James Gowan
I read yesterday that the British architect James Gowan died. James was my professor at the Royal College of Art in the mid 1980's and the architect along with his former partner James Stirling of the Leicester University Engineering building perhaps the greatest post war building in Britain. His studio office was next to my desk and drawing board on the 7th floor of the RCA Cadbury Brown building next to the Royal Albert Hall on Kensington Gore. We had many early morning chats after he'd arrived in the studio from his walk from the other side of Hyde Park. James became a big influence on myself and fellow students especially those of us who were trying to resist the fashionable pull of the post modern dream advocated by the visiting tutors flown in from Europe and the seductive pages of Academy Editions.
James was a quiet and extraordinary intelligent man meticulous in his examination and organisation of his own work, a discipline he tried to impart on his students.
He referred to himself as being a "goth" architect in the spirit of Ruskin whom he referred to frequently. Only in these later years have I really understood what he delicately implied. Ruskin was the font of Gowan's functional modernism that extended beyond Leicester to his ground breaking Schreiber house in Hampstead.
James spent too much time eclipsed by Stirling's "Vorsprung durch Technik" a chapter of architectural record that requires some serious overwriting by our professions Mad Men.
"Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort"
John Ruskin
Owner at Waddington Architects
9 年Odd though, how it can sometimes take decades for things we think we've learnt to really make sense?
CONSULTANT @ PIF - Recipient of Dubai Culture & Arts Authority Golden Visa
9 年Stephen thank you for sharing this, I've not had the good fortune to work with James Gowan however I belong to that period and very much appreciate the sensibility he espoused . Quality architecture is about depth and understanding , virtues that are becoming rare these days . Best regards Arif