Níall McLaughlin
Architects

A STYLE FOR OUR TIMES?

NOVEMBER 2015

“The way to make good architecture – that is, to respond with dignity to the relentless jostling of theoretical positions and of the buildings themselves – can be to say very little indeed and just to enquire into what a particular place might, by way of buildings, most need”

Niall Hobhouse in Translations: Florian Beigel and Philip Christou, Christoph Merian Verlag 2014

Each year the Stirling Prize shortlist sparks debate about contemporary architectural style and it was no different this year, particularly with such a distinctive set of buildings. The prize is “presented to the architects of the building that has made the greatest contribution to the evolution of architecture in the past year” and so any building shortlisted could be considered to exemplify a style for our times.

In practicing architecture I have been conscious of past and present styles or trends and how these influence design. The offices I have worked in each have different design styles and a different set of architectural references. This variety has enriched my experience of design; as a result, I do not consider myself to have a fixed stylistic agenda or claim a particular preference for one style over another.

I have now been at NMLA for almost a year, working on one project but well aware of the rich variety in the practice’s past and present portfolio. Whilst there may be a discernible common language in the architecture, I would say this transcends any one particular style. To pick three of the most celebrated projects, the Chapel at Ripon College is very different to the Fishing Hut which is very different to Darbishire Place. Of course these buildings have different briefs but perhaps their ‘style’ is most significantly determined by the ‘place’ they inhabit (where ‘place’ refers to location and context – physical, social, historical and political).

The Chapel sits on a sensitive site. It must respond to its bucolic setting in a clearing amongst trees, the historically-significant college building stock behind and the views to and from the valley below. The Clipsham stone is in keeping with the Limestone of the other college buildings. The smooth base helps ground the building in its natural setting whilst the rough-cut dog-toothed stone alludes to the craft evident in the historic buildings nearby and has an organic quality whose textured surface perfectly captures the shadows of the trees. The clerestorey windows glow as a halo and act as a beacon on the hill when seen from the valley below. Rowan Moore described the chapel as sitting “comfortably amid Cotswold scenery and gothic revival architecture”.

The Fishing Hut is set in the landscape, between water and sky. Its simple form and construction are familiar to rural or agricultural settings but the level of craft and its quality materials make it delightful for the user, elevating it beyond purely functional. With its operable screens and shutters, it is both solid and transparent, as much about shelter, security and shade as it is about light, air and opening up to the landscape it inhabits.

At Darbishire Place the new brick block reflects the massing and characteristics of the existing Peabody estate blocks. The brick selection and white precast concrete window surrounds complement the brick and white-painted window reveals of the Edwardian buildings around the courtyard. Inset balconies enable the new façades to have a flatness akin to those of the surrounding buildings. A simple kink in building’s footprint allows the block to work with its context on both sides – a longer elevation addresses the street while a more compact elevation works with the proportions of the other courtyard façades. This kink also provides a route in from the street and so the new block can complete the courtyard without closing it off.

In terms of these three buildings, it is perhaps more difficult to identify a common architectural language than to comment on how they respond to place. I think they are all concerned with light and shadow and each display a level of craft in their execution. For me though the architecture of each project has a fineness. The fragile crown of stone fins and frameless clerestorey windows at the top of the chapel; the intricate timberwork, lightweight permeable envelope and the slight cantilevered deck hovering over the water to the front of the fishing hut; and the open corners and slender corner posts containing the inset balconies to Darbishire Place. It is these moments of finesse that unite the three buildings and other projects in the office.

Style has played an important and often polemical role in the development of architecture over the last 150 years. However, whilst we can entertain debate about a cycle of trends in design, what style is ‘now’ and what is coming next, it seems more pertinent to be aware of the wide variety of styles and take influence from sources that are most appropriate to any one project’s place.

In the same vein as the opening quotation, we should not be concerned with a particular style for a particular time, but rather a particular style for a particular place.

CLAD IN A GARMENT OF POETIC IMAGERY

JANUARY 2014

The following text seeks to explore the communicative role of architecture, highlighting how the buildings of Louis Sullivan offer an antidote to the stoicism of the modern movement.

The reasons for the adoption of a muted architectural language in the beginning of the 20^th century were numerous, but perhaps the inability of architecture to communicate can be traced back to a Critique of Judgement wherein Immanuel Kant called for true artists to ignore conventional rules governing popular taste as a means to preserve the integrity of the artist / genius in the landscape of an emerging aesthetically uneducated middle class. The restriction of this Kantian ideology can be clearly seen in the modern movement where the elimination of ornament in favour of purely functional structures was meant to appeal to our morality. We were meant to appreciate their honest expression but this simplified architectural rhetoric stripped architecture of its ability to express meaning beyond its function and reduced the ability of the architect to infer a narrative.

It is here I believe that the architecture of Louis Sullivan offers a counterpoint to the stoicism of the modern movement.  Sullivan’s response to the modernist doctrine was not to abandon ornament but to heed the advice of Owen Jones and devise a new and contemporary ornamental vocabulary. The Guaranty Building represents the high point of Sullivan’s communicative architecture. The building presents a veiled ornamental screen of rich terracotta tiles which act to delineate the tripartite composition of the facades. The ornament at the base of the building reflects the connections of its veiled steel structure which support the vertical mullions above. The repetitive program on the upper floors are articulated by a rigid pattern of piers and ornate spandrels. Sullivan completes the composition by employing a concave cornice which absorbs the vertical mullions and acts to complete a flowing continuous organic architecture.

‘Our buildings thus clad in a garment of poetic imagery… will appeal with redoubled power, like a sonorous melody overlaid with harmonious voices’^[1] .  Although Sullivan never acknowledged the influence of Semper, the Garment analogy used by Sullivan is a clear reference to Semper’s theory of dressing and his insistence that the ‘archetypal origin of built form was textile production’^[2]. It is also indicative of the ‘strong influence that German culture had on Chicago in the 19th century’^[3].

Ornament was for Sullivan and Semper a demonstration of essential artistic and social motives, ‘being fundamental, the wreath was not only initial, it was also profoundly significant because it manifested the unity of the social body, the people themselves’ ^[4.

Sullivan’s Architecture represents an alternative modernism where function and ornament were not considered to be in opposition but could coexist to create a symbolic architecture which sought to communicate.

[1] Louis H Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats, Dover Publications Inc, 1980
[2] Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture, The MIT Press, 1995
[3] Ibid.
[4] David Leatherbarrow, The Roots of Architectural Invention, Cambridge University Press, 1993

Images from John Szarkowski –  ‘the idea of Louis Sullivan’ Thames & Hudson, 2000

Joseph Mackey holds a BArch degree from University College Dublin. Joseph won an Architecture Association of Ireland Student Award in 2006 and the Arup Architecture Graduates Medal in 2010. Between 2006 and 2012 he worked with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Paris, Tom dePaor in Dublin and Eric Parry Architects in London.  Since joining Niall McLaughlin Architects in 2012 he has been working on a chapel for monks in Dublin, the repair and extension of the old Radcliffe Infirmary Outpatients Building in Oxford and the T1 Building for Argent in King’s Cross, London. The T1 Building is a large mixed use development containing a district energy centre, an indoor sports pitch, car parking, shops, bars and 80 apartments.