Who is the British architect so considered to be among the most important and influential architects in the second half of the 20th century that an annual architecture prize is named after him?
MANILA, Philippines - He was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1926. He is perhaps best-known as one of a number of young architects who from the 1970s on questioned and subverted the compositional and theoretical precepts of the first Modern Movement. His success lay in his ability to incorporate theoretical references subtly, with a strong and muscular, very decisive architecture of strong, confident gestures that aimed to remake urban reform.
From 1945 to 1950, he trained in the Beaux Arts tradition at Liverpool University, and later worked with Lyons, Israel & Ellis in London for several years before he formed a partnership with James Gowan.
Influenced by the later designs of Le Corbusier and the theories of the Smithsons, Stirling and Gowan produced several influential buildings, which started a trend toward brick and exposed concrete.
Their first built project, the Flats and Ham Common (1955-1958) was regarded as a landmark in “brutalist” residential architecture.
The best known result of their collaboration is the Department of Engineering at the University of Leicester, noted for its technological and geometric character, marked by the use of three dimensional drawings based on axonometric character, marked by the use of three dimensional drawings seen either from above (bird’s eye view) or below (worm’s eye view).
When the partners separated in 1963, he oversaw two projects which confirmed his credentials as a leading British architect — the History Faculty Library of Cambrdige and the Florey Building in Queen’s College, Oxford. He also completed a training center for Olivetti in Haslemere, Surrey and housing for the University of St. Andres, both of which made prominent use of fabricated elements.
During the 1970s, his architecture became more overtly neoclassical, though it remained imbued with his powerful revised modernism. This produced a wave of dramatically spare, large-scale urban projects, notably three important museum projects for Germany — in Dusseldorf, Cologne, and Stuttgart.
These projects of the 1970s show him at the zenith of his mature style. In 1981, he was awarded the renowned Prtizker Prize. He then received a series of important commissions in England — the Clore Gallery for the Turner Collection at the Tate Britain, (1980-1987), the Tate Liverpool (1984), and No. 1 Poultry in London (1986). This work reveled a particular interest in public space and the meanings that facades and building masses can assume in a constrained urban context.
The last buildings to be completed while he was still alive were a series comprising the B Braun headquarters in Melsungen Germany completed in 1992. This complex and other late projects were acknowledged by critics as the possible beginning of a potentially important departure in his work, cut short by his premature death
Just before his death, he was given a knighthood in 1992. The annual British prize for architecture since 1996 was named after him.
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Last week’s question: Who is the artist who invented anamorphic or 3D pavement art in 1984?
Answer: Kurt Wenner
Winner: Alicia Mendoza of Mandaluyong city.
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