Here's a prize-winning British building....in Germany
(Photos taken by Christian Richters)
The building will be on the programme tonight. It's designed by David Chipperfield, a superstar in Germany but not quite here in Britain. Chipperfield has TWO buildings on the shortlist for the Stirling Prize, to be announced on Saturday. And both are abroad -- the other is in Valencia, Spain.
Nigel Wrench is, as you read this, on his way to the building you see here, the Museum of Modern Literature, just north of Stuttgart. Given he gets there in time, and that the satphone works, Nigel will be asking if we appreciate our homegrown adventurous architects enough. David Chipperfield will have something to say too. Pictures of all six nominated buildings, if you fancy making your own mind up, are .
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Oh, save us from "adventurous" architects.
What we need are more anonymous architects who design buildings that people can live and work in effectively and comfortably and are sympathetic with their surroundings. (the buildings that is, not the architects.)
Architects should view themselves as no more important than brickies and joiners and stop trying to make names for themselves with landmark (hah) designs that stand out like sore thumbs from the buildings and environment around them.
I feel strongly about this, so I'm going to fight the 502's with tooth and claw - apologies if this ends up in a double post.
It's beautiful - serene and elegant. Paying homage to classical architecture, yet selfevidently modern. Yes, a good choice.
Looking at the list of candidates, I was struck by the gridshell. Of course, we in the UK also have an award-winning gridshell which you can see on It is beautiful, and has won many awards.
Oh, and (she says rather smugly!) the carpenters who built that are building an annexe for us in Sussex.
(Sorry, SSC, I disagree with you on this one)
It's beautiful - serene and elegant. Paying homage to classical architecture, yet selfevidently modern. Yes, a good choice.
Looking at the list of candidates, I was struck by the gridshell. Of course, we in the UK also have an award-winning gridshell which you can see on It is beautiful, and has won many awards.
Oh, and (she says rather smugly!) the carpenters who built that are building an annexe for us in Sussex.
Did he run a circus once?
Sorry Big Sis, I have to agree with the gleaming metalic feline. As Clive James recently said; he often goes inside City Hall in London because that way he doesn't have to look at the outside of it!
This kind of modern architecture leaves me quite cold. It doesn't strike me as "clean" or "elegant" - it looks cold, barren and very off-putting to me. There's no harmony with it's surroundings, it's not even an unusual or interesting shape (it's basically a rectangular block). When I rule the World architects will be made to live Hobbit houses and told to come back when they've learnt to design proper buildings that human beings can actually live in and use, and don't make your eyes water when you look at them.
;o) []
Big Sis (3):
And I - entirely amicably - disagree with you. I'm afraid my first thought when I saw the picture above was that it was one of Albert Speer's buildings for the Berlin Olympics. It had that stark, concrete look, stylized to the point of over-simplification and with no concession to curvy, soft humanity.
Looking at the other nominations the only one that doesn't give me a feeling of wrongness is the Dresden trainshed which beautifully combines traditional functionality with modern materials. It shows commendable restraint on the part of the architects and in my view should be a model for all architects.
As a museum, I think this looks great. Clean, uncluttered, nothing to detract from its' function, but still elegant :)
Big Sis (3):
And I - entirely amicably - disagree with you. I'm afraid my first thought when I saw the picture above was that it was one of Albert Speer's buildings for the Berlin Olympics. It had that stark, concrete look, stylized to the point of over-simplification and with no concession to curvy, soft humanity.
Looking at the other nominations the only one that doesn't give me a feeling of wrongness is the Dresden trainshed which beautifully combines traditional functionality with modern materials. It shows commendable restraint on the part of the architects and in my view should be a model for all architects.
It looks very bland to me. A rectangular box with pillars. It looks so uninteresting. Is that what wins prizes now days?
It looks very bland to me. A rectangular box with pillars. It looks so uninteresting. Is that what wins prizes now days?
I like the Savill building
I agree with Big Sis, I really like the clean simple lines & especially the shadows. I wouldn't want to live in it but as a museum I think it's elegant and beautiful.
Sorry SSC but I really strongly disagree with:
Architects should view themselves as no more important than brickies
I think a beautiful building can really raise your spirits. I think that more, rather than less architectural input and thought should go into our new buildings. There are so many new boring unadventurous & ugly building which are just depressing!
Beauty, as ever is in the beholder's eye.
And, I have to say, this building, really is a work of very great beauty, simplicity, elegance and functionality - wonderfully situated within its' lansdscape and emminently fit for purpose
I've been fortunate enough to visit. I'm going to return in December. It's that good
I've also spent many very happy hours this year in The America's Cup Building in Valencia. Same architects and a structural statement every bit as impressive and purposeful as the Stutgart design
If you get the oportunity to visit either of these buildings, I urge you to do so. I cannot believe you'll be disappointed...
You're unlikely to see better. Anywhere
If you have the time and inclination, this outstanding entity's web-site will give you a further flavour of what a British head-quartered world-leading architectural design practice has achieved.
Fabulous stuff
www.davidchipperfield.co.uk
Yeah, well.
SSC seems right to me.
Think European, Gossip.
The camps and efficient modernism are inevitably linked in our minds. Much of late 50s and early 60s London looks like an attempt to cleanse the mind of the memory of the camps by claiming brutalism as capable of civility.
The South Bank complex has no hint of playfulness about it.
That unamused modernism is still too much for us to bear. It still speaks of the concrete efficiency of the camps. It is concentration camp architecture.
Smallness in scale (back to Corbusier) allows us to escape the allusion, as does extreme playfulness.
Evidently a reaffirmation of pure classicism does not.
yours till the memory dies
mac
Although, although, again..........
....on reflection, it does have a 'You can dismantle it and put the bits and bricks back in a box' quality.
But this suggests to me more a re - run of the Berlin Wall fiasco than some sort of Kurt Vonnegut reversal of Nazi architecture.
yours, 'till we don't have to remind the young to remember,
mac
Well, I was just chatting to the people who are doing the work for us here, and who did all the wood construction for the gridshell in Sussex and - guess what? - they are also responsible for the carpentry at the Savill Building, nominated for this year's awards.
And if you want to see more of their work, just click on my name.
Hang on, I don't think that brickies and joiners are less important than architects. If they don't get it right, the architects look pretty silly.
As for carpenters, they are the masters of a Black Art and should be treated with great respect at all times. Whether more or less than plumbers and electricians is a matter for personal decision. :-)
On the subject of modern architecture, I think it was C.S. Lewis some time after WWII who wrote a poem on the subject that starts
"No. It's an impudent falsehood. Men did not
Invariably think the newer way
Prosaic, mad, inelegant, or what not."
IT.S SIMPLE ,CLEAN , DRAMATIC IN ITS LIGHT AND SHADDOW IMAGERY ..NOT UNLIKE A HITCHCOCK MOVIE.
BLAME THE COUNCILS AND THE PLANNERS FOR OUR LACK OF ARCHITECTURAL CREATIVE IMPUT.MANY COUNCILS DEMOLISH BUILDINGS OF ARCHITECTURAL INTEREST ONLY TO REPLACE THEM WITH A PASTICHE OF YESTERDAY .
Listening to the coments on radio 4, I am very disapointed with the photos shown.
The building resembles a 1960s crematorium, if this is the best let him stay in Germany.
Mr Fish (17) I didn't mean to imply that brickies & joiners weren't important too, but that I thought we should actually have people with some vision & artistic inspiration designing our buildings so that they're pleasing to look at, rather than some of the boring stuff that gets thrown up now in such a hurry.
The craftsmen are clearly also really important in realising the project. Sorry, it's late & I'm not making much sense!
I like the building anyway!!
Gossipmistress (20):
Here here. Let's have some awards for joiners - "And the award for Most Elegantly Fitted Roof Joists goes to Young Fred! [applause]"
Let's have some honours for brickies...
"And on this thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we talk to noted bricklayer, Sir Fred Bloggs."
Why should Sir Norman Foster get a knighthood for what is basically Technical Drawing when the craftsmen get nothing?