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Thankfully, there has been no equivalent to the President in London,
only the distant braying of a privileged on-looker in extremis.
This author had the pleasure of taking Hans Hollein, over from
Vienna, around the British Library building, with the architect
nervously in tow. By contrast to Paris, Hollein's reaction
here was one of complete admiration, coming from a city that is
not tolerant of any but the most meticulous detailing. And yet there
is still a hush in London. Now Professor Roger Stonehouse's
new book, The British Library at St Pancras stands witness
to Wilson's achievement. The sources of inspiration for the
Library are, of course, widespread, as one would expect from Wilson,
one of the most outstanding teachers of architecture of his generation.
Most fundamental as a source for Wilson is Alvar Aalto. But the
full disposition of the building draws upon European Modernist sources
of the less than recent past: of Dudok; of Louis Kahn; and unavoidably
for Cambridge, and Leslie Martin, Wilson's mentor, the English
Free Style.
It is curious that although this building constitutes a national
British triumph, and is replete almost unwittingly with numerous
international references, it exhibits a particularly English ambience,
not least on account of the brick-cladding (pace Aalto), as well
as more diplomatically in the homage paid in the eastward prospect
to Scott's St Pancras Station skyline. Here is a British representation
of 20th century Modernism, on the one hand, and of the powerful
'Other Tradition of Modernism' (which Wilson has documented
and promoted for the correction of history), just as vehemently
set out as was Scott's interpretation there of the English
mode of the traditions of high European Gothic, for 19th century
travellers to the English Midlands.
Faced with these conflicting sources for context, Roger Stonehouse's
book now provides us with chapter and verse of many such roots.
There is also, in his chapter entitled, 'Anatomy, function
and use', a very clear analysis in the form of a full visual
narrative of the stages of development of the design, in the hands
of a series of Wilson's colleagues (the lieutenants to boot
of this Thirty Year's War). Space is too limited here to analyse
in detail the office schemes by MJ Long, or by Peter Carolin, or
Douglas Lanham, but they clearly should be documented, as in the
book, as an important influence on Wilson's final version.
This resulted from a kind of 'final' between Carolin and
Wilson himself, in the combination of advantages of both. Then it
had been useful to trace some ideas back to Wilson's Spring
House, in Cambridge for Christopher Cornford. But here again, MJ
Long's ideas proved instrumental.
Stonehouse's analysis has had the full collaboration of the
architect although there are some lapses. It is only fair to add
that the brick-built extension to the School of Architecture, Cambridge
(1959) exhibits a psychological materialism, as minimalist architecture,
which philosophically also forms a legitimate precedent as with
these further 1960s small schemes in Cambridge. And yet, this iconic
building is not mentioned.
There are small details which emerge from Storehouse's book
which reveal how Wilson perhaps had to concede defeat on some details:
the Kitaj tapestry (which hangs in the Library's entrance hall)
specifically in Wilson's early sketches, did not have any border.
That curiously unwarranted embellishment now diminishes it in the
final, officially approved version (and at what cost, in terms of
pointless tapestry extension?)
The book is comprehensive in providing a compendium of all the
facts and concepts. Stonehouse reveals Wilson's definition
of how by identifying a place (or places) within the building, the
individual 'also sheds light on their own identity'. Wilson's
antithesis was expressed in his article on Albert Speer's,
Chancellery for Hitler in Berlin, 'where, intentionally, awareness
of personal identity is drained by the numbing repetition of elements
that make it impossible to identify or attributes significance to
any one element ... neither proportion nor detail imply any human
presence'. It was valuable to elucidate exactly what the Library
was not about, as much as it was about in terms of certain timeless
architectural values.
In production and design, this expensive book has no colour pictures.
But the quality of Gerhard Stromberg's superb black and white
photography renders colour largely non-essential. Notwithstanding
this rationale, the richness of the library on an average (sunny)
day begs for documentation of the fuller effects of light. From
the calmness of the finishes to the formally articulate range of
the building internally and externally, all would swell with the
experience of colour and tone. The book has a reminiscence to architectural
documents of the 1930s (for example, Alberto Sartoris) which is
itself an appropriate mode for the Library. The book thus conveys
an archival quality of the recent past for the reader, wholly appropriate
for the Thirty Years struggle that was vindicated.
Sir Richard MacCormac has provided an Introduction which
succinctly places the entire venture in a design context. Dr Brian
Lang provides a longer essay which reviews the longer technological
implications of the Library. As the Chief Executive who edged the
Library along a subtle path to full realisation, his essay is from
the heart and yet adds an appropriate touch of realism to the event.
He could be seen at the recent book launch, standing back and yet
heaving, metaphorically, an immense sigh of relief.
Michael Spens
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