Architecture Against the Odds
This is post I wrote for The Yorkshire Post last Saturday.
I recently visited a new exhibition at the RIBA in London, called Architecture Against the Odds. The exhibition notes that “architects often produce their finest work when confronted with the challenge of designing for a difficult site. The free exhibition explores remarkable feats of architectural achievement in the face of tricky terrain, awkward urban plots, challenging remodels, and more. From the 1900s to today, it delves into over twenty complex, unusual, and dynamic builds across the UK. It includes work from history’s most renowned architects Neave Brown, Grimshaw Architects, and Lord Norman Foster as well as contemporary practices of Tonkin Liu, KnoxBhavan, and Carmody Groarke. The exhibition highlights the pioneering spirit at the heart of great architecture. Through original drawings, photography, models, and plans it offers an eye-opening look at how resilient and creative practitioners are in realising the inconceivable against the odds.”
Spanning private homes, cultural sites, commercial centres, housing estates, and more, the exhibition looks at over 20 buildings that made unique use of design, layout, materials, and processes as a direct response to site constraints and limitations. Distributed across three thematic sections – Difficult Landscapes, Difficult Urban Spaces, and Difficult Reworkings – the projects present an eye-opening and inspiring study into how resilient and creative practitioners realised the seemingly inconceivable. I was particularly impressed by the array of models and sketches, and to see how they have translated into reality. One particular favourite of mine is the Windermere Jetty Museum designed by Carmody Groarke-a building I have visited a number of times, and judged for the Civic Trust Awards. It is a building of real presence, set on the shores of the lake. I would encourage anyone visiting the Lakes to see for themselves. Another more local building featured is the Magna Science Adventure Centre in Rotherham. The centre is set within the former Templeborough Steelworks and was designed some 25 years ago by Wilkinson Eyre. It is an incredibly powerful reuse of an old industrial building and was winner of The Stirling Prize in 2001. Of the older projects, one of the most memorable buildings of the 20thC is the reworking of Coventry Cathedral following the bombing of 1940. A competition for the rebuild was won by Sir Basil Spence in 1950and his design has been the subject of much controversy over the years due to its unorthodox style. His cathedral was a radical new approach and a complete break away from traditional style cathedrals, yet it has grown to become a Grade I Listed Building.
The exhibition demonstrates the diversity of architectural problem solving across the country and across the years. Solutions to buildings in challenging places and settings. For me, the more challenging the site and the brief, the better the building will be. The result will be a totally unique building. A building which seemingly has ‘always meant to be’. To me this is the testament of good design and I would encourage people to visit the exhibition which is on until Spring of next year. I would love to see the exhibition tour the country, and I’m trying to encourage RIBA to do this. It’s a pity that such exhibitions should have limited viewing, since architecture has an influence to positively change lives and our perception of how they shape our environment.
RA Blenkharn BA [Hons] Dipl Arch FRSA FRIBA