David Chipperfield is still sky-high from scooping the Stirling Prize on
Saturday night for his Museum of Modern Literature, in Marbach am Neckar,
Germany, and he’s dishing the dirt. His chest is puffed like a prizefighter
fresh from the ring, and he’s licking his lips like a Rottweiler unleashed.
Who can blame him? The 53-year-old London-born architect has earned his
moment. For two decades he’s been the unofficial leader of that other,
reticent, high-minded school of modern architecture – not the flashy
high-tech of Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, not the showy twists and
turns of Zaha Hadid but an as-yet-unnamed movement that fuses abstract
modernism and historical tradition. It’s solid stuff, designed to last
generations, not what Chipperfield calls the “fizzy” iconic pop that’s
lately ruled the landscape.
Now, having seen off, at last, his old boss Norman Foster for the £20,000
Stirling Prize, David Chipperfield, the stage is yours.
So why was the “building that has made the greatest contribution to British
architecture in the past year” not British? For the second year running,
too. Four of the six buildings on the Stirling shortlist were foreign, while
the two that actually were on British soil were really rather tokenistic in
comparison. And why was one of the shortlisted architects – Koolhaas – well,
Dutch? Has it come to this? Is British architecture so enfeebled? What
distant foreign climes will we have to scour for next year’s prize?
Kazakhstan? (Don’t laugh – with China, central Asia is where all
self-respecting British architects are touting for work.)
“Simple,” Chipperfield says. “Britain gets the architecture it deserves. We
don’t value architecture, we don’t take it seriously, we don’t want to pay
for it and the architect isn’t trusted.” Not an ambience conducive to
architectural excellence, nor one easily changed. It is rooted, Chipperfield
thinks, as deep as British political-economic culture. “We are a country
that values money and individualism. Architecture becomes glorified property
development, not valued culture. Ten storeys? Try for 20. Squeeze in more
bedrooms. That’s British architecture” – especially since the Scottish
Parliament and Wembley Stadium debacles.
Yes, we’re building loads, “but all people want now is delivery. Sod the
quality. Just make sure it’s up on time and in budget.” And the budget is
generally peanuts. Proper architecture “is hard work. No escaping it. And we
just want it easy.”
Once, the architect was at the centre of things, the one who got the kudos –
and the blame. Now, in a climate in which cash rules, one of PFI and PPP and
design-and-build, with construction’s myriad parties – contractors, quantity
surveyors, subcontractors, client, architect – split into adversarial camps,
each focused on covering their backs, “the architect is reduced to being a
mere ‘design consultant’,” Chipperfield says. “Nobody takes a risk. And
architecture by nature is a risky business.” The result is a jobsworth
culture, “where ‘it’ll do’ rules, where actual architecture isn’t valued,
just this beauty parade of fizzy buildings that look good for the cameras.”
Like, of course, the Stirling Prize. Chipperfield’s buildings, though, are
very much not airhead bimbos. The Museum of Modern Literature, in Schiller’s
birthplace, is, as you might expect, a serious, sober affair, its interior
monastically hushed and contemplative, its controversial nods to the
stripped classicism of fascist architecture done intelligently, not for
headlines.
Chipperfield’s architecture perhaps wears its angsty gravitas and subtlety too
pointedly on its sleeve, but it’s a blessed relief to encounter in this
dumbed-down age, like switching to Goethe after Dan Brown. So, no, of course
he hasn’t built much in his native country. China, naturally; Spain, too;
and especially Germany, where his magnum opus, a series of restorations and
extensions on the Museum Island in Berlin, is hotly awaited in 2009. Even
the American Midwest, hardly Mount Parnassus, has given him work.
In Britain, though, his only building of note is the River and Rowing Museum
in Henley-on-Thames, completed a decade ago. “We’re regarded as the
difficult ones here, the ones who kick up a fuss. I don’t play golf with the
CEOs. I don’t schmooze or make friends.” But there is BBC Scotland’s HQ in
Glasgow, newly opened, bright and shining, on the waterfront in Govan, with
Chipperfield’s name on it. Don’t get him started. “I won‘t visit it,” he
says. “Not until I get an apology from the BBC.”
Chipperfield was unceremoniously dumped from the project when the
Director-General, Mark Thompson, succeeded Greg Dyke, and Dyke’s populist
largesse, supposed to herald a new age of architectural excellence for the
corporation, was replaced by the cold wind of penny-pinching. Chipperfield
designed the building in outline, but it was built by a less-renowned firm,
a process – nicknamed trophyism – increasingly common in the UK, and, to
Chipperfield, indicative of its architectural dumbing-down. “The BBC was
useless, useless. We were treated shabbily. We were shafted.”
You might expect it of a bottom-dollar developer, but Auntie? He reserves his
bile for the consultants, lawyers and bean-counters, and lily-liveredness on
the part of the client. “In Germany we had a client who was on the phone,
sorting solutions, taking the flak, all the time. You never get that in
Britain. In Britain it’s ‘nuffink to do with me, guv’. There was no point
ringing up Alan Yentob and saying there’s a problem with my roof cladding.
What could he do? But that’s what you need, a strong client, who’ll fight
for quality with you, not leave you out to dry. The architect ends up being
the sole guardian of quality, and hated for it.”
By contrast, on the Continent, where there’s still “the ghost of a public
system” in which intervention in the free market for the common good is
still the default, “quality is better because there the demand for it is
built into the system”. In Germany architectural competitions are the rule,
not the exception as they are in Britain; the law dictates a quota of young
architects on the shortlist for all competitions for public buildings, to
foster a vibrant, diverse architectural culture.
Is all this just sour grapes, another architect moaning again? “Well,
architects are partly to blame. We haven’t stood up for ourselves. We have
created this dysfunctional atmosphere where we’re not trusted. You go to
planning committees and you think: ‘God, these guys must absolutely hate
us.’ Then you see the crap they’re given to look at and you can quite
understand why.”
His last barb is reserved for the very body that has just awarded him the
Stirling, the Royal Institute of British Architects, which, he thinks, has
been snoozing on its watch. “They’ve sold architects away. They haven’t been
there for us, haven’t safeguarded what is special about British
architecture.”
Perhaps his win is proof that the tide is turning, that people are getting as
bored with celebrity architecture as they got bored of Big Brother in the
summer. He even has work in Britain – the Turner Contemporary Art Gallery in
Margate and an office building in the City. “Oh, it’s a bit better now. But
as good as it should be, given the wealth in this country? I don’t think
so.”
What does David Chipperfield actually like?
Engineering Building, Leicester University (James Stirling and James
Gowan, 1961)
Willis Faber & Dumas HQ (Foster & Partners, Ipswich, 1975)
Creek Vean house (Team 4 –– Norman Foster and Richard Rogers –– Feock,
Cornwall, 1967)
The Laban Centre for Movement and Dance (Herzog & De Meuron, Deptford,
London, 2003)
Lisson Gallery (Tony Fretton Architects, Lisson Grove, London, 1986,
1992)
An exhibition of the RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist is on display at RIBA,
66 Portland Place, London W1 (020-7580 5533), until Nov 24 2007
We as a nation fear modern architecture beacuse contrary to what we're told many great georgian and victorian public buildings were torn down in the 1960's. Some were bombed beyond repair in WW2 but many were not and were needlessfully demolished against public wishes. Italy/France did not do this.
Rob Tyman, London,
I do like modern architecture that is bold, daring but above all highly original like the New Opera House in Valencia by Santiago Calatrava. Also New Pancras and Royal Fest Hall refurbs - both fantastic, but most in this short list are boring, unimaginative and downright depressing. No originality!
Rob Tyman, London,
If town planning is a business (money changes hands, it has to be!), then the whole process of consulting the public and making development plans has to be subject to the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations just come into effect. Time to challenege the planners methinks.
Nora, London, UK
The government's clearly stated policy is that design is a material consideration in the determination of planning applications. It is for planning officers and council planning committees to ensure that high standards of design are maintained.
Arnold Ward, Weybridge, Surrey, UK.
David Chipperfield should be ashamed of the work he has done in Barcelona. He has destroyed large parts of a beautiful city with his concrete abominations.
Jeremy, London,
Design today is not about what makes great architecture. It's all about what can get planning permission.
When you look at the planners, the lack of design expertise prevalent there, lack of thinking, lack of perceptive intelligence, lack of bigger picture thinking (what kind of built environment do we really want?), and a complete them-against-us attitude towards anybody trying to create something of beauty and that works, you'll find the answer to the dire state of British architecture.
3 million homes by 2016 Yvette Cooper? You have got to be kidding. Sort the planners and the planning regs out first, then you might have a hope in hell of achieving it. Then raise the bar on design. Awarding loads of contracts to "fizzy" designers for the Olympic Legacy contracts is NOT the way to go about it.
Laura Roberts, London, UK
Design today is not about what makes great architecture. It's all about what can get planning permission.
When you look at the planners, the lack of design expertise prevalent there, lack of thinking, lack of perceptive intelligence, lack of bigger picture thinking (what kind of built environment do we really want?), and a complete them-against-us attitude towards anybody trying to create something of beauty and that works, you'll find the answer to the dire state of British architecture.
3 million homes by 2016 Yvette Cooper? You have got to be kidding. Sort the planners and the planning regs out first, then you might have a hope in hell of achieving it.
Laura Roberts, London, UK
Not sure how Chipperfield can justify his rant given the scheme from his office that was consented in the City - another curvy glass structure, that looks 'good for the cameras', with a height increase over what was there to probably the maximum which his client could get away with.
AR, London,
To Sohie
The International Style was commercially plundered because it suited an accountancy approach to cheap building in the economically difficult post war conditions in the U.K. It was even more previlant in other northern European countries. Nothing to do with climate or local history. These buildings are not the International Style.They had more in common the previous generation of slum re- housing projects. I repeat, these buildings were not the product of freelance architects but of elected councils.
In addition, there are no vernacular traditions in the U.K. that architects can usefully incorporate since there has been no vernacular tradition in U.K. architecture since the Elizabethans, the country cottage or the slum. The Georgian Style is a borrowed ancient style that could argued has no place in the British land or townscape - it was is a faked Imperial Style.
Uniting the vernacular with moderism is a just styling and not architecture. Modernism is 100 yrs old.
Peter Wigglesworth, Gachnang/Thurgau, Switzerland
David Chipperfield is right to say that architects are not trusted but wrong to attribute it solely to British money grubbing. For decades architects pursued an internationalist style that did not suit the British climate and was insensitive to the historic environment, often ruining cherished townscapes and entrenching a widespread public distaste for modernism. The belated acknowledgement by more recent architects (including Chipperfield) of the need to unite modernism with vernacular traditions is welcome and if there is genuine good faith on the part of architects to work with the grain of British conservatism rather than kick against it then there is no reason why good modern architecture should not flourish here as it does in Europe. The problem of cheap cost and low quality development is a slightly different issue. It is as much a function of pent up demand for housing in a restricted supply side market as it is of ‘a country that values money and individualism.’
Sophie, London, UK
The quality of architecture in this country makes me weep, but this architect's designs are ugly, and so are the buildings he says he likes, so he's in no position to lecture anyone.
We don't trust architects because they don't deserve to be trusted. They like to put about the myth that modernism was imposed on us by cheapskate developers, but actually it was the architectural establishment that committed that sin - and shows no shame about it, or any hint of making an apology.
I have no idea how things can be improved. Once in a blue moon a contemporary architect designs a decent building - say once in five years in the whole world - but even journeymen carpenters and stonemasons used to be able to produce fine buildings, so I am not impressed. Architecture is a failed profession. Good buildings are old buildings.
Oliver Chettle, Bedford,
What a hateful country we now live in. Everything built down to a price and sod the quality. Obscene profits are the only motivation for our greedy, bonus-sodden managers and chief executives. How did it come to this from the nation of Brunel? Three cheers for someone who actually wants to do a proper job and take pride in the work done.
tone the moan, London,
The population still prefers traditional buildings, which is why historic towns are the most visited. Many planners have little regard to Victorian architecture, and even less for the unique gems of the 1920's and 30's.
Here in Mid Sussex, we are watching one beautiful home after another bulldozed for more flats, for a false market. No account is taken of what the public want, despite so-called questionnaires that have a pre-determined outcome. Locals have had to report Mid Sussex District Council to the Standards Committee over this,.
Deborah, Horsham, Sussex
As a town planner how refreshing to see someone who doesn't blame us for all the ills of British architecture, I have lost count of the number of times architects have had a word with me on the quiet, worrried that their client wants to cut the cost and thus the quality, asking me to stand up to the client for them! All too often the scheme the planners see is the one the client wants with the maximum floorpsace for the minimum outlay; how many architects can honestly say they have refused a commission because they din't agree with the developers brief ... not many I suspect.
The best British Architects will design splendid stand alone buildings, unfortunately their training rarely seems to encompass context or historic environments and for that reason so many of their smaller schemes fail to satisfy the public, or planners for that matter.
There is a whole area here for the RIBA to get to grips with, or rather two areas.
Bob Britnell, Canterbury, UK
I would never buy a new build house in the UK, not would I live in one. The design is awful, the use os space is generally ill thought out and they all look the same... how perfectly boring... not to mention the fact that they are all on top of each other.
Chantel, UK,
'Poor architecture', does have an extremely negative impact on life and not simply 'can have'. Some of the poor post war building, to which Anne Ronald points, was planned by local counsel building departments to provide urgently needed housing. To some extent it was modelled on 'real architects' work, however, it was put throught the meat machine to reflect low cost, fast building. It was 'accountancy architecture' and its planners remain nameless. Whilst similiar standards were followed in the commercial sector, it should be remembered that this architecture was built by elected councils and governments and not the freelance architects of the day. This problem has been international and not merely Britain's.
Sadly, rubbish is being built to day without being challenged. Is that playing safe? Is to day's poor architecture being built with humility and humanity. AR's view is not one that leads to solutions and is adrift of reasonable and self-evident critique DC is expounding.
Peter Wigglesworth, Gachnang/Thurgau, Switzerland
Our towns are taking on the appearance of Favela. People live in properties that are becoming smaller and more cramped. Houses, the most expensive purchase that many of us will attempt, are largely engineered, not designed to facilitate speedy erection and built by piecework labour, whereby extra money is earned for speed of completion rather than workmanship. The spread of supermarket chains, and their anywhere the same look, are ripping the soul out of our towns. Once towns had their core of privately owned retailers, the profits were kept within the locality. Now the paltry wages earned in the Mall alone sustains economies while the real money goes off-shore; where once the retailer looked to maintain the atmosphere of the town and its amenities we now have the responsibility of the multiples, a concern that ends with their car parks. Coventry should be a watchword for architectural decline. Pre-bombing it was a medieval town, post bombing it was nothing.
Malcolm Turner, Alsager, England
I think I read in a Jeremy Clarkson book about how in England we don't have any big structures just because we can. Everything needs to have a way of making money.
There are no spectacular landmarks, because they don't make money.
Its a sad state of affairs.
On a more local scale, how often do we hear people complaining about the new train station costing too much because it has a flamboyant glass facade or something. If everything is built just enough to suit a purpose, then we end up with the concrete tower blocks of the former Soviet states.
They work fine, but they do not enhance our surroundings in the slightest.
We need extravagance instead of the cheap, but safe, but unfortunately, like the article states, they do not return as much profit.
Jamie, Halifax, West Yorkshire
It is always a cause for concern if it appears that culture is becoming degraded, but architects would do well to remember that their works, unlike other forms of art, have to serve a practical purpose, and people - all people, powerless people - have to live with them. This country paid a high price for the visions of architects in the immediate postwar years, and it is therefore entirely understandable if people are suspicious now, and prefer to play safe than to take a chance and end up with their environment blighted for forty years. Architects have to make unique but vital compromises in their visions, because poor architecture can have a dramatic negative impact on real life. A little humility and humanity in architects is needed.
anne ronald, birmingham,
David, I agree. In this country's over-regulated, Beauracratic, historically-amnesiac society, Quality is dead, killed by ignorance and fear of cost consultants, under-resourcing of all the important building disciplines, the demise of classical education in the polytechnics. The teaching of English building construction with a historical and technical bias, ended in the seventies. Learn from the car industry, said Sir John Egan. We did. We try to build from a kit of parts, the parts sourced from the cheapest supplier with no regard to track-record, serviceability or maintenance.Nothing ever fits together properly. The resulting building has its exterior rendered and its its' joints sealed with mastic to keep the rain out, only lasting 15 years before it is unfit for purpose and has to be torn down or refurbished. Never mind the Quality, look how much we got for our Money.
Roger Fyfe, London, United Kingdom
Thank you, David Chipperfield, for confirming my suspicions as to why St Mary's, Riverside and Pride Park football stadia are virtually interchangeable, while America's new wave of baseball stadia continue to take the breath away.
Jeffrey Prest, Wisbech, Cambs
The British are notoriously conservative when it comes to architecture. Rather than attempt something new they prefer a Quinlan Terry pastiche of the old or a McMansion in a cul-de-sac. The author is correct - the British are essentially property-speculators with very little understanding of aesthetics in architecture or indeed, how to create a dense urban architectural fabric. Our cities are crying out for innovators who can produce NEW styles that retain functionality and complement their surroundings - NOT more Gehry-esque oneliners that do nothing for the overall picture. It is our domestic architecture that is most at fault and that can only be remedied by a return to more individualistic styles of design and craftsmanship. Fordism in architecture is destroying our aesthetic sense.
JL, Paris, France
I would like to remind the writer that the American Midwest was the home of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. That Parnassus remark seems a little flip.
Charles Rowden, Westbury, USA New York