and examples for its future architecture. I were desperately trying to keep generation of new ideas through Leslie Martin was an assessor for our newly fledged practice afloat research and scholarship and their the Sydney Opera House with no prospect of new work on publication was a fundamental competition, with Saarinen, the horizon, it was Martin who task. And so it should be no Ashworth and the government urged us to persevere. It was he who surprise that in a College such as architect, Parkes. When Leslie Martin suggested us to the Design Research the one of which I am currently and Saarinen were about to leave Unit, at the forefront of dean, there are strong planning Sydney they sent me the marvellous contemporary design in the late and PhD programmes, a research news that I had won, and invited 1960s, which we joined fora centre with a very broad mandate, me to meet them in London. At that number of years until we won the and a publication programme. meeting, it took Saarinen and Leslie Pompidou competition. Martin And then there was his Martin five minutes and a drink subsequently put our names development of a parallel practice, before dinner to decide that I was forward forvarious potential jobs, where the work could be seen to be OK and that I did not need to have such as the Kite project in made of the same intellectual cloth any partners collaborating with me Cambridge and more recently for as that being woven in the school. on the project. our South Bank proposals - an area Few of us have been able to follow Reading the other day, I found in which he retained an him there, to the same level of what Goethe wrote on his trip understandable interest. achievement, but nonetheless the through Italy to study people, art Together with his wonderful wife sense of a necessary connection and architecture: 'Give me a job I Sadie, herself an architect, Martin between teaching research and can devote myself completely to maintained a particularly practice was an important part of and then it is not a job any more European vision at a time when the model he provided. but joy and art'. Leslie Martin was much of Britain was determinedly And lastly there was his totally devoted to architecture and insular. His skills as an architect, willingness to delegate to others. he made it a j oy and art for others. I informed by an admirable intellect, Once a task had been given he have never experienced any other made him a hugely influential trusted that it would be delivered. person or architect who would give figure in postwar Britain. His Occasionally I did understand that so much time for what is the most generosity as a human being also when he asked to instruct my class important thing in architecture - earned him a place in many it was actually towards me that the the respect among clients, people's hearts. politicians and people for our work. lessons were indirectly intended. RICHARD ROGERS He rarely told anyone what to do, Just consider a man who selected but rather asked for their help in someone for the Sydney Opera House, Richard Rogers practises with his doing it. I suspect that one of the and that person was then kicked out partners from London and was recently reasons I have lasted as long (25 - and then picking him again for chairman of the Urban Taskforce set up years) as an academic Kuwait and supporting him. It by the UK Government to report on the administrator is because I learnt sounds improbable - but that was the revitalization of our cities this last lesson very well. kind of person Leslie Martin was. JOHN MEUNIER JQRN UTZON A concern for the most fundamental aspects of urbanity John Meunier is Dean of the College of Jam Utzon was architect qfthe Sydney Like in his life, like in his person, Architecture and Environmental Design Opera House and the Parliament the urban ideas of Leslie Martin at Arizona State University building in Kuwait. were distinguished in shaping obituary arq • V0I4 • no4 • 2000 305 banal materials into meaningful ordinances, and the architects were forms and by marking members of a rising opposition to architectural reasoning with a the totalitarian imposition of a vector of collective and personal retrograde style of public sentiments. architecture known as 'Portuguese Evidence of his preoccupation lite'. These were recognizably with urban architecture should not modern buildings and Leslie be sought in the scale or Martin expressed disappointment, programme of his projects or bordering on disgust, when the research. It was, instead, a concern historian John Summerson for the most fundamental aspects declared, in an opening address, of urbanity- density, continuity, that he would have preferred it if social interaction and shape - that the buildings had been in the characterized his work. classical style." Barcelona, my own city, was In 1979, the Foundation invited certainly one of his points of Leslie Martin to design the new reference. As an expression of buildings for the Centre of Modern heterogeneous regularity (rather Art (CMA) and the Children's than regular heterogeneity) and a Pavilion, suggesting that these place where architecture and should be located in the park so as urbanism blend together without 'examined a number of original to integrate the existing possible distinctions, this city documents and ... examined during amphitheatre and water plane into clearly inspired him. In return, several visits to Spain, all the work a unified landscape. Leslie Martin those of us in Barcelona looked and under discussion'. This was a work described how this was achieved: 'It still look at his pioneer master which included 'for the first time, a is probably externally that the idea work in the 'type-form' debate, the family tree of the Churrigueras', in of a stepped roof makes its greatest housing for the LCC at which 'the signatures of the more contribution. The landscape rises Roehampton. And, as a real important members of this family from the level of the lake. The roof landmark of'the other Modern of architects are compared'. He levels of the stepped section are tradition' or 'the second history of concluded that 'this part of the planted so the rising level of the the Modern Movement' as we have history of Spanish Architecture landscape is extended onto the sometimes described it in reaction [should] be re-written'. building itself. A water source from to current historiography, we also If it is true that Leslie Martin the restaurant terrace feeds a revere his Glasgow project. made a contribution to channel of water that protects the Yes, Leslie Martin was a hard understanding Spanish baroque park and the gallery overlooking rationalist. But his search for a architecture, it is equally true that the park. Rainwater from the more rational architecture his studies of this subject had a planted roof levels spills into this concealed a spirit of romantic considerable impact on his own channel and finally forms a platonism, a search for perfection development as he explicitly meandering stream that descends and the most delicate respect for suggests stating that 'the peculiar to the lake below. The building and individual humanism. juxtaposition of circumstances the landscape are united by the In the interiors of the Kettle's which produced the Spanish architectural idea' [see n]. Yard Gallery, in the King's Mill and Baroque can occur only once in Leslie Martin aimed at providing in his gestures; in his urban ideas history; but the state of... change a flexible gallery where the main and his feeling for Barcelona: shape for which it stands as the artistic exhibits of any particular show and sentiment. We love him for expression is not uncommon'. could be placed in temporary, that. screened areas under one roof, MANUEL DK SOLA-MORALES TheGulbenkian pitched to the slope of the site. Leslie Martin's connections with Under the highest section, two Manuel de Sola-Morales was Director of the Gulbenkian Foundation were split-level floors are inserted for Laboratorio de Urbanismo at the Escuela developed at several levels over a more intimate events. The roof Ticnica Superior de Arquitectura, considerable period of time. In structure is carried by five paired Barcelona which prepared the 1968, the Foundation provided concrete portal frames. The theoretical base for the resurgence 0/ funding for him to undertake sectional design can be interpreted that city research at Cambridge on as a transformation of the thick, university planning.1 Meanwhile, in sculpted and stepped wall in Lisbon, he acted as consultant to Churrigueresque design. Referring Extending the creative process in to the Spanish baroque, Leslie Portugal the Foundation on two buildings - the Foundation's headquarters, Martin had observed that the 'mask Leslie Martin had strong facade' is one in which an area of completed in 19G9, and the connections with Spain and textures, contrasts with the blank Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. The Portugal. He presented his PhD wall surface of the actual facade planning, co-ordination and thesis, 'The position of Jose de itself. He found this to be the Churriguera in the development of execution of this work was headed 'constructive driving force' - the Spanish baroque architecture', at by Luis Guimaraes Lobato, while contrast of a formal concept and an the University of Manchester in the architectural design was 'enriching element'. The concept of 1936, the year the Spanish Civil War undertaken by Alberto Pessoa, broke out. We can now reflect on Pedro Cid and Ruy Athouguia. Luis using a truss is plain and simple. this dissertation and the Lobato had himself researched the But at the CMA, the architect's connections that Leslie Martin question of land use and built form constructive drive enriches this made researching it since he in the context of the Lisbon city concept by the realization that the 3<>6 arq • V0I4 • no 4 • 2000 obituary

arrangement is reminiscent of the publication. Destined to be a serial, English Free School; but the house Circle only appeared once. It sold also reflects regional few copies (about 500 were bound) characteristics. The terraces which before stocks were bombed during interlock the other spaces of the the war, but it was widely known house as well as the large and among the artistic and prominent chimney reveal some architectural community. A reprint fragrance of the south, more in the 1970s ensured that it would precisely, of Moorish origins, in becoine a classic with a wide sympathy with the Sindicato dissemination. Nacional dos Arquitectos 1961 Circle originated as a direct result horizontal bracing slab, outside, report on popular architecture in of Leslie's, and his wife, Sadie's, might become a hanging garden Portugal. The report, friendship with Ben Nicholson. sweeping down to the park below. commissioned by the government, Leslie first saw Ben's work at the Likewise, the vertical bracing, but written by the rising Unit One exhibition in 1934. Unit inside, becomes the framing for the generation of architects, was One was something of a prototype north lights providing natural, critical of existing policies. The for Circle in its grouping of ambient illumination to the dictator Salazar said of its authors: architects (Wells Coates and Colin gallery. 'so young and so perverted'. It was Lucas) with artists but in spite of its At the Alvar Aalto exhibition held this young generation of title it was far from unified. Leslie's Portuguese architects, isolated in the Calouste Gulbenkian and Sadie's curiosity led them to from the mainstream of modern Foundation in 1983, Leslie Martin Ben's studio in Hampstead, to the endeavour, whom Leslie Martin, recalled to a packed and receptive first of a series of purchases made audience, that 'like Aalto in his with his international reputation, encouraged and inspired. over many decades and a lifetime of generation', each architect and friendship. It was through the generation 'will have renewed and In this way 'the creative process support of such collectors as Leslie different problems. As each of architecture is [also] continually and Sadie that Ben and Barbara generation solves these problems extended and the architectonic Hepworth managed to survive with imagination and talent, the language is constantly developed through the economic slump of creative process of architecture is and enriched'. the 1930s. Leslie amassed one of the continually extended and the MARIO KRUGER finest private collections of Ben's architectonic language is Mario Kruger is Professor and Head of work leavened with a sprinkling of constantly developed and Hepworths and Gabos. Visiting his enriched'. It is precisely this that the Department of Architecture at the University ofCoimbra last house in Great Shelford, a Leslie Martin achieves at the CMA in converted barn, was like visiting Lisbon. Notes Kettle's Yard, the extension to 1. Bullock N., Dickens, P. and which he designed in 1969 (opened Holiday House in Portugal Steadman, P. 'The Theoretical Basis 1971). It was both a treasure house The family house that Leslie Martin for University Planning', LUBFS and a sanctuary of peace where art loved so much, located in the Report 1,1968. and life were fully integrated. Azeitao and built in 1964, is sited in 2. Personal communication with Leslie's house was the culmination the District of Setubal3 south of Lionel March. of ideas adumbrated in The Plot Book Lisbon on a steep slope. In the 3. Region of Portugal, on the southern and developed further in Circle. manner of the paired trusses at the bank of river Tagus facing the Circle was devised partly in CMA, two parallel block walls Atlantic, with a strong Christian response to the International follow the slope of the hill. These and Moorish cultural heritage. Surrealist Exhibition on view in almost unpunctured walls are London in the summer of 1936. It plastered and painted white. became in effect a manifesto for a Between them, at three levels, span Circle - a determining effect on the counter movement that took the the habitable spaces: bedroom, practice of architecture name constructive art (rather than living area, bedrooms. Each level Of the small number of critical and constructivist since that term had has a terrace contained by the theoretical modernist texts been adopted by Gabo to describe walls, but the living area also published in Britain in the first half extends beyond one of the walls to of the twentieth century, Circle a hillside patio [see o]. The floors [seep], edited by NaumGabo, Ben are brick paved, the roofs are tiled, Nicholson and Leslie Martin, was and partition walls are wood. The one of the most important. It had two 'blank' white walls contain an impact reaching forward across within them the 'enriching the decades to the present day and elements' for living with their a determining effect on the practice variety of textures. Once again, of architecture in Britain. Our Leslie Martin seemingly uses that interest in modern materials, 'constructive driving force' to take particularly glass and steel, in the thick, sculpted walls of the modernist geometric abstraction, Spanish baroque and transform in integrated town planning, in them into the sectional design of achieving a unified and healthy this small modern dwelling. environment where art and life The house is a fitting blend of would co-exist in a mutually two traditions and an original reinforcing relationship, all found fusion of both. The spatial forceful expression in this obituary arq • V0I4 • no 4 • 2000 307

his own work of the 1920s). The simply could not bring themselves central editorial office was Leslie to leave, so affecting was the and Sadie's house in Hull. The paste experience of being in diesen heil'gen up team was Sadie and Barbara. Hallen. Letters were written to the leading I remember particular parts of modernist artists, architects and that first experience no less vividly; writers for permission to reprint saying, for instance, towards the articles that had appeared end of the interval, what a pity it elsewhere (for example in Transition), was that in a few moments all that for new contributions, for drawings elegance and beauty would have to and photographs to reproduce and suffer the disharmony of the usual for statements. Bringing together jangling bell. Even as I finished contributions, whether visual or speaking, that delicate, silvery verbal, by such illustrious names as chime that signals RFH audiences Mondrian, Le Corbusier, Giedion, to go to their seats began to toll. Massine, Neutra, Breuer, Gropius, (Did you know that the note it Mumford, and Bernal among sounds is an A, and that this is others was unheard of in an because, A being the note to which English publication. Setting them orchestras tune, it is the first sound alongside the likes of Nicholson, you hear when you enter, thus Moore, Hepworth, Jackson, and experiencing a pleasant feeling of Martin himself was adventurous. It harmony?). And I recall my promoted a strong sense of companion on that first evening internationalism at a moment disappearing during the interval when London was temporarily the and returning with a beaming centre of the modernist movement smile on her face and the words as artists and architects sought 'SmashingLadies!' refuge from fascism. For a young The music I have heard in the architect with little reputation, it hundreds of visits I have paid to the was a great achievement to Festival Hall since May, 1951, has assemble all this material. But it made my way slowly across a formed a kind of palimpsest in my was also an indication of how small crowded Hungerford Bridge to pay mind's ear, but it is not just the the modernist community was in my first visit to it, I must have been great performances that I can hear the late 1930s. Circle bred a spirit of not quite three years old; it's a most clearly. For instance, the togetherness. mercy I wasn't trampled to death in acoustic of the Hall was too dry to Leslie's friendships with artists, the crush. Since then, we have both start with ('It ees', said Claudio who were a generation younger aged, the RFH and I; it is hardly for Arrau after his first performance than himself, had a direct impact me to say which of us has worn there, 'a leetle-ontiseptic', especially on his thinking. The double-height better. But I remember, and I shall to ears nurtured on the Albert space at Kettle's Yard, may be remember no matter how many Hall's cotton-wool (though the RFH directly compared to a Nicholson more quarter-centuries of the Hall's technicians installed equipment in white relief with its existence I survive, the first 1964 which has greatly improved interpenetrating planes and overwhelming shock of breathless the resonance), but I have heard, pierced walls. Leslie himself delight at the originality and twice, an orchestra make a noise so acknowledged the importance of beauty of the interior. Design has stupendously loud that it produced what in that Hall is an absolute Ben's 'constructive' use of colour in gone a very long way in those 25 impossibility, to wit an the late 1930s and suggested that years (not always in entirely happy unmistakable echo, crashing off architects could learn much about directions), and the result is that the back wall; once it was Cantelli, the spatial properties of colour this revolution, too, has devoured from Ben's example. conducting the newly-formed its children, so that young people Philarmonia (in, I think, the third Leslie's friendships were paying their first visit to the RFH movement of the Tchaikovsky enduring. When Ben returned from [see q] today must find the foyer Sixth), and on the other occasion it Switzerland, in the early 1970s, his and ambulatories [see r] nothing was Leonard Bernstein with the first port of call was Shelford. When more than spacious, airy and New York Philharmonic. Henry Moore set up a foundation, admirably lit; what they cannot feel Leslie was named one of the is what we did, which is that we had I suppose the most memorable foundation trustees. Leslie was been instantly transported far into experience the Festival Hall has so trusted by all for his good work, his the future, and even that we were far provided was the visit of the exquisite taste, his intellectual grasp on another planet altogether. Vienna State Opera in 1954. They and his sympathy for the modern. I do not exaggerate; I vividly stayed for a fortnight, doing Don JEREMY LEWISON remember talking to an attendant Giovanni, Figaro and Cosi, and I seem on a visit a week or two after my to remember being there Jeremy Lewison is Director of Collections first, and being told that at the end practically every night, hearing at the Tate, London of every concert the ushers were incomparable casts (they included assembled at the top of the Paul Schoeffler, Irmgard Seefried, Times remembered in the Royal building and that they then, Lisa della Casa, Erich Kunz and Festival Hall of Fame linking hands, moved slowly down Leopold Simoneau - the last-named So the Royal Festival Hall is 25 years from concourse to concourse, being the exceptional rarity, a true old; well, well. That means that gently shepherding from the Mozart tenor). Kunz was their when, exactly 25 years ago today, I precincts audiences that otherwise Figaro, of course (even our own ]08 arq • V0I4 • no 4 • 2000 obituary

beloved Geraint has never Evidently there could; for as a front- surpassed him in that role), and the desk violinist leapt up to support opening Figaro provided a neat Monteux, and the orchestra moment of dramatic irony, for wavered, the great conductor shook Kunz had had an accident on his himself upright and carried on - it arrival in London, falling down the was afterwards reported that he aircraft steps, and when, in Act Two, had been momentarily overcome the genuinely limping singer told by the heat. the Count of his damaged leg - 'e But for me, the most moving stravolto m'ho un nervo del pie' - a musical occasion I have attended in great growl of amused sympathy the Festival Hall, or indeed ran round the audience. The anywhere, was Kirsten Flagstad's Festival Hall was not designed to farewell concert. She had naturally take stage performances, though it given up by then all the Wagner has had a good many, which have roles with which she had been so managed surprisingly well in view inseparably associated over the of the lack of facilities; I recall not years, and her contribution to the only the Vienna Opera but the evening included nothing very Stuttgart, the latter with, among strenuous. But when she had taken other things, a Fidelio produced by her final bow, and the final cheer Wieland Wagner which I thought had died away, and we settled back perfectly horrible, the heavily for the last, orchestral item of the evening (Bolero, I think it was to be), symbolic and stylized mis-en-scene Sargent, who was conducting, robbing the work of all its glory. announced 'Ladies and gentlemen, (Fidelio without glory - imagine!) there will now be a change of I have also been present at some programme, and those of you who deeply moving occasions at the are not satisfied can have your RFH, such as the last appearance - money back. Madame Flagstad has somehow we knew it was going to said that if we will play the Prelude be the last - of Albert Cortot, who to Tristan, she will sing the played all 24 Chopin Preludes Liebestod'. And so she did, for the before the interval, and all 24 last time on this earth, floating Etudes after it, a programme that I that last F sharp out into the imagine would daunt the auditorium as ethereally, as inexhaustible Barenboim himself. beautifully, as ever I have heard her There were also three concerts at do in her prime. each of which a great conductor returned after an illness which had Thousands of the happiest hours looked like being his last: of my life have been spent in the respectively Beecham, Klemperer Royal Festival Hall, and to this day, and Monteux, and the third of as I catch the first sight of it from these produced the most the other side of the river, its huge sensational single moment in all windows glowing in the dusk, my the 25 years of the Hall's existence; heart lifts not only with the Monteux, in his eighties, had a thought of the evening's music to heart attack, and was not expected come, but with the richness that, in to survive, let alone ever conduct its 25 years, the music I have heard again. But he did both; the within its walls has added to my programme I remember - on a very life. Du teure Halle, sei mirgegriisst! hot evening - ended with the BERNARD LEVIN Beethoven Ninth, and in the third © Times Newspapers Ltd in which it movement Monteux suddenly appeared on 7 May 1976. Reprinted staggered, dropped the baton, and with the kind permission of The Editor toppled slowly forward. There were some three thousand people in the Hall, and I am perfectly certain that every single one of them had exactly the same instantaneous thought that flashed through my mind. Here was a man full of years and honour; who had spent his life in the service of the noblest and deepest of the arts; who had conducted the first performance of Pellias and of Le Sacrt du Printemps; and who had been beckoned by death at the foot of one of the very greatest monuments mankind has ever erected; could there be a more perfectly fitting way to go?