Discover Top Posts Tagged with #peter smithson

The “Trundling Turk” Chair, Model No. NF 3400, designed by Alison & Peter Smithson in 1953

#alison smithson #peter smithson #furniture design #british design #design history #modern design #chair design

Looking at the Smithsons’s Hunstanton School the influence of Mies van der Rohe’s IIT buildings is unmistakable: the steel skeleton filled in with brick and the extensive use of glass demonstrate Alison and Peter Smithson’s close reception of Mies’s early American works. But the influence of Mies went further and actually permeates the couples’s entire work as Mark Linder comprehensively shows in the book „That’s Brutal, What’s Modern? The Smithsons, Banham, and the Mies-Image“, recently published by Park Books: in six chapters Linder explores the Mies-image in the Smithson’s work, the visual culture it was born from and how imaging informed New Brutalism. Each chapter is accompanied by individual arrays of photographs that are integral to understanding and tracking the Smithsons’s development.

In the first two chapters Linder establishes the general historical context of New Brutalism and British modernism and in so-doing highlights the background and environment of the architects. As the author derives much of the theoretical underpinnings of the book from visual theorists like Jacques Rancière and Vilém Flusser, chapter three is dedicated to the practice of imaging in both the 1950s and today, a comparison that highlights the intuitive understanding and use of it by the Smithsons. In the chapter following, which in fact is the backbone of the book, Linder examines the Smithsons’s publications and maps their complex interrelationships: in fact, they repeated and rearranged earlier texts and photos from previous publications, juxtaposed their and Mies’s buildings and recollect, reformulate, resituate, and reactivate variations of New Brutalism as the pursuit of the Mies-image. With the latter the two were in opposition to their ally Reyner Banham but virtually in passing also showed that Mies had a natural understanding of the signficance of imaging as a practice to communicate architectural ideas and visions.

Linder examines it and the Smithsons’s unique modus operandi against the backdrop of both a historic and contemporary visual culture that is reflected in a broad range of theoretical approaches and thus offers a new reading of New Brutalism and the Smithsons’s contribution. A challenging yet fascinating and absolutely worthwhile read!

#alison smithson #peter smithson #new brutalism #brutalist #architecture #england #architectural theory #architecture book #book #park books

With the demolition of Robin Hood Gardens, the Alison and Peter Smithson designed social housing blocks in East London completed in 1972, Britain lost an ambitious Brutalist building and at the same time a decade-long campaign against Brutalism had finally succeeded. British media and politicians had framed it as a reason for the difficult situations in many Brutalist estates of the 1960s and 1970s but carefully omitted the neglect and disrepair they had fallen into due to a lack of maintenance on the part of housing authorities.

Already before the demolition of Robin Hood Gardens, sociologist Nicholas Thoburn took to the buildings and the people who actually lived in them. Proceeding from the Smithsons „as found“ neologism and the honest relationship with materials, site and social conditions it implies, Thoburn examines how it modulated class society by means of socio-architectural forms and during his research amassed investigative material that was also the basis of a traveling exhibition. But although he engages with architecture in various ways, the very core of his research are the often marginalized residents of Robin Hood Gardens: having conducted countless interviews with them, Thoburn uncovers a very different narrative of the „concrete monstrosity“ and shows how decent life and community have been and how inhabitants from very diverse backgrounds enjoyed life at Robin Hood Gardens. And that’s the major point: the inhabitants were basically absent from the discussions surrounding the estate, a disregard that gave rise to false assumptions and stereotypes that ignored the actual qualities of the Smithsons’ design.

„Brutalism as Found“ is a wonderful, critical account of the history of Robin Hood Gardens and how it fell prey to speculation, gentrification and stereotyping and became another inglorious chapter in the history of British social housing. A highly recommended book!

#alison smithson #peter smithson #housing #architecture book #architectural history #book #architecture #england

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#peter smithson #tony ray-jones #robin hood gardens #the charged void

A central position in both life and work of Alison and Peter Smithson held the so-called Upper Lawn Pavilion located on Fonthill Estate in Wiltshire, England: beginning in 1958 the couple turned a derelict cottage into their young family’s country home and a testing ground for their architectural ideas which in turn would be applied in later large-scale projects.

In 1986 Alison Smithson sat down with fellow architect Enric Miralles to make a little book about the house called „Upper Lawn, Solar Pavilion“. It documented the building’s construction process and the consecutive family life in and around it. In photos, diary entries and references Smithson reflects on the pavilion’s qualities and the learnings she gained from living in it together with her husband, three children and a cat named Snuff.

One of these learnings is the submitting to the seasons as they pass by and to embrace the melancholy that comes with it, an aspect of life that is also documented in the many photos included. Another climate related learning was the necessity of being able to open the house „at a touch as Japanese screens indeed are“ as Alison Smithson remarked against the background of the particular wind situation at Fronthill Estate and a negative experience made during a visit to Alvar Aalto’s Maison Carré. A second architectural icon that in this instance serves as a positive reference is the example of Mies van der Rohe’s and Lilly Reich’s Barcelona Pavilion: as a manifestation of an architectural idea and a place of withdrawal it had a great influence on the Smithsons in designing their pavilion as they developed it in a stem lineage started by Mies and Reich.

The little book by AS and Miralles has recently been reissued in a significantly extended edition by Mack Books that adds materials from the Smithson archive as well as an introductory essays by Paul Clarke who shares his own impressions of the pavilion. Through the very personal perspective on this influential building one really grasps its importance and key position in the Smithsons’ oeuvre. In my opinion a must-have book to enter the architects’ cosmos!