SAHGB Publications Limited Picturesque and Intransigent: 'Creative Tension' and Collaboration in the Early House Projects of Stirling and Gowan Author(s): Mark Crinson Source: Architectural History, Vol. 50 (2007), pp. 267-295 Published by: SAHGB Publications Limited Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40033855 . Accessed: 26/09/2014 12:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. SAHGB Publications Limited is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Architectural History. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:51:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Picturesqueand Intransigent: 'CreativeTension' and Collaborationinthe Early HouseProjects of Stirling and Gowan byMARK CRINSON Between1956 and 1963James Stirling and JamesGowan createda seminalbody of work,one thatseemed to challengethe overly-institutionalized state of contemporary modernism,and evento pointthe way to otheralternatives beyond it. Their buildings were quasi-brutalistand pre-postmodern,startlingly original in the contextof the worthyarchitecture of the welfarestate, yet able to draw on inter-warforms of continentalmodernism as wellas thearchitecture ofthe industrial city. The notoriously fractiousrelationship between the partnerswas an importantfactor in this achievement.Mark Girouardhas used the term'creative tension' to describethis relationship,deriving it froman interviewwith Michael Wilford, who workedas an architecturalassistant in thepartnership's last years and later(in 1971)himself became Stirling'spartner.1 This formulation may well relateto a colourfuland discordantnew architecturalidentity - a sometimesplayful, sometimes edgy combinationof angry youngmen, teddy boy architectsand awkward,blunt provincials shaking up thebig city- emergingin contrastto theanonymous public architect of thetime.2 Girouard uses 'creativetension' to label a photographof Stirlingand Gowan (Fig. 1): Stirling leanseasily to theside lookingwryly camerawards, while Gowan, absorbed and tense aroundthe mouth, looks down and outwardsto theright; between the two is a gap measuredout by the line of columns seen behind them. The contrast with a photograph reproducedlater in the same book, of Stirling and Wilfordsitting companionably across a table,seems to speakfor itself.3 In analyzingthe partnership between Stirling and Gowan,however, we need to be waryof several aspects of 'creative tension'. Obviously, focusing on itmight too easily glossover such issues as designdevelopment, the apportioning of responsibilities for a building,and theroles of clientsand planningauthorities (critical in Britainafter the 1947Town and CountryPlanning Act).4 More interestingly,'creative tension' seems implicitlycontrasted with a certain stereotypeof a good partnershipwithin 267 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:51:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 268 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 50: 2007 Fig. 1. JamesStirling and JamesGowan, c. 2956 (Mark Girouard) architecturalhistory, one in which a mercurialand inspirationalpartner is complementedby a practicaland methodicalone.5 Against this model, Stirling and Gowan's 'creativetension' stands for a situationin whichboth partners make equal contributionsto thecreative side of thework but theirattitudes, working rhythms or charactersare ill-matched, and someof the creativity seemingly arises from the friction that results.The stereotypicallybalanced partnership,by implication,offers the correctiveor norm against the creativebut dysfunctionalone, and it is this conventionallybalanced partnership that is representedby Girouard' s image of Stirling and Wilford.Too oftenin thecommentary of historians and criticssome of the elements ofthe balanced partnership have been overlaidonto the Stirling and Gowanpractice, and the loser has been Gowan. Stirlingwould be treatedas the major designer, demotingGowan to a pragmaticproblem-solver or detailsman at best,regarding 'Stirling& Gowan' as merelya corporatetitle, or evenforgetting to mentionGowan at all.6The yearsfrom 1956 to 1963became a vestibuleopening onto the great career of Britain'snew Hawksmoor,in whichanything deemed of value in theworks produced in theseyears must be ascribedto Stirling.Such narratives in partreflect the needs of criticsin close sympathywith the ambitionsof Stirling'slater career, and in partthe tropesof architecturalhistorians, particularly the need to find great mastersor transcendentbuildings whose subtle exegesis may reflect the historian's sensitivity but does not give enoughcredit either to the complexityof Stirling'scareer or to the This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:51:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PICTURESQUE AND INTRANSIGENT 269 dynamicsof the collaborationwith Gowan, let alone to the particularand broader contributionsthat Gowan made to thebuildings produced during the partnership. Theseproblems have been augmentedby Stirling'sown retrospectiveediting of his careerand managementof his fame.The LeicesterUniversity Engineering Building (1959-64)was thepartnership's most famous work and thelast to be finishedwithin the partnership.For Stirling, Leicester established the pattern of acclaim and criticismthat markedhis careerfrom that moment onwards. For Gowan,however, its completion was thebeginning of a muchquieter career as an architectand teacher,one putinto the shade by his ex-partner'sgreater fame. Stirling'strajectory was to be carefully publicizedand stage-managed,with a particularslant given to theyears of partnership withGowan. In 1974,for example, Stirling exhibited drawings at theHeinz Gallery, London,with little acknowledgment to his erstwhilepartner, elevating his own status further(or ironizingit?) by using'neat, brown antique British Museum lettering on creammounts'.7 Most importantly, in the early 1970s Stirling prepared a retrospective monographof his work,employing Leon Krierover many months to helphim redraw the early projectsand presentinghis work in the time-honouredformat of Le Corbusier's CEuvreComplete.8 James Stirling: Buildings & Projects1950-1974. (1975), or the 'BlackBook' as itwas quicklynicknamed, is demonstrablythe result of an editinghand thatplays fast and loosewith the historical record, diminishing the importance of some buildings,redrawing early designs so thatthey point more obviously forward to later work,sometimes emphasizing unbuilt designs at the expense of actually-erected buildings,and generallyobscuring the contribution of Gowan to thework. Genius, it wouldseem, cannot abide a partner. Finally,reconstructing the working practices of the partnership has also beenmade difficultas a resultof Stirling's destructive folly in theearly 1970s, when he threwaway almostall preliminarysketches or conceptualdrawings produced before and during the partnership,including those made by Gowan.9There are not,as a result,many drawingswith the processes of composition or ofdialogue between the partners made visible,although the exception here are thedrawings for the Leicester building, which seem to have survivedbecause Gowan gained possessionof manyof them.10The destructionof conceptual drawings may accord with a commentmade by ColinRowe, criticand friendof Stirling's, that Stirling was 'determinedto keephis architecture,or his conceptualstruggles, very conspicuously private';11 or it maybe thatthe nature of Gowan's contributionto the partnershipwas deliberatelyobscured. Without such drawings,and unable to reconstructwhat mighthave been said over the drawing board,the historian must turn to a rangeof other, more diverse resources. The argumentin what followsis threefold.First, as alreadyindicated, that in discussinga selectionof earlyhouse projects,built and unbuiltand including,with somelicence, the Churchill College competition designs (as housingfor students and fellows),Gowan's contributioncan be given more reliefwithout implying any diminutionof Stirling'soverall achievement. Second, that rather than a generalized 'creativetension' there was a particularformal dynamic between the two architects that has notbeen previouslyrecognized. This dynamicwas foundedupon an opposition betweenStirling's concern with bounded and balancedcompositions based on box-like forms,and Gowan'spreoccupation with picturesque groupings of various, sometimes This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:51:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 27o ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 50: 2007 disparate,parts. In this,as will emerge,the articlerevises accepted views of the partnershipand specificallytwo earlyand highlyinfluential theoretical accounts of Stirling'sarchitecture, neither of which were interested in whatGo wan had broughtto the partnershipor in how designshad actuallydeveloped and solutionsemerged; consequentlythese and similarwritings attributed to Stirlingformal innovations that properlybelonged to thedynamic between the partners. Third, and morespeculatively thearticle argues that it was theexperience of collaboration