CONCRETE QUARTERLY

LASTING IMPRESSION 2014-17 | LEADING DESIGNERS AND THE CONCRETE BUILDINGS THAT INSPIRED THEM

ALAN STANTON w JIM HEVERIN w JOHN TUOMEY w SIMON ALLFORD w RAB BENNETTS NÍALL McLAUGHLIN w WILLIAM MITCHELL w HUGH BROUGHTON w DEBORAH SAUNT w CHRIS LOYN ARTUR CARULLA w EUAN MACDONALD w MARION BRERETON w GAVIN MILLER w NEIL GILLESPIE LASTING IMPRESSION 2

IN EACH ISSUE OF CONCRETE QUARTERLY, WE INVITE A DESIGNER RENOWNED FOR THEIR WORK IN CONCRETE TO SHARE THE BUILDINGS OR STRUCTURES THAT HAVE INFLUENCED THEM MOST. THEY HAVE CHOSEN HOUSES AND CATHEDRALS, CONCERT HALLS AND FACTORIES, SWIMMING POOLS, SILOS AND ZOOS. THEIR ANSWERS ARE OFTEN SURPRISING, ALWAYS ILLUMINATING, REFLECTING THE VERSATILITY OF CONCRETE AND THE MYRIAD WAYS IN WHICH GREAT ARCHITECTS HAVE The National Theatre in , by Denys Lasdun (1976). Chosen USED IT TO SHAPE THE MODERN WORLD. by Marion Brereton, page 15

On the cover: CONCRETE QUARTERLY Brynmawr rubber factory LASTING IMPRESSION 2014-17 | LEADING DESIGNERS AND THE CONCRETE BUILDINGS THAT INSPIRED THEM in Ebbw Vale, by the Architects Co-Partnership (1951). Chosen by Chris Loyn, page 12 The Concrete Centre is part of the Mineral Products Association, Photo: Veale & Co / the trade association for the aggregates, asphalt, cement, concrete, dimension stone, lime, mortar and silica sand industries. ALAN STANTON w JIM HEVERIN w JOHN TUOMEY w SIMON ALLFORD w RAB BENNETTS NÍALL McLAUGHLIN w WILLIAM MITCHELL w HUGH BROUGHTON w DEBORAH SAUNT w CHRIS LOYN The Concrete Society ARTUR CARULLA w EUAN MACDONALD w MARION BRERETON w GAVIN MILLER w NEIL GILLESPIE www.mineralproducts.org Photo: George Perkin SUMMER 2014 3

LASTING IMPRESSION ALAN STANTON

FROM A FRENCH MONASTERY TO AN ITALIAN FURNITURE SHOWROOM The way we design buildings is in many ways similar to how an artist works on a sculpture, so concrete is quite often an ideal material because it’s very versatile and plastic. A building that exemplifies this is ’s La Tourette monastery 1 (1959) near Lyon in France. It’s very crudely built, but 1 3 you really get a sense of the wonderful sculptural qualities of concrete. It can form itself to do all kinds of things throughout the building, and because it’s all concrete, it has a tremendous integrity. Another is Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre on London’s South Bank (1976), which we worked on about 15 years ago. Denys said to me, “We had a very limited budget, but what we did have was the luxury of space,” and the concrete actually creates those spaces. The whole building is in rough board-shuttered concrete and you can light it to get a soft, almost furry quality. Certainly on the interior I think everybody loves it; the exterior is another question. The other interesting thing about the National Theatre is that if you put concrete together with luxurious materials – Lasdun does it with stainless steel, lighting and a very beautiful purple carpet – then immediately you lift people’s perceptions of it. The person who does this best is the great Italian architect Carlo Scarpa. I recently visited his Gavina showroom 2 (1963) in Bologna, in rough board-marked concrete with two big circular windows. There are grooves in the concrete where he’s put gold leaf, and little bronze fittings around the windows – it ennobles the concrete, if that’s not too grand a word. At the Sainsbury Laboratory 3 [in Cambridge], we managed to get very high- quality fair-faced concrete, and by putting it with a rather beautiful limestone and timber and beautiful detailing, it just became a very, very special material. 2

Alan Stanton is co-founder and director of Photos: 1. Jacqueline Salmon/Artedia; 2. Klaus Frahm/ARTUR IMAGES; 3. Hufton + Crow

FROM THE ARCHIVE: WINTER 2003

5,500 HOLES IN CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS The Glasgow School of Art (pages 4-7) is not the first time that New York architect Steven Holl has set tongues wagging with a massive, in-your- face university building. Back in 2003, in the rarefied setting of the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Holl completed the Simmons Hall student housing block – a hulking 10-storey concrete honeycomb with more than 5,500 small square windows cut into its solid exterior. “The dormitory’s massing resembles two Pac-Man figures set head to head,” thought William Menking, writing for CQ. As with the Reid Building, it is inside that the building really comes to life. “The most successful spaces are those that could only happen with concrete as a material,” writes Menking. “The most impressive are the six multistorey group lounges that slice up, across and through the standard residential floors. These flowing spaces, made of thin poured concrete, suggest Bilbao crossed with La Tourette and cut diagonally through the building’s walls and floors, often spilling into the hallways. They are expressed on the facade as large irregular openings that Holl labels ‘amoebic’, but which look for all the world like gaps in Swiss cheese.” Access the full CQ archive at www.concretecentre.com/cq AUTUMN 2014 4

LASTING IMPRESSION JIM HEVERIN

INSPIRED BY ITO’S TOKYO AND THE BUILDING ACROSS THE ROAD … While thinking about this, I realised that I haven’t visited enough of the buildings that inspire me – it’s one thing to admire them from a distance, but to actually see and touch and use a building connects you to it. A lot of the post-war projects by Nervi, Candela, Le Corbusier and many other architects feed into our work, but we also admire contemporary work such as the Angel building by AHMM (2010). The Angel 1 , just up the road from our office, is a 1 3 great project, particularly the central atrium. AHMM took a building that wasn’t very interesting and created a lot of quality. It’s good to see concrete coming back into commercial projects, and it’s also pertinent that it’s a refurb – the concrete projects of the post-war generation aren’t appreciated enough. I’m looking forward to Herzog & de Meuron’s Tate Modern extension. The in- situ staircase will be spectacular, the precast frame looks stunning, and there’s a precast ceiling that I first saw in the Schaulager building 2 in Basel (2003) – we couldn’t figure out whether it was in situ or precast. Water runs through it for heating and chilling, and lighting is placed very precisely in the gaps. At the moment we are travelling quite a bit to Japan, the kingdom of in-situ concrete. I like the universal application, the fact that it’s used in very ordinary buildings but delivered with amazing skill and care. The facade of Toyo Ito’s Tod’s building 3 in Tokyo (2004) is phenomenal. None of the corners are blunted, the panels are extremely smooth and the finish is so consistent – it’s like polished stone. When that’s applied to a really great building, like his Tama Art university library (which I haven’t seen), it’s an amazing combination of the materiality of concrete, which can be structure and cladding all at once, and this ability to be very permanent and to allow architects to carve out spaces. 2

Jim Heverin is a director at Architects Bisig; 3. Edmund Sumner/VIEWpictures.co.uk Photos: 1.Peter Cook/VIEWpictures.co.uk; 2. Tom

FROM THE ARCHIVE: AUTUMN 1962

REVIVAL OF A THEATRICAL CLASSIC The Chichester Festival Theatre, which has just reopened after a £22m refurbishment by , was “a pioneer in English theatrical design”, according to CQ when the curtain went up on Powell and Moya’s bold modernist auditorium 52 years ago. Not that there was a curtain: Chichester was the UK’s first modern thrust stage, with no proscenium arch, little scenery and the actors “thrust” out into the audience. This dramatic functionalism was reflected in the building design, with Powell and Moya’s novel hexagonal form determined by the shape of the stage and auditorium – an “adventurous step”, according to CQ. As with the productions inside, the mechanics of the construction were given a starring role: “The supporting skeleton is exposed on the outside, and both columns and beams are of structural concrete, cast in situ and bush- hammered to expose the grey aggregate,” noted CQ. Inside, “the soffits are left as they came from the formwork and simply painted white”. Over the years, the building has suffered from that old theatrical problem of over-direction, with a number of extensions compromising the clarity of the original design. Enter Haworth Tompkins, stage left … Access the full CQ archive at www.concretecentre.com/cq WINTER 2014 5

LASTING IMPRESSION JOHN TUOMEY

FROM THE PROFOUND TO THE ‘ELEVATED ORDINARY’ My interest in concrete is to do with it being cast in situ. I absolutely love the feeling that the building is made in the place or even right out of the place. When I try to think about that, two things come to mind. One is an everyday anonymous concrete that you might find in any Irish handball alley or municipal swimming pool or Atlantic pier – the 1 whole thing of concrete as a landscape consolidated halfway between topography and geology. My exemplar for that would most certainly be Àlvaro Siza’s swimming pool 1 at Leça (1966) just outside Porto in Portugal. It takes concrete architecture to a high poetic form but it comes out of trying to make something like seawalls and benches – landscape works, in a way. Siza was very young when he made it but it’s just one of those in-situ topographical concrete buildings that never ceases to inspire me. It’s a beautiful piece of work. At one level I like that feeling of what I might call the “elevated ordinary”. At the other, I like the feeling of profundity or even weightiness or timelessness that you get in concrete structures, such as you find in the chapel by Le Corbusier at La Tourette 2 (near Lyon in France, 1960). It feels like a Romanesque interior, it’s so powerful in its physical presence. It’s also cast in situ but it shows the highly formal aspect of what you can make out of concrete. So I have a divided inspiration between the highest expression of form or refinement you might find, such as at La Tourette or in ’s Kimbell Art Museum 3 (in Fort Worth, Texas, 1972), and at the other end, I really like the elevated ordinary, exemplified in Siza’s swimming pool. 2 3

John Tuomey is one of the founders of O’Donnell + Tuomey 3. Hans Muenchhalfen/Artur/VIEWpictures.co.uk Photos: 1.Fernando Guerra/VIEWpictures.co.uk; 2. Javier Callejas, F.L.C./Adagp;

FROM THE ARCHIVE: SPRING 1987

A MEETING OF TECHNOLOGY AND RELIGION The Shree Swaminarayan Temple (page 10) is not the first house of worship to combine modern concrete techniques and traditional Indian elements to stunning effect. In 1987, CQ was similarly struck by a vast Baha’I temple in New Delhi. “There is something immensely appealing about the Baha’I faith,” wrote then-editor George Perkins, “an independent world religion stressing the oneness of mankind.” Perkins clearly felt a little of this oneness had rubbed off on the project team: “The building is a shining example of the combination of computer technology, human craftsmanship and more than a little inspiration … It represents a striking marriage of architecture and engineering.” The building derives its form from the shape and symmetry of the lotus flower, with the overlapping petals created from 200mm-thick “shells” of white concrete, cast in situ and clad externally in white marble. The lotus form, which involved spherical and toroidal surfaces and both inward and outward curves, shows the extent to which computer technology was reshaping design by the mid-1980s. As Perkins wrote: “Ten years ago it would have been impossible to realise the design so faithfully and elegantly.” Access the full CQ archive at www.concretecentre.com/cq SPRING 2015 6

LASTING IMPRESSION 1 2 SIMON ALLFORD

BOMBS, BRUTALISM AND BIRMINGHAM To me, the magic of concrete is its history. It’s an ancient material, invented essentially by the Romans, but it’s almost as if every era rediscovers it and refines its use. So it’s got this permanence and yet it’s an invented, liquid, mouldable thing, with this amazing thermal property. As a child I first came across it running around the countryside going into disused pillboxes 1 . Now people celebrate the extraordinary defences built in northern France, but you used to come across these amazing brutal structures 3 everywhere. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the post-war obsession with brutalism was shaped by industrial wartime structures that were so everyday. Lubetkin was building air raid shelters in the 1930s. You still find them around central London, these concrete pop-ups to an underground world. So in the brutality of war there was also innovation, and in a sense that spun on into the architecture of the last century. Over the years, you find infrastructure projects, industrial structures, seawalls, motorways, all made out of in-situ concrete in quite brave and magnificent ways. As a youngster, I always admired Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction 2 (1968-72) – in one sense a traffic nightmare, but in another the most amazing futurist structure. As a young architect, one of the first buildings I visited was Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseille 3 (1947-52). The failures of post-war housing were drummed into me at college, so I expected to think it was magnificent but didn’t work – but instead I thought it was magnificent and does work. The way we built with concrete was cheap, quick and ill-considered, but there it was cheap, quick and designed. It was an early lesson in the importance of not necessarily spending money on something, but spending time to think about it.

Simon Allford is a director at Allford Hall Monaghan Morris Photos: Dave McAleavy/Shutterstock; Keystone/Getty Images; Edmund Sumner/VIEW Pictures

FROM THE ARCHIVE: SPRING 1967

A CASTLE ON THE CLYDE “Splendidly virile and rugged” might seem an unlikely description for a convent and seminary, but that was CQ’s verdict on St Peter’s Kilmahew, near Glasgow, by Gillespie Kidd and Coia. “Its powerful structural expression and natural materials seem right for a community of young men searching for basic values in the shifting sands of current doctrine.” The seminary was quickly established as an icon of Scottish brutalism – part Le Corbusier, part brooding castle – and CQ was particularly impressed by the as-struck finishes on its in-situ concrete interiors: “One cannot help thinking that over-careful concrete would have destroyed the elemental character of the seminary as a whole.” Perhaps CQ need not have worried – the building’s elemental character has withstood far worse. Since the seminary closed in 1980, it has become an eerie modern ruin: overgrown, roofless and graffitied. But its raw power remains. Now, arts organisation NVA plans to turn it into an event space, and has signed up Avanti Architects, ERZ and Nord Architecture to help make that happen. There won’t be any civilising of the brute however. “Our role is not to make people like it,” NVA’s Angus Farquhar recently told The Observer. “That would be the least interesting thing you could do.” Access the full CQ archive at www.concretecentre.com/cq SUMMER 2015 7

LASTING IMPRESSION 1 RAB BENNETTS

IN PRAISE OF JUST GETTING ON WITH IT When my wife Denise and I were at college, we were very attracted to the engineers and builders – the rebels – rather than the fine artists. People like Auguste Perret, Owen Williams and Robert Maillart didn’t have the social agenda of Le Corbusier or the brutalists, they were just building well. Williams said he didn’t have much time for the architectural establishment, he just got on and did buildings and that idea appeals to me a great deal. Most of the avant-garde architects of the day were just doing small residential projects, 2 4 but Williams was designing enormous buildings, like the Boots manufacturing plant in Nottingham 1 (1932) with its concrete structure and glass curtain- walling. Perret’s most extraordinary building is the Church of Notre Dame at Le Raincy, Paris 2 (1923). It’s just a concrete structure and glass – there’s nothing else to it, and that’s what is so beautiful. I was also intrigued by the way Arup Associates did really good concrete structures, such as the Sir Thomas White Building 3 (1975) at St John’s College, Oxford, which takes a kind of romantic approach, or Gateway House for Wiggins Teape [now Mountbatten House and recently listed – see page 2]. I was lucky enough to join Arup, and ended up working on Gateway Two 4 3 (1982). That was a lightbulb moment, the first time I realised that the exposed concrete structure was helping to keep the building cool. That is fundamental to an awful lot of what we’ve done as a practice since. It was really inspiring because it meant that the architecture of the interior was inseparable from the exterior, and the whole thing became far more integrated, and visually and architecturally a much richer experience. It’s a combination of art and craft and science that is terribly important, coming together in this concrete structure.

Rab Bennetts is co-founder of Bennetts Associates @BrutalConcrete; 3 and 4. Arup Associates Photos: 1. Boots UK Archive; 2. Barnabas Calder/Twitter:

FROM THE ARCHIVE: WINTER 1961

THE MUSCLES OF MILAN “What makes a skyscraper stand up?” It’s a question many New Yorkers have been asking as they look up at the wafer-thin 432 Park Avenue (page 8) with its astonishing 14:1 height-to-width ratio. But 54 years ago, CQ was pondering the same thought at Gio Ponti’s altogether more substantial Pirelli building in Milan (height-to-length ratio, 2:1), then the tallest reinforced-concrete tower in Europe. The answer it found was “weight”. Behind the 32-storey tower’s iconic form, with its distinctive cigar- shaped plan, was “a masterpiece of economic engineering”. The structural design, carried out by Pier Luigi Nervi transferred the building’s entire 60,000-tonne weight to the ground through four massive concrete piers and two triangular service cores at either end. Large-span concrete floors also played a key role, concentrating loads on these eight elements and ensuring that there was no need for intermediate supports of any kind. The tower’s mighty frame is fully revealed on the top three floors, “a magnificent open space where the rough concrete of the naked piers rises up to the topmost beams, with the floating roof clear above … Here one is fully conscious of the strength of bone and sinew that has gone into this elegant structure”. Access the full CQ archive at www.concretecentre.com/cq AUTUMN 2015 8

LASTING IMPRESSION 1 NÍALL MCLAUGHLIN

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND THE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK I’m mainly interested in precast concrete at the moment, so the buildings I’d like to talk about are the suite of 1920s houses by in California: La Miniatura 1 in Passadena (1923), the John Storer House in Hollywood (1924), the Samuel 2 3 Freeman house 2 and the Ennis House 3 4 in Los Angeles (1924), which relate to the tessellated use of complex precast concrete blocks. I’m always slightly suspicious of the béton brut school – there’s a kind of a machismo about the way in which it is used and the almost impossibly exacting demands of pouring in-situ concrete. What I like about the Wright houses is that he takes what concrete is good at, being a cast and moulded product that allows for a degree of repetition. In other words, you can build complexity into the mould, do it once and then get a number of quite complex blocks – the relationship between the labour of making the mould and the complexity of the outcome is very satisfactory. I also like the almost tapestry-like way in which a pattern is moulded and 4 repeated in certain ways, building up a kind of layered warp and weft. It seems to speak to a moment when Americans were interested in Mesoamerica and an almost Inca primitive quality. Wright’s houses have a pagan, arcane quality – it’s like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Our Tapestry Building at King’s Cross probably owes something to projects like the Storer house and the Ennis house, but the technique is quite different. We’re working with highly sophisticated organisations that are factory-making products to exacting standards and installing them using very advanced forms of construction. I’ve a feeling that the houses that Wright built in California are almost the opposite. It’s a much more vernacular and primitive use of the technology, a build up of blocks which you could probably cast and lift by hand.

Níall McLaughlin is founder of Níall McLaughlin Architects Reprinted with permission 4. Liz O. Baylen, 2010, Los Angeles Times. Photos: 1. Scott Mayoral; 2. KTO/Flickr; 3. Kirk McCoy, 2009, Los Angeles Times;

FROM THE ARCHIVE: SUMMER 1980

HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN On the Autobahn that links Frankfurt and Basel lies ones of the world’s more unusual places to take a motorway break. Just outside Baden-Baden, drivers can pull into Freidrich Zwingmann’s St Christopher’s church, a pyramidal temple surrounded by four ornately decorated concrete obelisks. They may not be able to get a pre-packed sandwich and a coffee, but they can at least pause and admire one of Europe’s more virtuosic displays of cast-concrete sculpture. CQ was clearly impressed, declaring the church “the most elaborately ornamented concrete building yet to have appeared in this journal”. The reliefs were unlike anything seen in European church architecture, but were instead reminiscent of pre-Columbian architecture in Mexico: “Some of the motifs bring to mind those on the ancient Temple of Quetzalcoatl dating back from about 200AD.” What distinguished the church from other examples of concrete murals was that here they formed an integral part of the structure, which meant sculptor Professor Emil Wachter had to be constantly on site during construction. The concrete surfaces were cast against expanded polystyrene carved into “strong, vigorous motifs” depicting biblical scenes. The result, our correspondent felt was “a synthesis of art and architecture seldom seen today”. Access the full CQ archive at www.concretecentre.com/cq WINTER 2015 9

LASTING IMPRESSION 1 WILLIAM MITCHELL

MOTORWAYS AND OTHER OBJECTS OF BEAUTY I believe that Spaghetti Junction 1 (1968-72)is one of the greatest things – it’s a fantastic concrete structure. It should be used as a piece of artwork, like an abstract artistic interpretation on a wall or a mural. Think of the different colours you could use. Not enough is spoken about the aesthetics of 2 3 motorway works. I did a lot of work in the Middle East, and I was very aware of the desert and how the wind turns it into sculptural shapes. When I came back here and was driving on the motorway, I could easily imagine the walls and roads as sections of desert rather than concrete. In the north, where towns like Sunderland and Newcastle are served by motorways, you come across these immense structures 2 . On bypasses, the road is out of sight down below and there’s an enormous retaining wall and on top of it are some buildings, and suddenly the whole thing becomes totally sculptural. One of the biggest influences on my work was the 1951 Festival of Britain. It was a fantastic thing to go to. Nobody had ever seen anything like the Dome of Discovery, the Skylon and of course the Royal Festival Hall 3 . They were 4 expressions, sculptural statements. It’s not so much that it influences you, it becomes part of your vision. You call on your memories without knowing it and up come all these images. What I do feel very strongly is that architecture and construction is not taught enough in schools. It has a tremendous impact but it’s something that happens “over there”, like getting your car mended – it’s not integrated into the civilisation. The star turns in architecture and engineering should be as well known as celebrities. Think of Crossrail 4 – there’s this incredible tunnel being driven through the earth, being built under our feet. What a fantastic thing. William Mitchell is an artist, sculptor and designer. His book Self Portrait,

The Eyes Within is out now Photos: 1. Hoberman Collection/Corbis; 2. Andrew Whitaker/Northern Horizons; 3. Colin Westwood / RIBA Collections; 4. Crossrail Ltd

FROM THE ARCHIVE: SUMMER 1963

SCULPT LIKE AN EGYPTIAN Twelve years after the Festival of Britain, William Mitchell was adding his own artistic vision to London’s other brutalist arts complex, the Barbican (pictured right). Mitchell’s bold concrete murals prompted CQ to consider the role of the mural designer, lamenting that such reliefs are “widely regarded as an afterthought … [and] the artist is thought of as someone called in at a late stage to rescue a building from bleakness”. Mitchell was part of a vanguard eager to show that sculpted murals and the expression of wall texture were in fact an integral part of architecture: “Take those shiny slabs over there,” he told our correspondent at the Grosvenor Hotel in London. “They have no thickness – nothing; might just as well be a plastic skin … Those Victorians knew a thing or two. Why not show the thickness of a wall?” Mitchell’s approach was to work closely with architects and contractors from the start of a project, with his knowledge of concrete construction and “continued zest for experiment” leading to some impressive results. CQ felt that his latest murals – in deeply modelled concrete, variously textured and cast against chunky sections of polyurethane – were “not unlike the sculptural ornament found in the ancient temples of Egypt”. Access the full CQ archive at www.concretecentre.com/cq SPRING 2016 10

LASTING IMPRESSION 1 HUGH BROUGHTON

MINDBLOWING SIGHTS AND MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCES The wonderful thing about concrete is that it has a solidity which flies in the face of our increasingly disposable modern world. It is reassuring both in its monumentality and in the certitude that it’s going to be there for a really long time. In 1984, aged 19, before I had any idea about architecture, I visited Dhaka in Bangladesh. I don’t remember many of 2 the sights in the city centre, but I definitely remember arriving at Louis Kahn’s National Assembly Building (1982) 1 and it was a mind-blowing experience. It has a stunning concrete facade inlaid with strips of marble and shows off Kahn’s inspirational manipulation of natural light. It feels like it’s going to last for hundreds of years. In a country that was in many respects economically destitute, it gave a strong sense of hope. It made me think that if architects can do that, it must be a magical profession to be involved in. In the age of the machine aesthetic, concrete still retains a strong sense of craftsmanship. My son was looking around Nottingham University and I managed to persuade him that we should go and have a look at Caruso St John’s Nottingham 3 Contemporary (2009) 2 , where they cast lace into the exterior concrete. There’s something delightful about the contrast between someone pouring concrete out of a mixer and the patterns of something as delicate as lace. I also really enjoy the plastic potential of concrete – it allows you to dream, it’s not a limiter. Dulles airport (1962) 3 by Eero Saarinen is one of my favourite buildings and has this incredible sweeping concrete roof. It captures the spirit of an age when flight was truly glamorous. That form could only ever be achieved with concrete. Having done so much work in the Antarctic where people suffer sensory deprivation, I’m always looking for the extra sensory dimensions of buildings. You get that with concrete, which retains a very special kind of smell – there’s a sense of earthiness. Smell is an extra dimension that we rarely think about when designing buildings.

Hugh Broughton is director of Hugh Broughton Architects Pictures; 3. John Dalkin Photos: 1. Mahabubur Rahman Robin; 2. Richard Brine/View

FROM THE ARCHIVE: WINTER 1967

JAPANESE GOTHIC In October 1967, CQ editor George Perkins joined a group of 114 British architects on a tour of the Far East to see how modern concrete architecture was transforming cities such as Hong Kong, Chandigarh and Bangkok. The highlight, however, was a building that seemed to owe as much to medieval Europe as the Bauhaus: Kenzo Tange’s Roman Catholic cathedral. “It could be said that a characteristic of Gothic cathedrals is their peculiar spiritual quality achieved by soaring space, which does – in a way – transcend the material world around us,” observed Perkins, adding that Tange had “surely succeeded” in achieving the same thing with modern concrete techniques. The interior was breathtaking. “The floor is diamond-shaped, from which plain concrete walls made up of eight vertical hyperbolic paraboloid shells soar to a great height to meet a cruciform roof with translucent natural lights.” The scale, Perkins noted, was “intentionally superhuman” – an effect heightened by the use of concrete. The walls were board-marked and, unusually for a Roman Catholic cathedral, almost completely unadorned, relying on subtle changes of plane and indirect lighting to create an element of wonder. “It is the quality one hopes to find in a cathedral but, nowadays, does not always.” Access the full CQ archive at www.concretecentre.com/cq SUMMER 2016 11

LASTING IMPRESSION 1 DEBORAH SAUNT

SILOS AND SKATE PARKS SHOWED ME THE WAY HOME My current favourite building is my house. I wake up to concrete every day and luxuriate in its hand-made, crafted qualities (see CQ 251). I thought there would be more tension between everyday life and this strong armature, but it’s rather like living in a beautiful stone villa. The first concrete environment that I felt exhilarated by was the undercroft of the Queen Elizabeth Hall 1 (1967). 2 3 I used to hang out in the Southbank skate park and visit the , a really good demonstration that concrete can be a foil to both teenage action and high art. I find that kind of concrete underworld fascinating. These spaces have not achieved their potential in modernism. Designers didn’t know what to do with them so they became car parks or waste areas, but I think we are entering a period where we appreciate their congregational quality. I travelled in America as a student and I love the grain silos of the Midwest 2 . The power of the monolithic material and form is so expressive in dialogue with the landscape. Then I went to Cambridge for my diploma and learned about architecture in 4 5 one of the most inspiring brick and concrete buildings, Colin St John Wilson’s Scroope Terrace extension 3 (1959). The roof is made of concrete beams, and light filters through so that something very powerful becomes weightless. I teach architecture now and one of my first student trips was to Zaha Hadid’s Landscape Formation One 4 (1999) in Weil am Rhine, an incredible sinuous form emerging from the landscape. Skateboarders were using it, people were walking over it – I love that infrastructural quality of concrete, where it has the power to mediate between inside and outside. As a teenager, I visited the Van Nelle factory 5 (1926) in Rotterdam – an amazing building that captures the heroic scale of concrete. I find it as exciting today as they probably did in 1926. So I’d always wanted to use concrete. Making a building completely out of concrete is a rare treat – that’s why I did it with my own house.

Deborah Saunt is director of DSDHA Photos: 1. Sam Ashley; 2. Fotolia; 3. RIBA Collections; 4. Hélène Binet; 5. Stuart Forster/Alamy

FROM THE ARCHIVE: AUTUMN 1982

A DAISY CHAIN AROUND THE TIGER’S NECK? When the Barbican Centre finally opened in 1982, CQ editor George Perkins went to see if London’s latest brutalist beast was quite as snarling and aggressive as all that. On entering the building, he quickly decided that the most attractive course of action was to head straight back out – to the lakeside terrace. “Here, there is a real suggestion of metropolitan café life,” he wrote, before turning his attention to the concrete complex itself. “Seen from this angle, the blocks have a certain dark and brooding majesty. But are they really for people? Beside you, a small tree struggles symbolically upwards in the first years of life. Is it not, you wonder, like hanging a daisy chain around the tiger’s neck?” Venturing inside, Perkins was slightly alarmed by the sheer quantity of bush-hammered concrete surfaces: “Their tactile qualities are not what everyone would call attractive, and the vision persists of a lady – once glimpsed in similar surroundings in far off Montreal – dressed in a backless evening dress, leaning against just such a wall …” Fortunately, Perkins soon found that the concrete was softened by a palette of rich upholstery and tilted mirrors. Indeed, the cinema interior was so restful as to be “conducive to dozing off”. The tiger, it turns out, was really a bit of a pussycat … Access the full CQ archive at www.concretecentre.com/cq AUTUMN 2016 12

LASTING IMPRESSION 1 CHRIS LOYN

ENLIGHTENMENT, ELEPHANTS AND EBBW VALE I find so much of Le Corbusier’s work inspirational, I could pick any number of his buildings, or even parts of buildings. Visiting his little chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp (1954) was one of the most enlightening experiences of my life: the form, the quality of light and concrete surfaces, and the way he used rubble from a destroyed chapel on the site within the walls. Frank Lloyd Wright is another timeless master – his skill in siting Fallingwater (1939) just hanging over the precipice makes you truly feel the waterfall, you’re part of it. Great architecture isn’t just visual, it 2 engages all senses. Closer to home, ’s Penguin Pool at London Zoo (1934) is beautifully detailed and structurally fascinating, on the edge of the possible. And the Elephant House 1 by Hugh Casson (1965), with that ribbed boss-hammered texture, like an elephant skin – such a robust, appropriate response to the brief. Then there are lesser-known buildings that I grew up with in Wales. I did a lot of drawing and watercolour sketching – that’s what opened my mind and made me really see, instead of just looking. I used to get up very early every Sunday morning and go walking in the Brecon Beacons, and once I passed the Brynmawr rubber factory 2 in Ebbw Vale, by the Architects Co-Partnership (1951). I snuck in and wandered beneath its awesome roof. There were nine shells creating a cathedral-like space, which was also very human. It was phenomenal, filled with an ethereal light from the arched 3 4 clerestory windows. It was Grade II* listed but demolished in 2001. I was part of the campaign to save it but we lost and now it’s gone forever. Also demolished is Spillers’ Cardiff Mill 3 designed by Oscar Faber (1933) – a fantastic, powerful monument, which I painted as part of a commission for Midland Bank. And Trawsfynydd nuclear power station 4 by (1968) is literally the architecture of power. I remember seeing this incredible cube by a lake in North Wales, where my family used to go walking. It’s still sitting there empty. It’s been under threat but it still exists.

Chris Loyn is founder of Loyn & Co Architects Photos: Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Collections; Veale & Co / The Concrete Society; Chris Loyn; Magnox Ltd

FROM THE ARCHIVE: AUTUMN 1966

“A PERFECT FOIL TO FEMINITY” The decision to let the brutalist architects of the Barbican Centre – Chamberlin, Powell and Bon – design an entire new college certainly shook things up at the University of Cambridge in the early 1960s. It seems to have got CQ editor George Perkins slightly flustered too. New Hall – completed 50 years ago – was the university’s first purpose- built women’s college, and part of a new wave to be built in a bold modernist style. On visiting, Perkins found it a “stimulating experience” to walk amid the white-concrete courts and fountains, noting the “quiet domesticity” of the residential block, and the dome of the dining hall “like the separated segments of an orange”. But could such robust materiality and strong forms really be suitable for the fairer sex? “Apart from the symbolic inference which may be drawn from domes and curves, there is nothing obvious in these chalky masses of concrete and brick to suggest femininity: rather an image of rugger and tobacco comes to mind,” Perkins ruminates, before (almost) getting with the times: “Perhaps with the narrowing gulf between the sexes, this is appropriate. Perhaps also this coolly austere setting is a perfect foil to femininity, wanting only the warmth and animation of its inmates.” Access the full CQ archive at www.concretecentre.com/cq WINTER 2016 13

LASTING IMPRESSION 1 4 ARTUR CARULLA

NEGATIVE SPACE AND THE GHOSTS OF FORMWORK The most influential concrete creation I can think of is not a building but a sculpture – ’s A Cast Of The Space Under My Chair 1 (1965-8). It tells you that you can understand an object by the space it creates, rather than by 2 its form or appearance. Architects have always explored the plasticity of concrete, and Eero Saarinen’s TWA terminal 2 in New York (1962) stands apart. The concrete retains all of its tectonic qualities, and yet it feels incredibly light and fluid. It presaged a number of projects where space circulation and walls, roofs and floors all become one. Perhaps less versatile but equally extraordinary is the Portuguese national pavilion by Àlvaro Siza for the 1998 Lisbon World Exposition. The concrete there has all its weight, and yet it’s very agile. There’s no clear boundary between architecture and structure, between the more intangible aspects of the building’s quality and the pragmatic aspects that it needed to resolve. Concrete is also a natural material – an artificial rock, but ultimately a rock. I really enjoy those buildings that exploit this aspect by blending with the landscape. The two 3 best examples I can think of are Igualada cemetery by and Carme Pinós (1994) near Barcelona, and Braga stadium 3 by (2003), particularly one of the grandstands which is very much embedded into the rock. Formwork is the unsung hero of concrete. There are many examples where the actual engineering feat was in building the formwork, but once it’s cast and cured it disappears, so there’s the ghost of a building that leaves no trace. Félix Candela’s Chapel Lomas de Cuernavaca 4 in Mexico (1958) is pretty much just the concrete shell with the lightest of enclosures, but an entire structure had to be put together to create it. Having admired that building for many years, I came across a picture of it under construction and it just blew me away. It makes you realise that some concrete buildings should never be finished.

Artur Carulla is a partner at Allies and Morrison Photos: 1. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; 2. Nathan Willock/Getty Images; 3. Paulo Catrica; 4. Dorothy Candela; Portrait: Nick Guttridge

FROM THE ARCHIVE: WINTER 1969

LASDUN’S FLEXIBLE FORTRESS Denys Lasdun’s campus of “architectural hills and valleys” at the University of East Anglia was one of the most radical of all the university developments of the 1960s. The compact site was intended to be a “place where activities merge and where the individual can sense his identity with the whole”. One of the most notable aspects of Lasdun’s approach was that, despite its castle-like demeanour, it was one of the first academic institutions to acknowledge the need for layouts to adapt to changing uses. In keeping with the spirit of the age, education was expected to evolve fast (although no one could be sure quite what that evolution might entail …) The solution to this tricky problem rested on a precast concrete structural system, which formed the basis of all of the teaching blocks and comprised four large components: a U-shaped duct column, a duct spandrel, an edge beam spanning between columns, and a T-shaped floor beam. Variations in the requirements of schools were achieved by adjusting the position of the corridor and in-situ columns and beams. New buildings could also easily be added. CQ noted: “Each school has the possibility of altering its internal its internal arrangement or of being replaced in time by a different use – all within the basic system of structure and services.” Access the full CQ archive at www.concretecentre.com/cq SPRING 2017 14

LASTING IMPRESSION 1 4 EUAN MACDONALD

LIFE AND DEATH IN A RUGGED WILDERNESS I grew up in rural Scotland so I didn’t have much awareness of concrete, other than as a pretty utilitarian material. I first became aware of it when I was studying at Edinburgh University, through the very controversial work of Basil Spence and RMJM around the central campus at George 2 Square. That gave me mixed feelings, but I also started to appreciate concrete’s versatility and its power. Probably the classic Scottish example is St Peter’s Seminary in Cardross 1 by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia (1966). That’s a very powerful piece of work, sculptural and playful, but also beautiful and serene. It’s brutal in its execution, but delicate and refined as well. I’m always very sorry to see the state it’s in now, but it’ll be exciting to see its renewal as an arts venue. I think the approach is not to restore the building, but to treat it in its found state – to accept it as a ruin and exploit the strength of what remains, much as some of the buildings I admire riff on a huge landscape and use concrete as a way of making insertions into a natural space. The Temppeliaukio Church 2 – Church of the Rock – in Helsinki by Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen (1969) is excavated out of rock to create a sunken circular space, then above that is a copper dome like a sun, supported by 3 a series of radial concrete columns. It’s an amazingly beautiful space. Natural light washes down the smooth concrete columns, which contrast with the rugged quality of the walls, just hewn out of the rock. The Igualada cemetery 3 outside Barcelona by Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós (1994) is a seamless integration of landscape and space, with concrete as a retaining structure. It has such a rich variety of spaces, from very public to very intimate and private, and the geometry is very fluid and plastic. Zaha Hadid was a master of using the plasticity of concrete, and the work of hers that I like best is the diving boards in the London Aquatics Centre 4 (2012). It’s a lovely composition of forms poised at the end of the pool, dynamic and muscular and heroic, but also incredibly delicate and refined. That to me sums up the sport of diving.

Euan Macdonald is a partner at Hawkins Brown Photos: 1.Mark / Flickr; 2. Jorge Lascar Cecilia Hufton + Crow

FROM THE ARCHIVE: SPRING 1963

THE GREAT JAMBOREE When John Pawson transformed the Commonwealth Institute into the recently opened Design Museum, it was, to a certain extent, a new building: wrapped in new brick and glass walls, with new timber interiors and a dramatic triple-height atrium. But there was no question that one feature of the existing building had to be preserved: the tent-like concrete roof. This was certainly what caught CQ’s eye when it first visited the RMJM- designed building. The roof captured the “jamboree-like” spirit of the institute, which was designed to celebrate the Commonwealth. But more than this, it was an unprecedented feat of structural engineering by AJ and DJ Harris’ James Sutherland. Comprising a central hyperbolic paraboloid surrounded by four separate “warped” surfaces, the roof was resolved as two discrete solutions: while the central section is an in-situ concrete shell, the side panels proved “too steep in places for easy concreting”, so were realised as a system of thin prestressed concrete ribs covered with wood wool. CQ deemed the solution “very satisfactory”, adding that “there is a symbolic purpose about it too – the great tent spread over, and unifying, the various exhibits of the Commonwealth” – just as it now envelopes the rich and diverse history of design. Access the full CQ archive at www.concretecentre.com/cq SUMMER 2017 15

LASTING IMPRESSION 1 MARION BRERETON

CONTRASTS, CALATRAVA AND CORNISH BLUE I was born and brought up just by the Thames in SE1, so my introduction to concrete was watching the construction of Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre 1 (1976). As a 13-year- old, I hadn’t yet thought of becoming an architect but even then I could appreciate that something special was being 2 revealed. I loved the contrast of that Brutalist concrete with the very high-quality materials of the interiors and the colours. There’s no airs and graces about Brutalism, but the way the concrete sets off other materials is a wonderful thing. It’s like ambergris – it enhances their qualities and allows them to shine. At architecture school, we went to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater 2 and the Johnson Wax Headquarters (both 1939). There you can see the versatility and the beauty up close. In Fallingwater, again it’s the concrete in contrast with the other materials, particularly glass, that’s wonderful for me. The beautiful ribbed arched structure of Santiago Calatrava’s City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia 3 (1998) also stood out for me. It clearly shows what a dream material concrete is for an engineer – the structures it can produce are so impressive, in terms of the elegant shapes and the gymnastics they can perform. It’s painted white, which looks absolutely amazing 3 4 against the Mediterranean sunlight – like something out of this world. You can see why it was chosen as the backdrop for a recent episode of Doctor Who. More recently, the practice was fortunate enough to extend Powell and Moya’s in-situ and precast Wolfson College 4 (1971) in Oxford. I liked the unpreciousness of the in- situ concrete. There’s discoloration, and the holes where the panels were removed are not perfectly round, yet they didn’t feel the need to touch them up. Sometimes I think concrete is almost artificially touched up today, which seems a shame. In-situ concrete is what it is. But I also appreciate the refinement that’s possible with precast. At Wolfson, the panels are perfectly assembled and inset with Cornish blue granite, which gives the building a timeless quality. It looks as good now as it did in the 1970s.

Marion Brereton is a director at Berman Guedes Stretton Photos: 1. Douglas Miller / Getty Images; 2. Nick Higham Alamy Stock Photo; 3. Marion Brereton; 4. Quintin Lake Photography

FROM THE ARCHIVE: WINTER 1948

‘TOO MIGHTY FOR MEANING’ The early issues of CQ were focused on one thing above all else: power. By the end of 1948, the first four had reported on two modernised collieries, three hydro-electric dams and four power stations. Of these, Ham Halls B station in Birmingham was easily the most imposing. The hyperbolic cooling tower was probably the most iconic concrete form of the 20th century and the four here were at the time the largest in the world: each as tall as Giles Gilbert Scott’s mighty Liverpool Cathedral and with the capacity to cool 4 million gallons of water an hour. The numbers involved in the construction of Hams Hall must have made astonishing reading in austerity-stricken post-war Britain. It was designed to produce 300,000 kilowatts of electrical power, for which it needed up to 8,000 tonnes of coal a day. CQ could not help but compare this with the “meagre allocation” of the rationed British family. It also marvelled at the cost, an estimated £10.5m. “Perhaps you find these figures too mighty for meaning? Then try it this way! A man earning £500 a year would have to have started working nearly 20,000 years before the beginning of the Christian era to earn that amount. Does that make it easier?” In 2017, CQ is celebrating its 70th anniversary. Find out more, and access the full archive, at www.concretecentre.com AUTUMN 2017 16

LASTING IMPRESSION 1 GAVIN MILLER

FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN TO THE TOP OF LONDON The Romans built some amazing concrete buildings, but the best Roman concrete is underwater, used to form breakwaters for harbours. Researchers at the University of Utah have found that it’s superior to most modern concrete in terms of durability. Instead of using Portland cement, the Romans mixed baked limestone and seawater with volcanic ash, which reacts with seawater to become stronger – 2 another example of Roman innovation that could inform more environmentally friendly mixes today. The Glenfinnan Viaduct in north-west Scotland 1 was completed in 1901, but it’s also Roman in the sense that it’s mass concrete rather than reinforced. I love the solidity of the arched forms, and the curve gives it a real presence in the landscape. The Rue Franklin apartments in Paris by Auguste Perret 2 (1903) was one of the first uses of a concrete frame. It’s quietly beautiful, the way it integrates the structural frame with the infill panels, and the contrast with the decorative elements. I like the innovation of the building plan, with flexible spaces and an inverted bay window that brings light into the rooms. It’s a very humane and urbane use of concrete. For me, Oscar Niemeyer’s Casa de Canoas 3 (1954) in Rio de Janeiro is the original plastic use of concrete. It has a free-form oversailing roof slab, which provides shade 3 4 to the spaces below, but the glass doesn’t follow the form of the roof above and it integrates with the landscape, so you get a wonderful merging of inside and outside. A lot of people think that Richard Seifert’s Centre Point 4 (1966) is a Brutalist building, but it’s much more luxuriant than that – it’s more in the vein of Niemeyer or Pier Luigi Nervi. There’s only board-marked concrete where you’re not meant to see it, otherwise there’s a deliberate treatment to it. Sometimes concrete is used daringly, pushing it to the absolute limits, and in other areas it’s quite flamboyant. The more I’ve got to know the building as we’ve led its refurbishment, the more I’ve appreciated it.

Gavin Miller is a partner at Rick Mather Architects 3. Michel Moch/Artedia/VIEW; 4. Paul Grundy 2. seier+seier/CC BY; Photos: 1. Nicolas17/CC BY-SA;

FROM THE ARCHIVE: SUMMER 1981

CLOVER OVER THE CITY At 183 metres and 52 floors, Richard Seifert’s Natwest Tower was the tallest building in Britain when it was completed. But this modern engineering triumph did not chime well with the mood of the time: the office block was “an unfashionable building type”, noted CQ, and in the wake of “ill-fated tower blocks of flats”, all towers were now viewed with suspicion. Centre Point, arguably Seifert’s finest building, had only just found an occupier 13 years after its completion. And the romance of high-rise commercial architecture had definitely fizzled: where the tapering plan of Centre Point had appeared sleek and modern, the Natwest Tower’s clover-leaf shape based on its client’s logo just seemed nakedly commercial. Nevertheless, CQ still found plenty to like in the Natwest Tower, a “gleaming and sophisticated presence in the City”, it concluded. “The towers that have come from the offices of Richard Seifert and Partners over the last two decades will probably go down not only as the most handsome office towers that the twentieth century ever built but also as the most striking contribution of the century to London’s skyline.” This year CQ is celebrating its 70th anniversary. Find out more, and access the full archive, at www.concretecentre.com WINTER 2017 17

LASTING IMPRESSION 1 2 NEIL GILLESPIE

NORTHERN LIGHT AND ALPINE BEAUTY I’ve got three buildings and they’re all connected. The oldest is the Nordic Pavilion 1 on the Venice Biennale site by Sverre Fehn (1962). It’s essentially a canopy made from a series of concrete fins, very narrow and quite deep. Between each is a rooflight – light coming into the pavilion is reflected off the fins, which cools it visually. The effect is the creation of a northern light in Venice. It’s a very subtle thing – you walk in and there is this very cool daylight, whereas being in the Mediterranean you would expect it to be quite warm and saturated. There are trees inside the building growing up through the roof – it speaks a lot about the north, which is what interests me. In this one device, Fehn 3 manages magically to create a sense of landscape through a concrete beam. The second is La Congiunta 2 by the Swiss architect Peter Märkli (1992), a gallery for the sculptor Hans Josephsohn. It sits in a valley and it’s a very concrete building, very austere, a series of slipped boxes sitting in an alpine landscape. I wouldn’t say “aggressive”, but it’s very abstract and graphic. You go to a cafe to get the key and then you wander through a vineyard, open the door and go into this amazingly stripped back space. It’s very, very powerful. I’m interested in the material side of architecture and both of these buildings appeal to me in the way the concrete can be used to express really fundamental, sensual spaces, almost devoid of technique. The third is 6a Architects’ Stirling-shortlisted Juergen Teller studio 3 (2016). It seems to take cues from the Fehn building, again it’s a linear sequence: building, courtyard, building, courtyard. I think it’s a very beautiful building. In the times we live in, with everyone system-building and subcontractors doing the detailing, these three buildings are definitely unique. They’ve taken effort, there’s a huge amount of investment in actually making the building. When you strip away all the formwork

you’re left with something incredibly powerful. Photos: 1. Åke E:son Lindman; 2. Klemens Ortmeyer; 3. Dirk Lindner Neil Gillespie is a director at Reiach and Hall Architects

FROM THE ARCHIVE: SPRING 2009

OLD AND NEUES

Thomas Heatherwick’s Zeitz MOCAA art gallery in Cape Town (page 4) is CONCRETE QUARTERLY SPRING 2009 not the first museum to have been brought to life through the clever use of ISSUE NUMBER 227

Remaking history Render unto Siza Scaling Everest Architects The work of Álvaro Siza, Hampshire County Architects’ new concrete elements in a formerly derelict building. In spring 2009, CQ used concrete as a unifying Portugal’s most celebrated Everest College was designed factor in its refurbishment architect, who was awarded the using the Fibonacci sequence of Berlin’s Neues Museum RIBA’s Gold Medal in February to meet sustainable criteria reported on David Chipperfield’s remarkable Neues Museum in Berlin – an 11-year project that overturned conventional wisdom about restoration. The 19th-century Neues Museum had been badly damaged by bombing in the Second World War. Chipperfield’s approach was neither to restore the building to its former glory nor to start again, but instead to retain the beauty of the ruin he found and insert new elements only where appropriate. Throughout, precast concrete acted as the bridge between old and new, “fusing the shattered parts into a comprehensible whole”. “In some areas [concrete] has been used in a neutral way but in others has been allowed a strong physical presence of its own,” CQ noted, citing the once-lavish Egyptian Courtyard, in which Chipperfield had inserted a lattice structure of concrete beams and 24m-high columns. The uniform mix of sand, white cement and marble aggregate provided both background and character. Perhaps only concrete could have performed such a nuanced role. Access the full CQ archive at www.concretecentre.com