sign in sign up
<<
Home , Agnes Martin, Aldo Rossi, Geoffroy Tory, John Nicholas Brown II, Mike Davies (architect), Robert Venturi

70

Joseph Bedford 3 In Front of Lives That Leave Nothing Behind

Jesús Vassallo 19 Doll’s Houses

Andrew Leach 24 Letter from the Gold Coast

Jean-Louis Cohen 28 Protezione

Susan Holden 33 Possible Pompidous

Enrique Walker 46 In Conversation with &

Dietrich Neumann & Juergen Schulz 60 Johnson’s Grid

Goswin Schwendinger 70 Paradise Regained

Gavin Stamp 76 Anti-Ugly Action

Sam Jacob 89 Body Building

David Jenkins 92 Kaplický’s Coexistence

Paul Vermeulen & Diego Inglez de Souza 98 Babel Brasileira

Irina Davidovici 103 The Depth of the Street

Mark Swenarton & Thomas Weaver 124 In Conversation with John Miller

Will McLean 138 Atmospheric Industries

Andrew Higgott 144 Eric de Maré in Search of the Functional Tradition

Nicolas Grospierre 152 The Oval Offices

Diane Ghirardo 159 The Blue of ’s Sky

Paul Mason 173 A Return to the Ideal City

176 Contributors

70 aa Files The contents of aa Files are derived from the activities Architectural Association of the Architectural Association School of . 36 Bedford Square Founded in 1847, the aa is the uk’s only independent wc1b 3es school of architecture, offering undergraduate, t +44 (0)20 7887 4000 postgraduate and research degrees in architecture and f +44 (0)20 7414 0782 related fields. In addition, the Architectural Association aaschool.ac.uk is an international membership organisation, open to anyone with an interest in architecture. Publisher The Architectural Association For Further Information Visit aaschool.ac.uk Editorial Board or contact the Admissions Office Mark Cousins aa School of Architecture George L Legendre 36 Bedford Square Joanna Merwood-Salisbury London wc1b 3es Irénée Scalbert Brett Steele The Architectural Association (Inc) Martino Stierli is a Registered (Educational) Charity No 311083 and a Company limited by guarantee Editor Registered in No 171402 Thomas Weaver Registered office as above aa Publications Editor aa Members can access a black-and-white and/or larger-print Pamela Johnston version of specific printed items through the aa website (aaschool.ac.uk) or by contacting the aa Membership Office Editorial Assistants ([email protected]/+44 (0)20 7887 4076) Clare Barrett For the audio infoline, please call +44 (0)20 7887 4111 Sarah Handelman

Design A Note on the Display Initials John Morgan studio The display font in this issue, drawn by Adrien Vasquez from the John Morgan studio and featured in the essay by Sam Jacob, No 70, 2015 Contents is an adaptation of a letter face created by the sixteenth-century © Architectural Association French humanist and engraver Geoffroy Tory. Perhaps most and the Authors famous for his 1525 version of The Book of Hours, which championed the use of typography as distinct from handwritten issn 0261-6823 print, Tory’s faith in the and in a rational isbn 978-1-907896-73-6 system of setting words on a page in many ways established the model of publishing as a discipline of meticulous editorship Printed in England and design. Two of the by-products of his influence were his by Pureprint Group introduction into French of the apostrophe, the accent and the , and his mentoring of Claude Garamond, who later aa Files is published twice a year succeeded him as Printer to the King. Our own Tory display Subscription for two issues letters derive from his book Champ Fleury (1529), the subtitle (including postage & packing) of which gives an indication of its focus – The Art and Science of uk £32 (students £27) the Proportion of the Attic or Ancient Roman Letters, According Overseas £33 (students £28) to the Human Body and Face – although the specific face and body Single issues: £15 featured in our letters is not Tory’s but Sam Jacob’s; a body whose (plus postage & packing) proportions changed as Sam trained for the London marathon. Back issues are available aaschool.ac.uk/aafiles Johnson’s Grid The List Art Centre at Dietrich Neumann & Juergen Schulz

In the mid-1960s found himself During this time Johnson was still seen offerings were ‘style-mongering … imbued with in a deep, existential crisis. His firm had mostly as an acolyte of Mies van der Rohe. He the dull complacency of wealth’.6 Already in 1960 recently completed three major projects – the had gained the reputation of an apt interpreter Johnson had confessed to being ‘ashamed of the New York State Theatre at the Lincoln Centre of Miesian ideas, thanks to his Glass House in terribly scattered work that I do, and its lack of (1964), the New York State Pavilion at the New Canaan, Connecticut and his design for direction’.7 By the mid-1960s, according to Robert World’s Fair (1964) and the extension of the the Four Seasons Restaurant inside the Seagram A M Stern, ‘students at Yale were increasingly Museum of (1964) – all to mixed Building.4 But his attempts to move beyond disenchanted with Johnson’s work and with the reviews. No other projects were forthcoming. the shadow of his mentor to a mellower kind of man himself’, and he was ‘out of favour with Johnson’s lead and business manager, , characterised by softly curved critics and younger and experiencing Richard Foster, had left when these projects structural frames in concrete or clad in marble, considerable self-doubt’.8 His former head neared completion to start a practice of his met with little critical acclaim.5 Johnson designer, John Manley, confirmed that Johnson own. Several potential commissions – an would one day describe these buildings – which was indeed ‘at a bit of a loss’ in those years.9 American headquarters for Mercedes-Benz in included the Amon Carter Museum in Fort He had to prove his relevance and fight for the Manhattan, a shopping centre in Brooklyn Worth, Texas (1961), the Sheldon Art Gallery survival of his office. It is from this particular (‘Broadway Junction’) and a high-rise apartment in Lincoln, Nebraska (1963) and the Beck House phase, a time of introspection and reorientation, building, ‘Chelsea Walk’, in Manhattan – had in Dallas (1964) – as his ‘television-windows that a remarkable and almost entirely forgotten come to nothing.1 The office had suddenly gone period’ and the ‘low point’ of his career. For the building in Philip Johnson’s oeuvre emerged.10 ‘from being very busy to not busy at all’.2 critic Robin Middleton, Johnson’s post-Miesian In the summer of 1963 President Barnaby Johnson reduced his staff to five architects and Philip Johnson in his office Keeney of Brown University asked Johnson for a considered moving out of the Seagram Building in the Seagram Building, 1957 meeting. To the struggling architect Keeney must into cheaper accommodation.3 © Arnold Newman Collection, Getty Images have appeared like a deus ex machina, holding out

60 aa files 70 the possibility of a commission and a new interest in modern architecture, which led departure. Johnson knew and got along well with Johnson, then curator of architecture at the the energetic and witty Keeney, who had risen , to invite him to join the swiftly through the ranks at Brown, joining the museum’s Junior Advisory Committee. In all history department in 1946 as an assistant likelihood it was Brown who was responsible for professor with a Harvard PhD and becoming hiring Johnson for the university’s computer a – very young – dean of the graduate school three centre. Financial support for a new art building years later, full professor in 1951, dean of the was found that summer, in the form of a lead college in 1953 and president in 1955. He would gift from the art collectors and philanthropists greatly increase the university endowment, Albert and Vera List, and smaller gifts from Mrs substantially raise the number of undergradu- John D Rockefeller, Jr, the Ford Foundation and ates, double the number of the faculty and triple the estate of Edith Knight. According to Keeney, the number of graduate students. Keeney had the exploratory meeting with Johnson in the previously commissioned Johnson to design the summer of 1963 went exceedingly well: Johnson, university’s first computer centre – a handsome he reported to John Nicholas Brown, ‘knows structure in red-coloured concrete, with an and likes [the] Lists’, and was ‘anxious to do art exoskeleton of thin piers connected at the top building’. Brown immediately informed his via cross braces – a device that emerged simulta- committee members, adding ‘the President neously in sketches for the Lincoln Centre.11 and I recommend Philip Johnson as architect’ Johnson was so fond of the building that he and soliciting their approval of this recommen- placed a model of it prominently on his desk dation, which was promptly given.14 when the photographer Arnold Newman came to The faculty of the art department now began take a series of portraits for Life Magazine in 1957. development of a programme for the building’s Like many other institutions of higher design in consultation with Samuel Lerner. learning during the 1960s and 1970s, Brown Johnson started to draw proposals and the University embarked on a major building department chair, William H Jordy, a specialist campaign. Given an extra boost by the institu- in modern architecture, closely followed his tion’s 200th anniversary, ambitions ran particu- progress. Johnson clearly struggled. In March larly high: ‘We have a wonderful opportunity 1964 Jordy went to New York to examine John- at Brown University to create a museum of the son’s second design for the project. He liked it works of the most important mid-twentieth less than the first, which he described as ‘a century architects’, Samuel Lerner, engineering windowed block on stilts with solidly enclosed professor and director of construction planning, free forms organised in a kind of architectonic wrote to president Keeney in the spring of 1964. sculpture of spaces, plazas and ramps among His shortlist of potential architects included, the stilts’. The second design, instead, seemed apart from Johnson, , , to him but ‘a fortress-like variant of your geology , I M Pei, Mies and others.12 The building at Yale’. In addition, Johnson had eventual products of the building campaign introduced the ‘communal idea’ of an arcade were considerably more modest. Two new in the centre of the building. Urging Johnson libraries by Warner, Burns, Toan & Lunde – the to return to the first version with a colonnade John D Rockefeller Jr Library and the Sciences in the front, Jordy submitted his own sketch Library – were completed in 1964 and 1971, the of a building with greater depth and a vertical new Graduate Centre and Biomedical Centre, pattern in the facade reminiscent of that earlier both by Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott, colonnade.15 The effect of Jordy’s criticism were finished in 1969 and 1971, and a new is unrecorded, in any event, Johnson’s next dormitory complex by Donlyn Lyndon was attempt was rejected by the building committee, added in 1976. Projects with I M Pei (for an earth which observed that ‘the plans submitted by sciences and mathematics building) and Felix Mr Johnson were on too grand a scale to meet Candela (athletics complex) matured as far as the budget’. At the same meeting the budget was the design stage in 1965 and 1966, but then died fixed at $1.5 million.16 In August, Jordy returned for want of funds. Against such diminished to Johnson’s office accompanied by Lerner and competition, Johnson’s new building for theart the three men agreed to reduce the building’s department ended up being the most prominent area by 25 per cent and to give offices and result of the university’s engagement with studios more ‘realistic’ proportions.17 Johnson contemporary architecture. kept working on the design, writing good A proposal for a new art centre was consid- humouredly to John Nicholas Brown in October ered by the university’s building committee in 1964: ‘Dear John, I am making some studies, as early 1963. Its chairman, John Nicholas Brown II, you can see by the enclosed, and at least at first brought up Johnson’s name early on.13 The scion blush it looks pretty bad. I shall bring the model of the family that had liberally endowed the From top: Brown University Computer Centre, 1961 up with me on the 23rd with some red paper so © Hassan Bagheri; Amon Carter Museum university during the nineteenth century, Brown of Western Art, 1961; Sheldon Art Gallery, 1963; we can play.’18 Unfortunately, none of these early had known Johnson when the two were under- Kreeger House, 1967; Art Museum of South Texas, 1972 models or drawings (except that by William H graduates at Harvard. Brown had developed an © Ezra Stoller / Esto Jordy) seem to have survived.19 The designer in aa files 70 61 charge of the project in Johnson’s office was office-studios for the teachers. Jutting out from John Manley, who had worked there since 1955. the western windows of this floor are Corbusian He described the design process as a close brises-soleil, crooked like an elbow to shade the collaboration with Johnson, who, since ‘he was rooms against the late afternoon sun. Above the not a very good draughtsman’ would explain roof rise north-facing skylights, triangular in verbally what he had in mind (in a remarkable section but of different heights (two tall ones for shift of allegiances, apparently ‘he wanted the painting studio, four small ones for a something Corbusian’), and Manley would then drawing studio and the studio-offices), creating proceed to produce sketches and eventually a jagged skyline. This floor is carried by a grand working drawings.20 (Johnson considered colonnade of nine slender, rectangular piers, Manley his amanuensis, ‘the only man who can four storeys high, which draws visitors in design with me … the key man in the office’.)21 perpendicularly from the sidewalk on College Two long years passed before the intended Street, providing protection from the elements site for the new building became available, in and guiding them slightly uphill towards the January 1966: a narrow strip of ground running main entrance at the centre of the structure. The north–south between Waterman and College third floor, set back behind the piers and shaded Streets, and between the John Hay Library (built by the parapet of the studios, contains offices in 1910 by the Boston firm of Shepley, Rutan & for the art historians – expressed externally by Coolidge) on the east and a former private individual bay windows – and storage and work residence on the west.22 Johnson’s planning now rooms. The second floor has fewer windows; it progressed from hypotheses to reality, and he contains a printmaking studio at the north end, delivered final drawings in 1967. The letters a photography studio and darkrooms in the from Johnson’s office to the university in this centre and a general studio at the south end. The final design phase were mostly signed by John first floor houses the department’s administra- H Burgee, who had just joined the office as tive offices at its centre, with the chairman’s a partner and took over the correspondence. office projected outward to meet the great piers. It was put out to bid in September 1967.23 At the south end lies another studio space; Nothing in the building’s final form reveals at the north end, two windowless seminar the complicated and drawn-out design process; rooms. A large lobby offers views over the city nor is there any trace of Johnson’s recent bout through extensive fenestration and access to of stylistic insecurity and self-doubt. It is as a vast terrace atop the ground-floor lecture hall. self-assured, courageous and hard-edged as Another lobby on the ground floor leads to an anything in Johnson’s oeuvre. And its siting exhibition gallery and two lecture rooms, the – one of Johnson’s most sensible urban gestures smaller one within the building’s footprint, the – changed the face that the hill-top university larger one jutting out westward, breaking the presents to the city below. Since 1910 the rhythmic sequence of the arcade’s thin piers. Hay Library, facing west towards the centre of In the basement a large sculpture studio campus, had turned its back on downtown occupies the northern half, a storage space the Providence, showing its unadorned rear side southern half. The building is resolutely with narrow, vertical book-stack windows. mono-directional: the slim north and south Next to it, a small utilitarian library annexe of facades are entirely windowless, while the the 1930s and a clapboard house completed eastern side towards the Hay Library has only the motley collection of rather unremarkable a few small windows on the third floor, the building backs. Johnson erased this impression. loading dock and emergency stair exits. The He made the new building the same height as scheme is reminiscent of a chest of drawers, with the Hay Library and aligned its facade with different sections having been pulled forward. the carefully articulated back of the then newly At some point during the final design phase completed Rockefeller Library across College a new, unusual element emerged – a dense grid Street, so combining the two into one continu- of vertical and horizontal grooves covering ous, monumental front towards the city. And all sides of the building, achieved by fastening he gave the List building a facade that is an thin, triangular laths to the insides of the exercise in welcoming openness and readability. concrete’s casting forms.25 While the intervals Johnson envisioned an entire building of between the vertical lines remain constant, reinforced concrete cast on site – a shocking the distance between the horizontal lines varies contrast to Brown’s largely neo-colonial campus, between 3ft and 4ft, indicating floor and and a first and singular occurrence in Johnson’s window levels. Unlike more typical examples career. According to John Nicholas Brown, in contemporary brutalist concrete architec- ‘late one night, the brilliant idea of an upside- ture, which show the seams between pieces of down building suddenly came to him’.24 Indeed, Sketch by William H Jordy formwork and successive levels of casting, or the building has a truly unusual section. It varies of the List Art Centre (top); between precast elements, the lines of the List followed by an elevation signed by Johnson, greatly in depth, with the greatest expanse and then elevations of the initial design Art Centre frame smooth surfaces and do not reserved for the top floor, which houses a large as adapted by Glaser & Partners reveal any wood pattern. Their grid continues studio space for instruction as well as © Brown University Archive relentlessly over the horizontal ceiling surfaces

62 aa files 70 Plaster model of the List Art Centre, 1967 © Brown University Archive , The City, 1966 © The Cleveland Museum of Art underneath overhangs – thus demonstrating got underway.29 Looking back, we can see a The importance of Le Corbusier and its independence from the casting process. potential hint at Johnson’s motivation to apply Rudolph buildings at this moment becomes The tall, vertical piers on the west side of the a grid in the definition from Krauss’s seminal apparent from a text that Johnson wrote while building – the facade’s most striking element essay, ‘Grids’: working on the List Art Centre. ‘Whence and – are fitted precisely into this overall pattern. Logically speaking, the grid extends, in all Whither: The Processional Element in Architec- Every field of the matrix contains two round directions, to infinity… By virtue of the grid, the ture’ appeared in Yale’s architecture journal holes – results of the casting process, in given work of art is presented as a mere fragment, Perspecta in the autumn of 1965.32 Johnson which both sides of the wooden formwork are a tiny piece arbitrarily cropped from an infinitely compared the ‘shifting, rising, declining path’ connected and held in place by metal anchors. larger fabric. Thus the grid operates from the of the Carpenter Centre to the ‘off axis’ approach Entombed in the hardened concrete, their work of art outward, compelling our acknowledg- and ‘baffling’ of the ‘explosion into remaining ends can either be covered up by ment of a world beyond the frame.30 space’ in Yale’s Art and Architecture Building. concrete or pressed into service as an ornamen- While Johnson never explicitly mentioned He then proceeded to describe the imagined tal system, with plastic stoppers protecting the a connection between the List Art Centre’s approach to the Kline Biology Tower in New metal from corrosion. Here, each of the matrix’s grid and Agnes Martin’s drawings, the idea of Haven that he was planning at the time. It fields contains two such holes.26 The entire treating the surface of an art centre as a gigantic could easily be mistaken for a description of system of grooves and holes appears on all of canvas must have seemed compelling. the approach to the List Art Centre, also on his the final drawings for the project signed by As the List Art Centre’s design was evolving, drawing boards: ‘What I intend there is space Johnson in the summer of 1967. Given that they Johnson must have been acutely aware that seen in motion. A walk with change in direction were not explicitly visible in the site model, and his project would invite comparison with two with changing objectives… Walking up the hill … the single existing presentation drawing shows recent buildings with similar programmes you enter through a propylaeum, a covered, instead a dense grid of vertical lines in the style and sizes on two Ivy League campuses nearby: columned portico.’33 It seems safe to assume of Paul Rudolph, we can assume that the List Art Centre was indeed that the decision to include the meant as an answer to, even grid was made late in the design a synthesis of, Le Corbusier’s thesis process in 1967. Its execution and Rudolph’s antithesis.34 How had to be planned with a special much the choice of material at the concrete consultant in Johnson’s List Art Centre was influenced by office and required a high degree its two predecessors is confirmed of care and experience onsite in by the fact that no other building placing the formwork and settling by Johnson at the time employed the freshly poured concrete. raw concrete. All others were The application of such a matrix clad in stone, brick or stucco.35 For covering the surface of an entire Johnson this meant an engagement building is unique not only in with the broad discourse on Johnson’s oeuvre, but in American brutalism, which until then he architecture of its time.27 had studiously avoided (Reyner Where did this grid come from? Banham’s The New Brutalism One cannot help but think of Saul appeared in 1966) and with it Steinberg’s endearing reflection on a return to essential modernist the international style with his transformation of Paul Rudolph’s Art and Architecture Building principles of honestly exposed and readable, a sheet of graph paper into the elevation of a Park at Yale (completed in 1963) and Le Corbusier’s load-bearing structure, material and process, Avenue-style apartment block, published in Carpenter Centre at Harvard, completed a year which he seemed to have abandoned long before. Fleur Cowles’s short-lived Flair magazine in 1950. earlier, in 1962.31 Both were of reinforced Another of Johnson’s essays from this time No doubt more apposite for Johnson was the concrete and both made surface treatment is equally instructive. In a review of Robin Boyd’s contemporary discussion about grids in abstract a major design feature – in the case of Rudolph’s The Puzzle of Architecture (1965) he follows the art, which had ‘become important modes of building, the famous ‘corduroy’ pattern of author’s division of contemporary architecture organisation for recent art’, John Elderfield wrote a roughly hammered, corrugated surface, in into three phases or degrees of development in 1972.28 There were grid drawings by Agnes the case of Le Corbusier the exact opposite: of the international style. The second phase after Martin alongside works by Thomas Downing, a refined smoothness, painstakingly executed the classic beginnings had, according to Boyle Sol LeWitt, and in under J L Sert’s supervision, using specially seen a ‘monolithicism’ of buildings, where the ‘Systemic Painting’, the Guggenheim Museum’s trained craftsmen and custom-manufactured functions were ‘stuffed … into preconceived 1966 exhibition on minimalist art as an alterna- formwork. The urban siting of Rudolph’s and geometric volumes’. Johnson sees himself as part tive to . In particular, Le Corbusier’s buildings is also diametrically of that stage and, indeed, his Bielefeld Art Martin’s large (181 × 183cm) painting The City opposed: while Le Corbusier clearly negotiated Museum, Kline Biology Tower or Bobst Library displayed a vertical oblong grid pattern similar and challenged the existing street grid on all fall easily into this category. But he is more to that on the surface of the List Art Centre. Harvard’s campus with his diagonal crosswalk, excited about Boyle’s ‘third stage’, which seems Martin had been a constant presence on the New Rudolph designed a solitary fortress that to provide a blueprint for the List Art Centre, York art scene for a number of years, thanks to avoided contextual references. At the List Art with its ‘synthesis of unity and diversity, clarity annual solo exhibitions at the Robert Elkon Centre, the integrative response to the urban and complexity’ and the ‘play of external space Gallery since 1962, and her work was known to context was a central factor of the design. semi-enclosed by functional elements strongly Johnson, an avid collector of contemporary art, expressed’. This phase is also ‘contemptuous of who had purchased her drawing, The Red Bird List Art Centre, 1971 careful finishes’, favouring the ‘toughness’ in 1964, just as design work for the List Art Centre © Brown University Archive of raw concrete. From his examples – Rudolph’s aa files 70 65

Government Service Centre in Boston, Kahn’s at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. When Construction began in 1968 and continued Richards Medical Research Laboratories at the he told them of this development they for almost three years, with a one-year hiatus University of , or Johansen’s expressed astonishment and indignation. In all caused first by student protests in favour of proposed library for Clark University, which likelihood, however, they were informed and minority hiring by the Dimeo Construction ‘expresses separately almost every varying perhaps even complicit in the decision, Mrs List Company and then by striking ironworkers and function in the building’ – it is clear that he sees especially so, because – as she even volunteered carpenters.48 As the building neared comple- the List Art Centre as belonging to this category.36 to Philip Johnson that night – Samuel Glaser tion, in January 1971, Johnson reached out to Certain formal features were shared with was her brother.43 in a gesture of reconcilia- other recent buildings. The protruding top floor Needless to say, Johnson was deeply tion: ‘Just stopped off in Providence to see The was a current fashion embraced by ’s offended and relations between him and Brown Building. My Congratulations! It is beautiful Ford Foundation Building, Kallmann, McKinnell University crumbled. In early November he and exactly like the drawings. I am impressed & Knowles Boston City Hall, Minoru Yamasaki’s wrote to president Heffner, asking that Johnson and very pleased.’49 According to Burgee, it was Roberston Hall at Princeton, and Shapiro Hall & Burgee be released from their contract. ‘Since at that moment that Johnson decided to ‘put his at Wayne State University by Paulsen, Gardner & it is impossible for us to be “semi-responsible” name back on the building’.50 Delighted, John Associates, among others. ‘Architrave buildings’, for a building’, he concluded, the university Nicholas Brown asked Philip Johnson to design a German architecture magazine called them. should now ‘continue with the other firm’ and a stele for its southern front carrying the name For all of these works, Le Corbusier’s La Tourette stop using the names of Johnson & Burgee ‘on of the building. Adding insult to injury, however, Monastery had been a decisive influence.37 any drawings or publicity, and similarly that the building committee viewed a mock-up in Johnson’s design was put out to tender in the names of our engineers should be deleted August and promptly rejected it. Brown’s new September 1967. Thereafter, a series of unfortu- from the plans and not used as a reference in president Donald Hornig, even more bent on nate events unfolded that would seal the fate of any way’. Since the university continued to refer savings than his predecessor, stepped in and the building’s reception, ensuring its complete to the rising building as designed by Johnson, suggested a simple slate sign detached from the obliteration from the critical discourse. The he wrote another, more strongly worded letter building, which was subsequently installed.51 bids all came in too high, so the department’s in 1970, insisting ‘that my name is on the sign Though rebuffed once again, Johnson remained faculty and the Office of Construction Planning on the construction site and I would like very unfailingly generous. He accepted an invitation were asked to find ways to cut costs. The most much to have that removed.’44 to attend the opening in October 1971 and important changes were the elimination on the And so it was to be: final changes were made made a few remarks – including a characteristi- Waterman Street side of an outdoor sculpture by Glaser & Partners, and supervision of actual cally teasing reference to Albert List’s generosity court and light cannons to bring daylight into construction fell to them. What were Glaser’s – giving no sign of rancour.52 the basement sculpture studio.38 So revised, the changes to Johnson’s plans? On the exterior The building received almost no critical plans were put out for new bids in September and in the layout of the main floors there were reception when it was completed.53 Probably 1968, which were once more judged excessive.39 none at all, except for the aggregate from which the university was unsure of how to handle the To complicate things even more, a new depart- it would be formed. Johnson had specified a red complicated question of its genesis, and two ment chair, Juergen Schulz, arrived from granite aggregate, similar to what he had used administrations and many delays later, the Berkeley, and requested changes in the layout of at Brown’s computer centre ten years earlier, building was left with few enthusiastic support- the fourth floor to create more individual office which would have given the exterior a slightly ers on campus who could have started a public space for the planned growth of the department pinkish hue. However, that aggregate had to be relations campaign. At least John Nicholas the following year.40 Exasperated, Johnson and trucked in from the Midwest. To save the Brown was delighted: ‘If the art department Burgee complained that between them, the university $120,000, Glaser substituted a local couldn’t have a tasteful building, who could wished-for savings and the new changes made aggregate that produced a neutral grey concrete expect one?’54 The Art Journal reported on a ‘complete redesign’ of the building necessary.41 closer in colour to the Vermont marble on the the opening and the building’s complicated In the meantime, the university had hired neighbouring Hay Library.45 No changes were authorship: ‘Originally designed by Philip a new president, the rather hapless Ray Lorenzo made in the design of the exterior, except for the Johnson, the stunning building, beset by Heffner (who would suddenly resign three years omission of the Corbusian light cannons on the more than usual problems of budgetary woes, later, frustrated with internal politics). He set ground floor of the north side of the building. construction difficulties and local strikes, was the institution on a strict course of financial In the interior an expensive system of heavy erected by the Boston firm, Samuel Glaser & thrift and had little patience with Johnson rafters over the basement was replaced by a Partners, who perhaps deserve more credit than and Burgee’s objections. He had never met system of columns and the basement’s height they officially received at the dedication festivi- Johnson, and as a scholar of Elizabethan poetry, was reduced, saving some $20,000 on making ties. Star of the ceremony was Philip Johnson.’55 he had no experience with architectural design the sewer connection. A giant HVAC mechanical In 1973 a 22-year-old Paul Goldberger, recently processes. He authorised the university to plant in the basement was replaced by small graduated from Yale, produced a rather fawning entrust the project to another architect, and mechanical rooms on each floor. (As part of this, article in Architectural Forum on two ‘new apparently no one on the building committee air conditioning was added for the painting and museums and two college art centres’ by Philip had the guts to tell Johnson, who only found out drawing studios and the artists’ studio-offices Johnson, declaring ‘at least three … worthy of an when he got a message from the firm of Samuel on the top floor.) According to Samuel Lerner, extended look’: the Art Museum of South Texas Glaser & Partners of Boston in early October ‘Glaser & Partner’s use of new engineering at Corpus Christi, the Neuberger Museum of 1968 informing him that they had been retained principles saved us a small fortune’.46 Put out to the Visual Arts at the State University of New by Brown University to make ‘architectural, bid, the revised plans came in at just short of York at Purchase, and the Fine Arts Centre for structural, electrical and plumbing changes … $2.1 million; the winning tender came from the Muhlenberg College. Fourth was the List Art redesign the heating, ventilation and air Dimeo Construction Company of Providence.47 Centre, represented by a photograph and plan conditioning systems … and administer the Opposite: List Art Centre, seen over but referred to nowhere in the text.56 Johnson construction’ of the building.42 Shortly after- the rooftops and spires of Providence, 1971 himself never mentioned the building again and wards Johnson encountered Albert and Vera List © Brown University Archive did nothing to promote it. He did not give Ezra aa files 70 67 Stoller the usual commission to photograph the third and fourth floors have been rebuilt to might be the above mentioned, little-known finished project, and in all of the vast literature accommodate changes in function, and in 2009 project, the South Texas Institute for the Arts on Johnson’s work, Peter Blake’s monograph is the university safety officer ordered the in Corpus Christi, designed at roughly the same the only one to illustrate it.57 Twenty years on, characteristically thin Miesian steel handrails time, also with John Manley as lead designer, in a series of interviews with Robert A M Stern, running along the interior stairs to be replaced and finished one year after the List Art Centre Johnson acknowledged his difficulties during the with thick, clumsy tubes. There have been no opened, in 1972. Jutting out from the roof of the time of design but never the List building. changes to the exterior, which at the age of 40 bay-facing wing are three slanting skylights, Thirty years on, when viewing photographs of remains the finest and most striking monument whose scalene forms hint at those in Providence. the building, he still remembered its compli- of the modern movement in Providence. Yet this is where the resemblance ends. In fact, cated genesis: ‘You see, it wasn’t all that bad, If the building had received attention at the the stark white plaster and shellcrete skin, was after all, was it?’58 time, chances are it would have afforded Johnson perhaps for Johnson an exercise in letting go. Like all inhabited structures, the List Art the critical recognition he was longing for. died in 1969, just as Centre has suffered changes over the years, not Instead, it remained a pivotal solitaire. With no construction on the List Art Centre was finally all of them felicitous. The entrance lobby formal successors or anything else that achieved under way. Apart from a possible nod to Agnes retains Johnson’s ceiling, with lighting housed a similarly convincing connection to its urban Martin, the imprint of the grid on its facade in a grid of wooden slats, for instance, but the setting, the List Art Centre was one of Johnson’s might be read as a farewell to Johnson’s mentor.61 raw concrete walls that once exhibited the same least derivative and most courageous schemes, Its narrow, oblong elements echo the facade of lines and stopped-up holes seen on the exterior and one he would never completely revisit. Upon Mies’s Seagram Building, whose interiors have now been resurfaced with white plaster- disbanding from the project Johnson returned Johnson not only designed but worked out of for board. In 2002 Signer Harris Architects reno- to safer stylistic territory, designing the playful much of his career. While it might not have been vated the adjacent lecture hall, eliminating the Kreeger Museum in Washington DC (1967), the the sole reason for Johnson’s existential crisis, it sloping floor in the front row of seating. In the Kline Biology Tower at Yale (1966–69) and would have cast quite a shadow. As if in reaction, 1980s the north side of the second floor, which the stern, windowless Elmer Bobst Library for a few months before the List Art Centre was dog-legged to lead up to a rooftop terrace New York University (1972). But even when the completed, Johnson donated his Martin drawing covering the large lecture hall, was walled off to commissions picked up again, his subsequent to the Museum of Modern Art.62 His sense of create a new office. Use of the terrace itself was works displayed neither the toughness nor the relief was palpable. ‘The days of ideology are initially proscribed by the university’s safety structural and programmatic honesty of the List thankfully over’, he told students at Columbia officer due to its low parapet, and immediately Art Centre. The Bielefeld Art Museum, built in University in 1975. ‘Let us celebrate the end of the after the building opened it received an added 1968, has a vague formal resemblance thanks idée fixe… There are no imperatives, only choice… railing.59 More recently, portions of the second, to its protruding upper floor.60 A closer relative “Free at last”, I say to myself.’63

Juergen Schulz passed away on 23 Writings (New York, NY: Oxford 1964 (JNB 6/18). Lerner’s first list (Alvar Ahuja, who has been trying to find November 2014. He is dearly missed University Press, 1979), pp 104–16. Aalto, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, a buyer since 2010. It contains some as a great scholar, teacher, mentor 8. Robert A M Stern, op cit, pp 11–12. Stern Louis Kahn, Pier Luigi Nervi, I M Pei, 25,000 office drawings made between and friend. links these two quotes to events in the Paul Rudolph and Mies van der Rohe) 1967–91 and remains inaccessible 1. Franz Schulze, Philip Johnson Life and years 1963 and 1967, coincidentally the was followed by a second list including to scholars. In a 2010 interview John Work (New York, NY: Knopf, 1994), p 320. years during which the List Art Centre Architects’ Collaborative (Gropius), Burgee played down the importance 2. Interview with John Manley, 27 August was designed. Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings of the material: ‘We did not keep our 2012. 9. Interview, John Manley, op cit. & Merrill, Ralph Rapson, Saarinen sketches – Philip and I did not feel they 3. Franz Schulze, op cit. 10. Most of the details of the building’s Associates, Edward Durrell Stone, were that good. The sketches were 4. Monographs about Johnson include: history that follow have been extracted Hugh Stubbins and Minoru Yamasaki. only quick dashes, and Philip wanted Charles Noble and Yukio Futagawa, from files in the Brown University 13. Minutes of the Committee on New them destroyed. Most were not Philip Johnson (New York, NY: Thames Archive and include: the John Nicholas Buildings, Brown University, February dated or signed.’ There is allegedly & Hudson, 1972); Nory Miller, Johnson/ Brown Papers, here cited as JNB papers; 13, 1963 (JNB 6/21). At this meeting no material on the List Art Centre in Burgee: Architecture, the Buildings the Davis file; Dean of the College committee member Emil E Fachon Ahuja’s holding of the archive. and Projects of Philip Johnson and John files; and President Hornig files. A few suggested British architect Basil Correspondence between Raj Ahuja Burgee (London: Architectural are memories of Juergen Schulz. The Spence, who had just finished work and Dietrich Neumann, 4 September Press, 1980); Hilary Lewis and John T complete, departmental files of papers on Coventry Cathedral on the site of 2012. See also Robin Pogrebin, ‘The O’Connor, Philip Johnson: the Architect and drawings concerning the design the old church, destroyed by German Hand of a Master Architect’, The in his own Words (New York, NY: Rizzoli, and realisation of the building, which bombardment in November 1940. New York Times, 8 August 2010; Karen 1994); Franz Schulze Philip Johnson: were kept in metal file cases in the In July 1964 Fachon enthusiastically Cilento, ‘Philip Johnson’s Collection Life and Work (New York, NY: Knopf, building’s basement, were mindlessly supported John Nicholas Brown’s for Sale’, ArchDaily, 17 Aug 2010; 1994); Alba Cappellieri, Philip Johnson: destroyed in 1984 when they were selection of Philip Johnson. See Letter Asad Syrkett and Suzanne Stephens, dall’International Style al Decostruttiv- declared a hazard by the University’s from J N Brown to Emil Fachon, 17 July ‘Philip Johnson Archive Now for Sale’, ismo (Naples: Clean, 1996); Peter Blake, Safety Officer. 1963 (JNB 6/36). Architectural Record, 28 July 2010. Philip Johnson (Basel: Birkhauser 11. See ‘Recent Work of Philip Johnson: 14. Note dated 16 July 1963 from President 20. Interview, John Manley op cit. Manley Verlag, 1996); Stephen Fox, Hilary Lewis Computing Laboratory Brown B C Keeney to J N Brown (JNB 6/19). travelled to Providence to inspect and Philip Johnson, The Architecture University, Providence, RI’, Architec- 15. Letter from W H Jordy to Johnson, the site in the summer of 1964 and of Philip Johnson (Boston, MA: Bullfinch, tural Record 132, 1962, pp 124–25. 19 March 1964 (JNB 6/36). discussed alterations of the pro- 2002); Robert A M Stern, Philip Johnson Johnson described it as ‘neoclassical in 16. Building Committee Minutes, gramme and layout throughout the fall and Kazys Varnelis, The Philip Johnson concept’ but ‘the materials and designs 4 August 1964 (JNB 6/15). of 1964. He worked on the detailed Tapes (New York, NY: Monacelli Press, of the columns are of today. Only 17. Letter from S Lerner to J N Brown, construction drawings in September 2008); Emmanuel Petit et al, Philip precast stone could have been used 12 August 1964 (JNB 6/36). 1964. See letters from S Lerner to Johnson: The Constancy of Change (New to form the Xs of the entablature, only 18. Letter from Johnson to J N Brown, J N Brown, 1 July 1964 (JNB 6/36) and to Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). plate-glass could render the porch 8 October 1964 (JNB 6/36). Manley, 14 September 1964 (JNB 6/35). 5. Philip Johnson on his work of that useable in the New England climate. 19. The Philip Johnson Papers at the Getty 21. Robert A M Stern, op cit, p 179. period: Robert A M Stern, op cit, p 176. Red granite chips were used as exposed Research Institute in Los Angeles 22. In a letter to Johnson dated 6 May 1964, 6. Open Letter, Robin Middleton aggregate in order to harmonise the contain a few photographs, slides and Lerner indicated that the land would to Johnson, Architectural Design, new centre with the nineteenth century correspondence about the executed only become available in the fall of March 1967, p 107. which surrounds it.’ building but no drawings. The bulk 1965, and urged Johnson to allow the 7. Philip Johnson, lecture at the AA, 28 12. Letter from S Lerner to B C Keeney, of the Johnson-Burgee archive is still university’s art department enough November 1960. See Philip Johnson, president of Brown University, 2 March in the hands of former associate Raj time to review the drawings and arrive

68 aa files 70 at an agreement on a general scheme. House, a retirement home finished Johnson, 11 October 1968 (JNB 34). 45. Brown Daily Herald, 8 October 1971, More detailed drawings would only in 1968 seems to be a conscious Glaser had been one of the first op cit. be developed once the land became synthesis of ’s Guild modernist architects on the East Coast, 46. Ibid. available (JNB 6/36); see also University House in (1964) and designing the Gibbs House in 47. Three bids were received: Dimeo’s Archive (OF-1W-D1/Davis File/35). Rudolph’s Crawford Manor (1966). Brookline, Massachusetts at 6 Chilton was for $2,067,000. A contract with the Two former residences onsite, Judson 35. Exposed concrete surfaces are rare in Street (1936–37). The Chilton Street company was signed on 28 March 1969. House and Old Stone House, were Johnson’s oeuvre. The nuclear reactor house was created for Dr Frederick Brown University Archive (OF-1W-D1/ demolished that summer. The home in Rehovot, Israel (1960) is one of the and Erna Gibbs. Frederick Gibbs was Davis file, 35). of H P Lovecraft had also stood on the few examples. a childhood friend of J N Brown’s wife, 48. See Brown Daily Herald: ‘Heffner to site, but was moved in 1959. 36. Philip Johnson, ‘The Puzzle of Anne. About Glaser, see: George M Answer Charges of Inadequate Hiring 23. Its cost in design and engineering fees, Architecture’, Architectural Forum, Goodwin, ‘Woonsocket’s B’nai Israel Clause’, 24 March 1969, pp 1, 3; ‘Dimeo equipment and furniture was June 1966, pp 72–73, 93. Synagogue’, History 58, Answers Clause Charges’, 27 March estimated at $593,000. Construction 37. ‘Ford’s Feines Foyer: Outside-In’, February 2000, pp 3–21; and for 1969, p 1; ‘Apprenticeship Issue Settled. itself was projected at $1.5 million. Der Baumeister, May 1968, pp 514–22. the Gibbs House in Brookline, Mark Dimeo Signs, Building Starts’, 8 April Brown Daily Herald, 8 October 1971. For 38. So Juergen Schulz was told by faculty Favermann, ‘Brookline’s Gibbs 1969; ‘Opening Ends 8-Year Struggle’, the estimate see letter from S Lerner members of the department when he House: A Modernist Archetype’, op cit. to the then new President Raymond 49. Johnson to John Nicholas Brown, L Heffner, 12 August 1966 (JNB 44). 6 January 1971 (JNB 6/32). 24. Steve Rattner, ‘J N Brown: Striving 50. In ‘Opening Ends 8-Year Struggle’, For Excellence in Architecture’, Brown Glaser’s name was mentioned after Daily Herald, 26 April 1972, pp 1, 3. Johnson’s as ‘coordinating architect’. 25. Similar 45-degree bevels can be found 51. Minutes of the Planning and Building in the marble cladding on the base of Committee meeting, 10 August 1971 the adjacent John Hay Library. (JNB Papers 6/10). 26. The resulting pattern would suggest an 52. ‘Thank God, you’re rich, Al,’ Johnson unnecessarily high density of anchors. proclaimed, bending forward to look It can be discerned that not all of straight at a smiling Albert List, the holes have anchors behind them. seated in the front row. Other speakers Framing plans have not survived. included President Hornig, John Carter 27. The grid continues in the custom- Brown, Juergen Schulz and Kenneth made, earth-coloured, square Belgian Clark. ‘List Dedication Friday’, paving bricks (9.21cm on each side), Brown Daily Herald, 6 October 1971, 3. which cover the pavement in front A programme of festivities is preserved of the building on College Street and in the University Archive (OF-1C-14, lead under the colonnade to the Hornig 7; 1-41-1-46). entrance at the centre of the building 53. There are several articles in the Brown and into the lobby. The same brick was Daily Herald and the Providence Journal, used to cover the terrace surface above for example Stephen Glassman, the main lecture hall. On the lobby’s ‘Johnson’s Images Dominate’, Brown ceiling is a square grid of wooden slats Daily Herald, 8 October 1971, p S-2. with lightbulbs set into the centre 54. Steve Rattner, ‘J N Brown: Striving For of each square. Slats mask the bulbs Excellence in Architecture’, Brown Daily while evenly reflecting light Herald, 26 April 1972, pp 1, 3. throughout the space. The feature 55. Eugenia S Robbins, ‘Art News from stems from Johnson’s frequent Colleges and Elsewhere’, Art Journal 31, collaboration with lighting designer 1971–72, p 204. Richard Kelly, especially on Davis 56. Paul Goldberger, ‘Form and Proces- House in Wayzata, Minnesota (1954). sion’, Architectural Forum, January/ At night, the area outside of the February 1973, 33 ff. Goldberger main entrance is lit from above by five confirmed that the essay evolved ‘light cans’ – a device that Kelly from conversations with Johnson, pioneered, which sent ‘pools of light’ but did not recall any particular onto the floor, but rendered the light comments about the List Art Centre source itself invisible. About the (Paul Goldberger, email to the author, collaboration see Dietrich Neumann 20 April 2015). (ed), The Structure of Light: Richard 57. Peter Blake, op cit, pp 121–22. Kelly and the Illumination of Modern 58. Conversation with Johnson, June 1998. Architecture (New Haven, CT: Yale 59. At Schulz’s request the railing was University Press, 2010). designed by Johnson’s office. Yet for 28. John Elderfield, ‘Grids’, Art Forum, reasons unknown the design did not May 1972, p 53. coordinate placement of the railing’s 29. Lawrence Alloway, introduction to visited Providence later in 1967. The www.berkshirefinearts.com/03- supports with the grooves on the ‘Systemic Painting’ exhibition light cannons are visible on the plan 16-2009_brookline-s-gibbs-house- concrete wall to which they are affixed. catalogue (New York, NY: Guggenheim published by Paul Goldberger, which a-modernist-archetype.html. 60. Peter Blake, op cit, pp 114–15. Museum, 1966), www.guggenheim.org/ dates the drawings to 1967 or before. 43. Letter from Johnson to S Lerner, 61. Victoria Watson has discussed the guggenheim-foundation/annual- 39. Brown Daily Herald, 8 October 1971, 18 October 1968 (JNB 6/34). essential role of the grid in Mies reports/category/3-archives. op cit. 44. Letter from Johnson to R L Heffner, van der Rohe’s work and examined 30. Rosalind Krauss, ‘Grids’, October, 40. He also objected to the lack of natural 4 November 1968 (JNB 6/34). Rosalind Krauss’ ‘tantalising’ summer 1979, pp 50–64, 60. light in the rooms that housed Correspondence makes no mention suggestion in 1992 that ‘there was 31. Interview, John Manley, op cit. Manley the department’s slide collection of the university’s financial something to be learned about the confirmed having a conversation and slidemakers, and asked to install settlement with Johnson and architecture of Mies van der Rohe with Johnson about Le Corbusier’s windows facing the neighbouring Burgee. Total architects’ fees were through attending to the paintings of Carpenter Centre when he started Hay Library. $300,000 according to coverage of Agnes Martin’. See Victoria Watson, designing. 41. Brown Daily Herald, 8 October 1971, the building’s inauguration in the ‘Pictorial Grids: Reading the Buildings 32. Philip Johnson, ‘Whence and Whither: op cit. Brown Daily Herald, 8 October 1971. of Mies van der Rohe Through the The Processional Element in 42. Letter from Antonio P de Castro ‘Of that, Johnson got the bulk’, Paintings of Agnes Martin’, The Journal Architecture’, Perspecta, 9/10, 1965, of Samuel Glaser and Partners to Lerner wrote. of Architecture, vol 14, no 3 (2009), pp 167–78. pp 421–38. 33. Ibid. 62. Lawrence Alloway, op cit. 34. Worth mentioning is another 63. Philip Johnson, ‘What Makes Me Tick’, architectural conversation that found Saul Steinberg, lecture at Columbia University, 24 its final word in Providence at the graph-paper apartment block, 1950 September 1975, quoted from Writings, same time: Paul Rudolph’s Beneficent © Saul Steinberg / Flair magazine p 261. aa files 70 69 Joseph Bedford is a doctoral candidate at , Contributors Renzo Piano was born in in 1937 and studied the founding editor of the audio journal Attention and architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, graduating in 1964. co-founding director of The Architecture Exchange. He has In 1969 he moved to London where he taught at the AA practised, curated and filmed architecture, and his articles and the Polytechnic of Central London, and soon afterwards have appeared in journals such as ARQ and Log. met Richard Rogers with whom he set up a collaborative practice. Following their success with the Pompidou Jean-Louis Cohen holds a chair in the Sam Jacob is principal of Sam Jacob Studio and was one Centre, Piano created a new shared studio with the engineer at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts and is of the co-founding directors of FAT Architecture. He is also Peter Rice, and then in 1981 founded his own Renzo Piano a guest professor at the Collège de in . He has a writer, critic, curator and teacher, contributing editor Building Workshop, which today employs over 150 people published more than 30 books, including Architecture in for Icon and a columnist for both Art Review and Dezeen; in three separate offices in Genoa, Paris and . Uniform (2011), The Future of Architecture Since 1889 (2012) author of Make It Real: Architecture as Enactment (2012); and Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes (2013), and co-curator of the British Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Juergen Schulz (1927–2014) was professor of the history of curated numerous exhibitions, including the centennial Biennale; and professor of architecture at the University art at Brown University from 1968–95. His research focused show ‘L’aventure Le Corbusier’ at the Centre Georges of Illinois at Chicago, visiting professor at Yale School on medieval and Renaissance Venice, resulting in books Pompidou (1987); ‘Scenes of the World to Come’ at the of Architecture and director of Night School at the AA. and articles on Romanesque palaces, painted ceilings, and Canadian Centre for Architecture (1995); and ‘Architecture printed maps, plans and views of Venice, such as The New in Uniform’ at Rome’s MAXXI (2015). David Jenkins is an architectural writer and editor. In the Palaces of Medieval Venice (2005) and La cartografia tra scienza early 1990s he worked for Phaidon Press before establishing e arte: Carte e cartografi nel Rinascimento italiano (2006). Irina Davidovici is an architect and author of Forms of Practice: an independent publishing unit within Foster + Partners German–Swiss Architecture, 1980–2000 (2013). Formerly in 1998, which he directed for more than 15 years, producing Goswin Schwendinger is a photographer and architect. senior lecturer in the history and theory of architecture at numerous titles, including the Foster Works volumes. In He taught photography at the AA between 2000 and 2013 Kingston University, she is currently engaged in postdoc- 2014 he founded his own design imprint, Circa Press, which and has also collaborated with Paul McCarthy on Paul toral research at the GTA Institute of ETH Zurich, writing on recently published Jan Kaplický Drawings, in tandem with an McCarthy at Modern: Blockhead and Daddies Big Head the history of social housing in European cities. AA exhibition of a number of Kaplický’s drawings. (2003). He is currently preparing a body of photographic work called The Slasher Series. Diane Ghirardo teaches at the University of Southern Andrew Leach is professor of architectural history at California and has been visiting professor at MIT and Griffith University, Australia, where he also holds an Gavin Stamp is an architectural historian and writer the University of Cape Town. In 1979 she co-founded and Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. Among who taught the history of architecture at the Mackintosh edited Archetype and was executive editor of the Journal his books are What is Architectural History? (2010) and School in Glasgow between 1990–2003 and is a former of Architectural Education, 1988–99. Her books include Manfredo Tafuri (2007). founder and chairman of the Twentieth Century Society. Building New Communities: New Deal America and Fascist His books include The Changing Metropolis (1984), (1989), Mark Mack (1993), Out of Site: A Social Criticism Will McLean teaches at the University of Westminster and Telephone Boxes (1989), Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson (1999), of Architecture (1991), Architecture After Modernism (1996), has co-authored four books with Pete Silver, most recently Edwin Lutyens: Country Houses (2001), The Memorial to the Le duchesse, le bufale e l’imprenditoria femminile nella Air Structures (2015). In 2008 he established Bibliotheque Missing of the Somme (2006), Britain’s Lost Cities (2007), rinascimento ferrera (2009), Italy: Modern in McLean, an independent publisher of architecture books, Lost Victorian Britain (2010) and Anti-Ugly (2013). Gothic History (2013) and the English translation of Aldo Rossi’s whose first publication was Quik Build: Adam Kalkin’s for the Steam Age, an illustrated biography of George Gilbert Architecture of the City (1982). ABC of Container Architecture (2008). More recent titles Scott, is forthcoming. include Building With Air by Dante Bini (2014) and a reprint Nicolas Grospierre is a Warsaw-based artist who was of Experiments in Gothic Structure by Robert Mark (2014). Mark Swenarton is emeritus professor of architecture awarded the Golden Lion (together with Kobas Laksa) at Liverpool University. From 1977 to 1989 he taught at the at the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale for their ‘Hotel Paul Mason is economics editor of Channel 4 News and Bartlett where in 1981, with Adrian Forty, he set up the Polonia’ installation at the Polish pavilion. More recent the author of a weekly column for The Guardian. His books first masters course in architectural history in the UK. exhibitions have included ‘The Self Fulfilling Image’, include Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global He was co-founder and editor of Architecture Today Cueto Projects, New York (2009), ‘The Glass Trap’, Raster Revolutions (2012) and Rare Earth: A Novel (2012), and his new 1989–2005, head of Oxford Brookes school of architecture Gallery, Warsaw (2010), ‘One Thousand Doors, No Exit’, book Postcapitalism: A Guide to our Future will be published 2005–10 and inaugural James Stirling professor of Graham Foundation, Chicago (2011) and ‘The Oval later this year. He is currently producing a feature-length architecture at Liverpool University 2010–15. His first book Offices’, State Gallery of Art, Sopot (2013). His monograph, documentary following the first months of the Syriza was Homes fit for Heroes (1981) and his most recent (with Open-Ended, was published in 2013. government in Greece, and he tweets as @paulmasonnews. Tom Avermaete and Dirk van den Heuvel), Architecture and the Welfare State (2015). His next book, Cook’s Camden, Andrew Higgott is an architectural historian who taught John Miller was born in London in 1930 and studied at the will examine social housing in Camden in the 1960s under at the at the AA, where he also worked on exhibitions AA before working first for Lyons, Israel & Ellis and then its borough architect Sydney Cook. and publications on the work of Eric de Maré (1990) and Leslie Martin. In 1961 he established an office in partnership F R Yerbury (1987), and at the University of East London, with the architect and historian Alan Colquhoun. While Jesús Vassallo is an architect and writer from Madrid, where he led history teaching from 1995 to 2011. His in practice he also taught at the AA, Cornell and Princeton, currently based in where he is an assistant professor publications include Mediating Modernism: Architectural before becoming head of the newly formed architecture at Rice University. He studied architecture at Harvard Cultures in Britain (2007) and the co-edited book Camera school at the RCA, which he directed between 1975–85. Graduate School of Design and Escuela Técnica Superior Constructs: Photography, Architecture and the Modern In 1990 the office was reformed as John Miller + Partners de Arquitectura de Madrid. After completing his PhD, he City (2012). He is currently working on a book introducing and continued to build a number of projects largely for is now working on two book manuscripts stemming from the work of key modern architects. housing, art galleries and educational institutions until his dissertation, which focus on a series of exchanges Miller’s retirement in 2008. between architecture and documentary photography. Susan Holden is a lecturer in the School of Architecture, University of Queensland and a member of the ATCH Dietrich Neumann trained as an architect at the AA and in Paul Vermeulen is a partner in the Ghent-based firm Research Centre. In 2012–13 she was a visiting professor at Munich and is a professor of the history of modern De Smet Vermeulen architecten and an architectural writer. the Vrije University, Amsterdam as part of the ‘Métamatic architecture at Brown University. Among his publications He has been a member of the editorial board of Archis, Research Initiative’. are Film Architecture: Set Design from Metropolis to Blade a professor of architectural criticism at the Catholic Runner (1996), ’s Windshield House (2002), University Leuven, a design tutor at KU Leuven and TU Delft Diego Inglez de Souza is an architect, urban planner and Architecture of the Night (2002), The Structure of Light: and a visiting lecturer in architecture schools in Belgium, teacher at the Universidade Católica de Pernambuco Richard Kelly and the Illumination of Modern Architecture the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, Ireland and Switzerland. (UNICAP). He was the assistant curator of the 2013 (2010), Visualising the City (2012) and Cities of Light (2014). An anthology of his texts, Moderne Tijden, co-authored architecture biennale of São Paulo, and is the author with Maarten Delbeke and Christophe Van Gerrewey, was of Reconstruindo Cajueiro Seco: Arquitetura, política social Richard Rogers was born in in 1933 and moved to published in 2007. e cultura popular em Pernambuco, 1960–64 (2010) in England during the Second World War. He studied at the addition to many articles on architecture, social housing AA and at Yale University, where he met Norman Foster and Enrique Walker is associate professor at the Graduate School and urban history. with whom shortly afterwards he established the practice of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia Team 4. In 1967 he created a new office with his first wife Su University, where he also directs the Advanced Architectural Rogers, which then evolved into a partnership with Renzo Design programme. His publications include Tschumi Piano. Soon after the completion of their Pompidou Centre, on Architecture: Conversations with Enrique Walker (2006) and he founded his own office with Mike Davies, John Young Lo Ordinario (2010). and Marco Goldschmied. More recently the firm has evolved again and become Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, and currently maintains offices in London, Shanghai and Sydney.