Richard Horden — Light Architecture: the 1996 John Dinkeloo Memorial Lecture

The 1996 John Dinkeloo Memorial Lecture Richard Harden light architecture The University of Michiga College of Architecture+ Urban Plannin © 1996 The University of Michigan College of Architecture + Urban Planning & Richard Harden Associates, London Editor: Annette W. LeCuyer Design: Andreas Vogler, London Production: Christian Unverzagt, Ann Arbor Printing: University Printing Services, Ann Arbor Printed in the United States of America Typeset in Helvetica Light ISBN 0-9614792-5-6 College of Architecture + Urban Planning The University of Michigan 2000 Bonisteel Boulevard Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2069 USA Richard Horden light architecture Foreword John Dinkeloo graduated from this College in 1942 and became one of its most distinguished alumni. He was a gifted architect, an outstanding designer and an enthusiastic student of materials. John Dinkeloo was also an inventor who in the course of designing developed the neoprene gasket, several different types of glass and cladding systems as well as pioneering the use of Corten and exposed steel. In many ways he epitomized a spirit of inspired invention and design of which the College has been extraordinarily proud and which we are still totally committed to encouraging today. After graduating John worked in Chicago before returning to Michigan to work in the office of Eero Saarinen where he was to eventually become a partner. During that time he was responsible for a number of signficant projects, including Dulles Airport in Washington D.C. Following Saarinen's sudden death in 1961 he formed a partnership with Kevin Roche and the office of Roche Dinkeloo went on to build a reputation of international standing with the design of projects such as the Oakland Museum, the Headquarters for John Deere and the Ford Foundation Building in New York. The first John Dinkeloo Memorial Lecture was given in 1984, three years after John Dinkeloo's untimely death. Since then it has become a milestone in the academic year at our College. Generously supported by an endowment from friends and faculty and with the unfailing help of Thelma Dinkeloo, John's widow, the series has brought some of the most important architects working in practice to speak here. They are architects who are renowned for their commitment to design, technology and the art of making buildings - Kevin Roche, Richard Meier, Fay Jones, Thorn Mayne, Michael McKinnell, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien , and most recently the Canadian architect John Patkau. Robert Beckley Dean, College or Architecture + Urban Planning Thelma Dinkeloo has encouraged us to look across the wide field of architecture and to search out designers who are working internationally to develop ideas and concepts with the same fervor that John so energetically demonstrated in his work. With the benefit of that encouragement I am delighted to introduce the architect Richard Horden. After completing his studies at the Architectural Association, Richard worked with Nicholas Grimshaw before joining Norman Foster in 197 4. He worked on the design of the Sainsbury Center from the initial concept through detailed design and site supervision before going onto lead design teams at Foster Associates on other major projects including the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and Stansted Airport. Richard formed his own practice in 1984. His subsequent work has emphasized a preoccupation with materials and particular enthusiasm to search out ways to create an architecture of lightness, efficiency and elegance. This is an architecture of tiny cabins in remote places, houses, a grandstand designed for Her Majesty the Queen, aerodynamic towers and inhabited bridges. It is work that is rooted in collaborations with industry and inspired by a degree of technological innovation, curiosity and invention which directly recalls the work of John Dinkeloo. Richard Horden strives to create a light architecture. Light is a word which occurs several times in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. Unlike French or German, this one word in English refers not only to a condition of illumination but also to that of weight. This particular work revels in that ambiguity and rigorously responds to both qualities. In his book Six Memos for the Next Millennium ltalo Calvi no focused on lightness. He wrote "Lightness for me goes with precision and determination, not vagueness and the haphazard" and added "I look to science to nourish my visions in which all heaviness disappears" Albeit that he was speaking about literature Calvina's writing suggests an extraordinarily appropriate frame through which to view the work of both our guest speaker and the architect we are here to honor. I would like to welcome Richard Horden to the College and invite him to give the 1996 John Dinkeloo Memorial Lecture. Brian Carter Professor and Chair of Architecture Introduction In 1968 when I was a student at the Architectural Association Facing an open society with fast and light communication- The Air France in London I made my first visit to America. With a 90-day and British Airways Concorde 'meet' at Dulles Airport, Washington D. C. Greyhound bus ticket I toured the States. My 'guide book' was designed by Eero Saarinen. Modern Houses by Sherban Cantacuzino. The light, steel frame houses by Craig Ellwood, Eliot Noyes, Charles and Ray Eames and others made a long lasting impression on me. In fact, architects like Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, Jan Kaplicky, Looking into the future -American houses of the sixties: The Irwin Miller Nick Grimshaw and others in London have been greatly House in Columbus, Indiana by Eero Saarinen and the Daphne House in influenced by the architecture of the sixties in the United States. California by Craig Ellwood. For me the openness, lightness and their relationship to nature were the key points to these buildings. They showed, and still show, a way of living and open-mindedness, and they express a belief in the future of society and the individual - ideas which still are hard to find in England today. As a member of the design team for Stansted Airport I studied Dulles Airport in Washington D.C. intensively, which brings me to the work of Eero Saarinen and not least to John Dinkeloo in whose honor I have been invited to lecture. "Architecture consists largely of placing something between earth and sky" Eero Saarinen Jefferson Memorial Arch in St. Louis and Dulles Airport designed by Eero Saarinen. 8 That work has a lot in common with our approach to architecture. Saarinen's quote "Architecture consists largely of placing something between earth and sky" may sound simple at first, but he is addressing two key issues: He sets the first priority in the location and the relation of architecture to nature and secondly he is integrating the "sky" into architectural thinking. Architecture is lifted from its traditional earthen ties to a condition of being between earth and sky. He most brilliantly achieved these aims at Dulles Airport and the Jefferson Memorial Arch in St. Louis. The St. Louis Arch, where John Dinkeloo was the project architect, seems like building the flight to the moon by Apollo 11, before it actually happened. For us it is one of the rare examples where architecture was in front of history; usually it is far behind. It was also symbolising an approach to a light future. The Memorial Arch in St. Louis designed by Eero Saarinen seems like an architectural anticipation of the moon flight by Apollo 11 . Our passing century made the experience of flight accessible for the human being. 10 Lightness The recent development of western society could be seen as a development towards lightness. Nothing influenced our society in the 20th century as strongly as transportation. The concept of worldwide mobility for all became possible with the invention and mass production of cars, bicycles and aircraft. Movement is a basic concept of the perception of space and modern time-space automatically incorporates the concept of speed. The everyday use of cars, high speed trains and aircraft is changing our concepts of physical space. Space becomes lighter and more open, since we can more easily move through it. The possibilities of transportation make our globe smaller. People become closer together and are exposed to different cultural concepts. This "being close together" will only be possible by having "light borders", a process that the European Community is going through today. But much more than physical borders it needs a lightness of thinking - tolerance and open-mindedness. We are now just at a turning point towards the 21st century where modern information technology is likely to alter our concepts of communicating with each other and therefore our concept of society. The "lightening" of remote communication by dematerializing it into electrical impulses started with the invention of the telephone and now takes off by the worldwide People dress lighter than a hundred years ago ... linking of computers, the Internet. Another move to lightness in society can be seen in clothing. Today people dress more lightly than people of the last century. Henry Ford in his This goes hand in hand with a development towards openness Quadricycle and the 'Sunraycer' by GM and more personal freedom and tolerance in the society. and the University Architecture has been struggling its way towards lightness of Michigan. since the beginning of this century and its development has always been linked to new building technologies. These technologies went hand in hand with new social concepts. New materials like steel, glass and concrete and new construction methods like frame and skin construction, allowed architects like Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Eero The "Wright Flyer" and modern Rutan Aircraft. Saarinen and others to create light and open buildings, which are still admired today and offer parallels to a vision of a light and open society.

Load more