RESOURCES for ARCHITECTURE COLLEGES and LIBRARIES

1. Architecture Catalogue 2011
2. Tape/slide talks by eminent architects
3. Slide sets, Digitisation of slides.World Microfilms
4. Videos
5. Art 

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1. Architecture Catalogue 2011

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X ARCHITECTURE

X 2011

X CATALOGUE

1-3. CDs and DVDs on Architecture: 2011

Section 1. From the PIDGEON AUDIOVISUAL LIBRARY, 2011

Section 2. From MASTERS OF ARCHITECTURE

Section 3. DVDs on architecture (formerly videos from

the PIDGEON AUDIOVISUAL LIBRARY): 2011

ORDER FORM AT THE END OF THIS LIST.

Comsat Laboratories, Clarksburg, Maryland, 1967-68. Photo © Cesar Pelli

for DMJM Architects.

Section 1. CDs from the PIDGEON AUDIOVISUAL LIBRARY (can be supplied on DVD if required)

Talks accompanied by images from the PIDGEON AUDIOVISUAL LIBRARY, now

incorporated in the PIDGEON DIGITAL online subscription website at www.pidgeondigital.com.

The following, on pp. 3-103, are available separately on individual CDs or DVDs, and more may be added shortly. They can be purchased for £65/$105/€75 each and can be incorporated in a Library system provided copyright is observed. The list is in  alphabetical order by surname of speakers, commencing with new speakers since 2006.

Wu Hall, Butler College, Princeton University. Photo © Venturi Rauch Scott Brown

A More Interesting Way, by Will Alsop

 Manchester, New Islington: Housing. Photo © Will Alsop

In this second recorded talk with Will Alsop, he speaks about recent research he has been doing into the design of prisons, by discussing with the inmates and staff of HMP Gartree in Leicester their desires and needs. He uses the same approach to some existing housing n Nottingham, and shows work he has been doing in Bradford, Manchester and London. Painting has always been his passion and it inspires his unorthodox architecture and playful master plans. He cares about how people are going to use a building in a livelier and more interesting way. “Serious should be fun” he professes. This talk was recorded in 2006. Ref P0603

Advancing Geometries, by Cecil Balmond

 Serpentine Pavilion, London. Photo © Toyo Ito

Cecil Balmond, Deputy Chairman of Ove Arup and Partners, is one of the most important engineers of his generation. In this talk he charts his career, his relationship with Sir Ove Arup, his work with architects such as Serge Chermayeff and James Stirling, the development of his approach to the relationship of architecture and engineering and his ground-breaking designs with Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind and Alvaro Siza. In 2000 he set up his own design team - the Advance Geometry Unit within Arups. He was formerly visiting Kenzo Tange professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Architecture; Saarinen Professor at Yale University School of Architecture and is now the Cret Chair at Penn Design (the position once held by Louis Kahn), where he is developing a radical programme on the generation of form. This talk was recorded in 2009. Ref. P0901

Three's Company, by Denton Corker Marshall

Manchester Civil Justice Centre. Building Elements.  Photo © Denton Corker Marshall partners of the

Bill Corker, founding partner of the Australian practice Denton Corker Marshall, discusses the development of the practice - one of the few antipodean firms to have built up an international reputation. He discusses several projects, including the design of the new Civil Justice Centre in Manchester. This talk was recorded in 2008. Ref. P0801

National Treasures, by Jeremy Dixon & Edward Jones

 National Portrait Gallery, London: View from the

restaurant. Photo © DENNIS GILBERT/VIEW

Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones were students together at the Architectural Association and were close friends for many years before setting up the partnership Dixon - Jones in 1972. So they share stored references to do with architecture. For this recording they have selected, out of a huge body of work, projects in London - the Royal Opera House, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery and Somerset House; all 'National Treasures' - that come close to the architects' long-time concern for protecting the nature of cities, not merely in terms of conservation. This talk was recorded in 2006. P0602.

West Meets East In Tokyo, by Mark Dytham & Astrid Klein

 Rin Rin, department store renewal. Photo © KOZO TAKAYAMA

The architects Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein were students together at the Royal College of Art in London. A scholarship took them to Tokyo in 1988, where they decided to stay and set up the practice Klein Dytham (KDA). "They are inspired by the eclecticism of the city's cityscape, the aggressive energy and the confidence in the individual. Anything is possible.” "KDA shares a space called Deluxe with 5 other compatible companies where they have meetings, art events, concerts, performances, etc. in an infinitely flexible space. The environment is very much about interdisciplinary cross-over and about the excitement of Tokyo." The talk was recorded in 2005. P0601.

The Rise of the Media Architect, by Peter Eisenman

 Peter Eisenman, architect. Photo ©Chris Wiley

Peter Eisenman, architect, urban planner and author, is principle of Eisenman Architects. In 2005, he completed the Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Berlin and is currently building the City of Culture of Galicia in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. As well known for his theoretical work as his built projects, he was a member of the New York Five and exponent of Deconstructivism. He is the Louis I. Kahn visiting professor of architecture at Yale. In this talk, Eisenman explores his current preoccupations. He discusses the impact of the current media culture on architecture and architects; society's declining engagement with the built environment as a result of new communication technologies such as texting and Twitter; the significance of Barack Obama's appointment as America's 44th President; and the importance of writing in the practice of architecture. This talk was recorded in 2009. P0903.

Lifting the spirit, by Jim Eyre & Chris Wilkinson

 Gateshead bridge, Northumberland. Photo © WILFRED DECHAU

The twice Stirling-prize-winners are developing a process of design in all their work. In this recording they cover many themes - art and science linked to a study of nature; architecture and engineering; lightness; structure that responds to the environment; exploring new forms in terms of space and surface. More than anything they seek to create the kind of architecture that can lift the spirit. This talk was recorded in 2006. P0701.

Career retrospective, by John Johansen

 Johansen House, NY. Photo © Zoë Blackler

John Johansen (born 1916) is best known for his Oklahoma Theatre Centre - inspiration for both Richard Rogers and Frank Gehry - his US Embassy building in Dublin, and his series of symbolic houses.
Here aged 93, in his third talk for P D, he looks back over his career, from studying under Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius, to starting out in New Canaan, Connecticut as a member of the Harvard Five and providing John F Kennedy with one of his most famous lines. His exploration of futuristic building technologies is now focused on nanoarchitecture, which he dubs a new species of architecture.

This talk was recorded in 2010. P1001

Royal Ontario Museum, by Daniel Libeskind

 Royal Ontario Museum. Photo © Michele Nastasi

Polish-born American architect Daniel Libeskind was thrown into the international spotlight when he won the competition to rebuild New York'-s World Trade Centre. His deconstructivist buildings include the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester and the extension to the Denver Art Museum. Here, he discusses the Royal Ontario Museum, his most ambitious building to date, which opened in June 2007. He describes breaking the rules with his competition entry, 17 conceptual sketches on the back of 17 napkins; his inspirations, which included snowflakes and the museum's crystal collection; the controversy that greeted his dramatic building and why a group of school children were his most insightful critics. This talk was recorded in 2009. P0906

His Last Lecture, by Robert Maxwell

 Daniel Libeskind: Jewish Museum, Berlin. Photo © Robert Maxwell

This talk which Robert Maxwell billed as his "Last Lecture" was given to the Architectural Association in November 2006 to an audience of friends and colleagues; Maxwell specially recorded this version for Pidgeon Digital In the lecture he discusses the changes in architecture and architectural teaching that have taken place during his long career as teacher at the AA., the Bartlett School and later at Princeton, the shift from design as a product to that of concept and how to teach design in a period of rapid change. He talks of meaning in art and architecture and the significance of linguistics and semiotics, in particular the work of Roland Barthes. He illustrates his talk with double images which not only reinforce the meaning of the words but also provide a meaningful comparison" in themselves. This talk was recorded in 2007. Ref P0704

Jubilee Church, by Richard Meier

 Church Dio Padre Misericordioso (Jubilee Church), Rome. Photo © Edmund Sumner

Richard Meier studied at Cornell University, working for SOM and Marcel Breuer before setting up his own practice in 1963. His architecture, characterised by its whiteness, its preoccupation with the use of natural light and its debt to Le Corbusier, includes the Getty Centre in Los Angeles, The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art and the Atheneum in New Harmony, Indiana. He has won a string of prizes including the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects, the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Pritzker Prize and the Praemium Imperiale. In 1996, Meier beat off competition from amongst others Santiago Calatrava, Frank Gehry and Tadao Ando to secure the commission for Jubilee Church, his first church project. Here he describes his first meeting with the Pope to present the project, how Jubilee, with its three monumental concrete sails, fits within and breaks free from, traditional church architecture and the challenge of relying on donations to fund construction. This talk was recorded in 2009. P0907

Breeding Architecture, by Farshid Moussavi (FOA) & Alejandro Zaera-Polo (FOA)

 BC Music Centre, White City, London - Photo © FOA & Andrew Ingram

The architects Farshid Moussavi (from Iran) and Alejandro Zaera-Polo (from Spain), husband and wife, met at Harvard, but their collaboration only started when working at OMA in Rotterdam. There they began working on competitions. Then they taught at the AA, London. It was there that they won the competition for the Osanbashi Port Terminal building in Yokohama, and that was the beginning of their practice FOA. Many other commissions have followed. Included here are the BBC Music Centre, White City, London, the S.E.Coastal Park in Barcelona, and a project for the World Trade Center, New York. They are highly inventive designers. No one of their buildings resembles another. To them, style is anathema. They have been exploring ideas of convergence between landscape and infrastructure; and enjoy working with other people in a collaborative situation, where the client is tough and the project grows in discussion. No matter the constraints, they say they have a lot of fun. This talk was recorded in 2007. P0702.

Career Retrospective, by Cesar Pelli

 World Financial Centre, New York, 1981-1987 -- Winter Gardens.
Photo © Timothy Hursley/The Arkansas Office

Argentinian-born Cesar Pelli is best known as the architect of the world's tallest building, Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur. The many skyscrapers he has designed also include One Canada Square in Canary Wharf, London and the Museum of Modern Art Tower in New York. In this overview of his life and career, Pelli describes gambling everything he owned to pay for his wife's airfare when he won a scholarship to the United States, working for Eero Saarinen and Victor Gruen, inventor of the shopping mall, and why architecture keeps you young at heart. This talk was recorded in 2009. P0909.

New York Times Building, and The Shard by Renzo Piano

 New York Times Building. Photo © Renzo Piano Building Workshop

Renzo Piano has designed two very different towers for two different locations - the orthogonal New York Times building in Manhattan, and The Shard, a pyramidal structure planned for the South Bank in London. In this talk he describes why the two buildings turned out to be so different from each other, the influences of context and the differences in the planning systems of the two cities. This talk was recorded in 2007. P0703.

Retrospective, by Kevin Roche

 Knights of Columbus, New Haven, Connecticut Photo © Seth Tisue, under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike

Born in Dublin in 1922, Kevin Roche crossed the Atlantic to study under Mies van der Rohe at Illinois Institute of Technology before taking a job in Eero Saarinen's office. When Saarinen died suddenly on the operating table in 1961, he joined forces with colleague John Dinkeloo to take over the practice and complete Saarinen's unfinished projects, which included Dulles Airport and the St Louis Arch. The pair changed their name to Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates in 1966, and in 1982 Roche was awarded the Pritzker Prize. In this talk Roche takes a retrospective look back over his career. He compares the different methodological approaches of Mies and Saarinen; the upheaval following Saarinen's early death; his own breakthrough projects for the Oakland Museum of California, The Knights of Columbus in New Haven and The Ford Foundation in New York; his resistance to shifting fashions in architecture; and his ongoing work at the Metropolitan Museum, New York. This talk was recorded in 2009. P0904

Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, by Michael Sorkin

  Street corner, Manhattan; Photo © Michael Sorkin

Michael Sorkin is the founder of Sorkin Studio based in New York City. His recent projects include the planning and design of an environmentally sensitive 5000-unit community in Penang, Malaysia, masterplans for sites in Hamburg and Leipzig as well as a plan for a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. Architecture critic for the Village Voice for ten years, he is currently a  contributing editor to Architectural Record and author of numerous books including Variations on a Theme Park, Exquisite Corpse and Indefensible Space.

In this talk he discusses his latest book Twenty Minutes in Manhattan -- a personal reflection on fifteen years of social and physical change in his home city – how cities might change in the future and his speculative environmental design work through his non-profit Terreform. This talk was recorded in 2010. P1002

Career Retrospective, by Robert Stern

 American Revolution Center, Valley Forge, PA. 2011 Photo © Thomas Schaller for Robert A M Stern Architects

American architect Robert Stern studied at Columbia and Yale. In 1966, he set up Stern & Hagmann with John Hagmann, later renamed Robert A M Stern Architects when the two went their separate ways. A traditional architect, his work ranges from private houses to academic, cultural and commercial. He returned to Yale as dean of the architecture school in 1998. In this talk, Stern leads a tour of his career. He charts his early years revitalising the Architectural League of New York under Philip Johnson and working for local government to try to improve housing quality in the city. He describes the growth of his practice, taking over Johnson's Boylston Street project in Boston in the wake of controversy and how he secured the deanship at Yale. This talk was recorded in 2009. P0905

New Acropolis Museum, Athens, by Bernard Tschumi

 Acropolis; Museum Photo © BERNARD TSCHUMI Architects 1981

Swiss born Bernard Tschumi came to prominence as a theorist with the publication of his 1981 Manhattan Transcripts. In 1983 he won the competition to design the Parc de la Villette on the edge of Paris and in 1988 opened an office in New York. His current projects include the Museum for Contemporary Art in Sao Paulo as well as the New Acropolis Museum, Athens which opened in June 2009. He was awarded France's Grand Prix National d'Architecture in 1996. Here he discusses the Acropolis Museum project. He charts the history of the project and the development of the design concept and explains some of the controversies surrounding it, including the Greek claim to the Elgin Marbles held by the British Museum. Speaking in the month before the Acropolis Museum project opened to the public, Tschumi understands it within the context of his earlier work including the red follies in Parc de la Villette and Factory 798 in Beijing. He gave a previous talk in 1996 on Space, Event, Movement. This talk was recorded in 2009. P0902

Update on their Theories, by Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown

 Bob Venturi and Denise Scott Brown at home in Philadelphia. Photo © Zoë Blackler

Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi are best known for their 1972 study of American vernacular, Learning from Las Vegas, in which they called on architects to learn lessons from the aesthetics of the everyday. Wrongly attributed with inventing post-modernism they fell out of favour, but are now being rediscovered by a new generation. In this talk, Denise Scott Brown, with contributions from Robert Venturi, discusses the continuing relevance of Learning from Las Vegas and how their ideas have developed in the years since. What are the implications of neon's replacement by LEDs, how has the rise of environmental awareness challenged the automobile city and how can city physics be applied to the design of buildings such as laboratories? This talk was recorded in 2009. P0908.

Tradition and Invention, by Robert Adam

 Table. Photo © ROBERT ADAM

The British architect Robert Adam, after completing his training at Regent St Poly, London, in 1973, spent a year in Rome on a scholarship. That experience has had a tremendous influence on his work which is all in the Classical mode. He has won many awards and has written innumerable articles and several books on Classicism, on which he is a recognised authority. In his recorded talk he explains how, once you have learned the rules of Classicism, you can introduce invention. This is what has been happening continuously throughout the centuries since the Greeks built their temples. The Romans produced their versions, as did the Renaissance and Victorian designers. And now Adam shows us how he does it. He has even gone so far as to design a skyscraper in the Classical manner, something he says the Romans would have done had they had today's technology. And that is the point: Adam's buildings, though traditional in concept, are constructed using present-day technology. This talk was recorded in 1992. P9211

The Representation of Opposites, by Peter Ahrends

 National Gallery, London. Competition winning entry. Photo © John Donat

Peter Ahrends, Richard Burton and Paul Koralek first began working together while students at the Architectural Association in London, Ahrends having come to England from South Africa. They established their partnership in 1961 after Koralek won first prize in the competition for Trinity College Library, Dublin. As architects they have not embraced any specific theories but have always sought for quality in their work. The designs which they select from all possible solutions to a brief are the ones they consider most symbolise the activities and aspirations on which they were based. When designing a new building in a historical context, while paying due respect to neighbouring traditional buildings, they set up a carefully thought-out dialogue between old and new, traditional and modern, hand-crafted and machine-made. In his recorded talk, Peter Ahrends speaks about the significance of the representation of opposites in ABK's work, and he describes specific examples that embody the concepts of movement and rest which he thinks establish a fundamental relation to underlying cycles and rhythms of life. This talk was recorded in 1986. P8603

Berthold Lubetkin (1901-90) by, John Allan

 Penguin Pool, London Zoo Photo © JOHN HAVINDEN

"The greatest architect in Britain of the 20th century" is how John Allan refers to Lubetkin, one "who exemplifies the key ingredients of the Modern movement: the vision of architecture as an instrument of social progress, the beneficial use of technology and innovation, and the pursuit of a radical aesthetic." Allan was a friend of Lubetkin's for 20 years, until his death, and as a partner in Avanti Architects, has restored several of his buildings (Penguin Pool, Finsbury Health Centre, Whipsnade bungalow, Highpoint, and Dudley Zoo). Author of the definitive work on Lubetkin ("Lubetkin" published by RIBA Publications) he outlines the great man's life in his recorded talk and discusses his most important built or unbuilt projects. This talk was recorded in 1994. P9406

Constructing the Idea by, Simon Allford (AHMM)

 Pool House for Allford's parents. Photo © DENNIS GILBERT

Simon Allford and his partners (AHMM) are one of the younger practices in Britain to become well known. They have won innumerable competitions and awards and have been widely featured on TV, radio and the press. They met as students at the Bartlett School of Architecture in 1983 and have remained together ever since, setting up in practice in London in 1989. So they have evolved a collaborative method of working, now shared with their 40-strong staff. Their work has ranged from exhibitions to private houses and housing, schools, clubs, a medical centre, offices and the Walsall bus station. In his recording, Allford talks about the idea behind each design and how it develops; and about how to give a client better value, not necessarily only cost but the sort of quality of return in terms of space, maintenance and delight. This talk was recorded in 2002.P0201.

Tabula Inscripta, by Bob Allies (Allies & Morrison)

 Project for Kiosk in British Museum forecourt Photo © ALLIES & MORRISON

Bob Allies - Edinburgh trained and a Rome Scholar from 1983-1987 - set up in partnership with Graham Morrison in London in 1984. Together they have produced distinguished, widely recognised architecture and have won a number of competitions in the UK. Allies speaks for both of them when he says that their approach is a Modernist one which brings into the brief the aspect of context. For them architecture has to develop out of a "tabula inscripta" and not the "tabula rasa" of the 1960's. Their architecture responds to the ways existing places can be transformed to a set of new conditions. This is illustrated in the work they discuss in their recorded talk.
This talk was recorded in 1992. P9205.

Form, Colour, Behaviour, by Will Alsop

 Expo '92: project for UK pavilion. Photo © ALSOP & STÖRMER

In this second recorded talk with Will Alsop, he speaks about recent research he has been doing into the design of prisons, by discussing with the inmates and staff of HMP Gartree in Leicester their desires and needs. He uses the same approach to some existing housing n Nottingham, and shows work he has been doing in Bradford, Manchester and London. Painting has always been his passion and it inspires his unorthodox architecture and playful master plans. He cares about how people are going to use a building in a livelier and more interesting way. “Serious should be fun” he professes. This talk was recorded in 1995. P9202

The Poetics of Architecture, by Emilio Ambasz

 Showroom for Mercedes Benz, New Jersey. Photo © EMILIO AMBASZ

Emilio Ambasz was born in Argentina but trained at Princeton University. From 1970-76 he was Curator of Design at MoMA, New York, gaining great acclaim for his exhibition there "Italy, the new domestic architecture". Since 1976 he has run an architectural practice in New York and a design office in Bologna, Italy. He has gained many awards and honours and his work has been widely published and exhibited. He has lectured at many universities. He is still much involved with the activities of MoMA, and from 1981-85 he was President of the Architectural League in New York. In his recorded talk this prolific designer and inventor describes a number of his architectural projects and some of his graphic and industrial designs. Intrigued by the ceremonies and rituals of daily life, he sees architecture as a stage setting for this human activity and as a myth-making act to give poetic form to the pragmatic. Understandably he has been described as "a pragmatic visionary and a practical romantic" and as "a master of pure geometry and sculptured landscapes. This talk was recorded in 1987. P8707

Museum: Museum of the Moving Image, London BUILDING CASE STUDY, No. 3 by Bryan Avery (Avery Associates) & John Dawson (Job Architect)

 Drawing of tower base. Photo © Bryan Avery, Avery Associates.

Taking part in the recorded discussion were: Client: Leslie Hardcastle (Curator, MOMI/British Film Institute). Architect: Bryan Avery (Avery Assoc.) and John Dawson (Job Architect). Planner: Peter Rees (City Planning Officer, City of London Corporation). Structural Engineer: Alan Jones (YRM Anthony Hunt Assoc.) Services Engineer: John Case (Voce Case & Partners). Acoustics: Howard Gwatkin (Bickerdike Allen Partners) Quantity Surveyor: David Stevens (Northcroft Neighbour & Nicholson). Management Contractor: Les Chatfield (Divisional Managing Director, Bovis Construction Ltd). Everyone present agreed that this job was extremely difficult. The site was under Waterloo Bridge, to which nothing was to be connected. It was difficult to find space for foundations. There was no brief for the architects to work to. Funding had to be raised as the building grew. And so on. Despite everything, this attractive and popular film museum, an extension to the National Film Theatre, revealed itself in 1989. Its story is told in the recording, which was made by PAV in the NFT (hence "noises off").
This talk was recorded in 1993. P6003

Mythical Vernacular Monuments, by Reyner Banham

 Government Elevator, Montreal, demolished 1978,                                            and Marché BonSecours Photo © REYNER BANHAM

The late Reyner Banham, architectural historian and ‘eminence grise', was Professor in Art History at the University of California at Santa Cruz at the time of this talk. He went there from Buffalo where he had chaired the Department of Design Studies in the School of Architecture after a long reign at London University's Bartlett School of Architecture. His claim to fame came in 1960 with the publication of his doctoral thesis under the title ‘Theory and Design: the First Machine Age'. It was the beginning of a series of best-sellers from his pen, some written while he was still an editor at the ‘Architectural Review' in London. These included ‘Guide to Modern Architecture', ‘Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment', ‘Los Angeles', and ‘Megastructure'. He also had a devoted following for the articles on all manner of subjects which he contributed over the years to the ‘New Statesman' and then to ‘New Society'. In his recorded talk, he discusses the grain elevators of North America and how they constitute a kind of monumental vernacular of the early 20th century around which gathered powerful myths. It was Walter Gropius who first drew attention to them in an article on the development of modern industrial architecture, yet he, along with most of the early modern architects of Europe, has seen the buildings only in photos. This talk was recorded in 1982. P8210

Genesis of the London Eye, by Julia Barfield (Marks Barfield Architects)

 The Millennium Wheel (The London Eye). The Wheel, now 135ft high, with 32 capsules. Photo © MARKS BARFIELD

Julia Barfield and her husband/partner David Marks are the entrepreneurs who dreamed up the idea of a Millennium Wheel and then created the company to develop, build and operate it - now known as British Airways London Eye after its backers. Julia's recorded talk tells the amazing story of the problems and effort entailed over many years. The design was done in collaboration with Jane Wernick/Ove Arup & Partners (See P0103). Julia also describes other work, both before and after the Wheel. Their latest entrepreneurial project is Skyhouse, a cluster of three structurally-connected skyscrapers, which is a residential mixed-use scheme. The partners met while studying at the AA School. In 1975 they worked in Peru designing self-build houses in a ‘barriada'. Then, after a stint respectively for Norman Foster and Richard Rogers they started their own practice in London in 1989.This talk was recorded in 1999. P0102

Community, Context and Scale, by Edward Larrabee Barnes

 Emma Willard School library, music and art building,

                          Troy, New York, 1967. Photo © DAVID HIRSCH

The late EDWARD LARRABEE BARNES trained at Harvard under Gropius and Breuer. Born in Chicago, Barnes started practising architecture in New York in 1949. He taught at Pratt Institute and Yale and received many American awards and honours. A visit to Persia and Greece after a few years of practice changed his whole view of architecture as taught then at Harvard. He learned about scale and about the importance of continuity in both time and context. As a result, the materials he used are generally homogeneous covering large surface areas of his buildings; unnecessary details are eliminated; buildings are broken down into clusters to achieve human scale. He explains in his recorded talk about architectural ideas, ideas that can't be expressed in any other medium than architecture, and he deplores 'the way, in the present confusion in the architecture schools, painterly ideas are considered as substitutes for architectural thought. Some of the categories of building which he illustrates and to which he has given special attention are museums, skyscrapers and buildings for plants.
This talk was recorded in 1984. P8407

Working With A Genius, by Guy Battle & Christopher McCarthy

 OT Pavilion for Seville Expo '92. Architects, Alsop & Stormer

Photo © Will Alsop and Battle, McCarthy

"Who is the genius?" say the speakers in this recorded talk And the answer "It doesn't matter. What is important is that there is great pleasure in working in this collaboration" (of engineers and architects). Chris McCarthy and Guy Battle discuss work they have done with a number of architects, especially Will Alsop, and throughout they stress the collaboration. Their multi-disciplinary consulting engineering practice Battle McCarthy was born within the Ove Arup Partnership and has blossomed on its own since 1983. Battle (b.1962) is an environment engineer with knowledge of architecture, structural engineering and building services. McCarthy (b.1956) is a structural engineer who started out as a sculptor. Both have had wide experience in many countries. Together they look at how they can use the structure of a building to moderate the climate, and create comfort within their buildings. This talk was recorded in 1994. P9405

Putting Buildings Together by, Rab Bennetts

 Imperium offices, Reading Photo © PETER COOK

Rab Bennetts has always been concerned with the function of buildings, with the way buildings are put together, and with architectural space. He develops these three themes in some depth in his recorded talk, illustrating them with three office buildings he has completed; though offices are by no means the only category of building he has worked on. It was because of his interest in the relationship between space and structure and services that he worked for Arup Associates after leaving Heriot Watt University, staying for 10 years, most of that time with Peter Foggo - whom he considered a ‘fantastic architect' - and in the company of engineers, quantity surveyors, and other architects. With them he learned how the concrete structure of a building, if exposed, had the effect of damping down the internal climate and radiating coolness at the time of great heat outside. Structure led to architectural expression. In 1987, Bennetts set up his own firm in London and was immediately invited to do a new building near Reading, the Imperium. This led, in 1991, to his being approached by Powergen to design their headquarters. Bennetts' recent completed office building is for John Menzies in Edinburgh. Designed around an atrium it further develops his ideas for light and ventilation to suit the cooler northern climate. This talk was recorded in 1996. P9602

Spatial Narrative, by Gordon Benson

 Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. Photo © Museum of Scotland,     Edinburgh.

The British architects Gordon Benson and his partner Alan Forsyth both graduated from the Architectural Association School in 1968, worked for the London Borough of Camden till 1978 when they set up in practice together. Benson held the Chair at the University of Strathclyde from 1986-90 and became visiting professor at the University of Edinburgh. The partners have won many prizes and awards and their work has been widely published and exhibited. The buildings they describe in their recorded talk are all very different. The Oratory is an internalised building with no external figure. In contrast, the Museum looks onto buildings from above and below and from a great distance. The Japanese projects differ not only in size and nature but also conceptually: "whereas in the Museum the sub-text and the spatial narrative of the building itself has to be below the surface, in the Japanese buildings the sub-text is effectively the text."
This talk was recorded in 1992. P9213

Genesis of a Museum (Museum of Scotland), by Gordon Benson

 Walls appear to be thick Photo © NEILL McLEAN

To Design a museum for Edinburgh which reflects the city's geology, topography, history, development and characteristics; which has the genetic structure of the city of which it is part, as well as the genes of what it is itself; to house the country's historical collections of artefacts in such a way as to reflect their place of origin, period and category - these were the problems that the architects posed themselves when doing their design for the Museum of Scotland competition which they subsequently won in 1996. The building was completed in 1999. In their recorded description of its evolution, its significance for Scotland is clear, particularly at a moment when that country seeks to establish its own identity. Gordon Benson and Alan Forsyth, when students at the AA, were greatly influenced by Le Corbusier. They went on to do public housing in London, then set up their own practice and did an oratory in England and two small buildings in Japan (see previous recording PAV 9213). Later, while at the AA, they took students to Edinburgh to study the relationship between individual buildings and town planning, and came to understand the forces which had brought that city into being; all of which stood them in good stead for the Museum of Scotland.This talk was recorded in 2002.  P2002

Hans Scharoun, by Peter Blundell-Jones

 Berlin State Library. Photo © PETER BLUNDELL-JONES

Peter Blundell-Jones, an architect practising, teaching and writing in England, was the first person to publish in any language a critical monograph on Germany's greatest post-war architect, Hans Scharoun. In his recorded talk, as in his book, he traces the development of Scharoun's ideas from the late 20's until his death in 1972. Little is known about Scharoun outside his native land as he remained there throughout World War II. His greatest work is undoubtedly the Berlin Philharmonie, opened in 1973. His other major works, completed after his death, are the Berlin State Library, the Maritime Museum at Bremerhaven, and the theatre at Wolfsburg, all faithfully executed under the direction of Scharoun's assistant Edgar Wisniewski. This talk was recorded in 1979. P7912

In step with planning in China, by Walter Bor

 Shenzhen Library. Photo © Walter Bor and Llewelyn Davies Planning

The late Walter Bor, born in Czechoslovakia, lived in the UK from 1939. He studied architecture at Prague University and at Cambridge, and then town planning at London University, qualifying in 1947. He worked as a city planner for the London County Council from 1947-62, then as Liverpool City Planning Officer from 1962-66; after which he was in private practice as Partner in Llewelyn Davies Weeks Bor until 1976, and thereafter as Senior Consultant to Llewelyn Davies Weeks and Llewelyn Davies Planning. In 1963 he was President of the Royal Town Planning Institute and in 1975 he received the award of Commander of the British Empire. He lectured and taught at London University, Princeton and Nice, and was the author of many articles on urban planning and city development, as well as of the much-translated book The making of cities (1970). Projects with which he was associated during the 70s and 80s included Milton Keynes new town, two new cities in Venezuela, the development plan for Bogota, and the Nicosia master plan; then he became adviser to the Shenzhen Urban Planning Commission in the People's Republic of China. It is this last project which he discussed in his recorded talk. This talk was recorded in 1988. P8804

The AA School and projects, by Alvin Boyarsky

 AA bar, 1983 Photo © AA Slide Library

The Architectural Association School of Architecture in London is unlike any other school of architecture in the world. Brought into being in 1847 by a number of students, it continues to this day its tradition of self-directed education. It has no curriculum but is organised on the basis of teachers who offer projects and students who choose to work for them from an appetite for the activities programmed. The teachers, none of them tenured, are people well-known and active in the field of ideas etc. There are lectures and seminars all day and every day, and exhibitions and a publishing house to disseminate all this to a wider audience. The School has a truly international intake of students and staff and is today London's gathering-place and social centre for architecture. In 1971, however, when this remarkable School had been about to close down for reasons beyond its control, a small band of committed architects and students formed a new constitution involving the wishes of the school community as a whole. Their selected new Chairman was the Canadian Alvin Boyarsky, graduate of McGill and Cornell, who had once taught at the School but had left to become Dean of the College of Architecture and Art at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. He had already demonstrated the necessary expertise at his two highly successful International Institute of Design Summer Schools in London in 1970 and 1971. He set the AA School in a new direction from which it has not looked back and he says in his recorded talk, "It is possible for a school of architecture to rise above the everyday business of training to involve itself in the history of ideas and the formulation of new concepts." This talk was recorded in 1985. P8512

Unique housing models, by Neave Brown

 Alexandra Road, London NW Photo © Julian Feary

The architect Neave Brown, born 1929, qualified at the AA School of Architecture and worked with Lyons Israel & Ellis for three years. But the peak period of his life was when he worked for the London Borough of Camden and was selected to design and build the huge Alexandra Road housing estate, against enormous political opposition. The prototype for this and all the other schemes he describes in this recording, was a terrace of identical houses he built for himself and four friends. These are structured in section and in plan responding to the priority of sequences of privacy and public life. All his work is dominated by strong ideas of social structuring and the recognition of the inter-related identity of all the pieces in a project, while at the same time solving the problem of architectural and urban composition His talk is equivalent to a primer in how to design housing at any scale. This talk was recorded in 1999. P9903

Shopping Mall: Kingston, Surrey, by Building Design Partnership

 Main entrance to mall from outside and from inside.

 Photo © Dennis Gilbert.

The Bentall Centre which encloses the mall is in Kingston, Surrey. To build it involved demolition and some preservation as well as the new building. It was a fast-track construction programme executed under a management contract over five years, and was completed in November 1992, on time and on budget. The recording was made in the London office of Building Design Partnership. Taking part in the discussion were BDP's partner in charge Richard Allen, project architect William Morwood, structural engineer Don Peachey, services engineer David Murrell, and lighting specialist Barry Wilde; together with quantity surveyor Mike Sullivan (Ryder Hunt & Partners) and project manager Paul Young (Mowlem Management). They follow each phase of the building's progress, from the brief, through the design and construction processes, to eventual completion.This talk was recorded in 1992. P6002

Poetic Structures, by Felix Candela

  Olympic Sports Palace, Mexico. Architects: Candela, E Castaneda & A Peiri. Photo © FELIX CANDELA

In October 1992, the late Felix Candela was invited to London by the British Cement Association to talk at the RIBA about his work. Extracts from this comprise the PAV recordings. Introducing him, Prof Happold said: �In the 60's and 70's Candela's thin shell structures in Mexico demonstrated a mastery of daring and imagination, built in an economical way and designed for minimum cost.He was a pioneer in developing geometrics which, e.g. the hyperbolic parabola, were easier to build than most shell structures of the time. Born in Madrid, Candela trained as an architect, graduating in 1936. After serving in the Republican army he escaped to Mexico. There he worked as a designer and constructor and since then in various universities. He was the Charles Elliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard in 1961 - 62. His list of honours and awards is enormous and worn with typical modesty... Among them Gold Medallist of the Inst. of Structural Engineers (UK). A transcript will be incorporated with this talk shortly.
This talk was recorded in 1992. P9402

An Internationalised Tradition In Architecture, by Rifat Chadirji

 National Bank of Abu Dhabi HQ, 1970. Photo © R. CHADIRIJI.

The Iraqi Rifat Chadirji was born in Baghdad and trained as an architect at Hammersmith School of Arts and Crafts, London, qualifying in 1952. On returning to his own country he set up the practice Iraq Consult of which he is still president. Between 1954-63 he also held a number of top government posts and from 1980-82 he was in charge of a massive conservation and development program for Baghdad. His work - including public and private building large and small - has been widely exhibited in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and has won numerous awards. In 1986 he received the Chairman's Award of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Since 1982 he has been dividing his time between the USA, where he has been a Visiting Scholar at both Harvard and MIT, and England, where he is preparing future books. Already published are several in Arabic and �Concepts and influences: towards a regionalised international architecture�, London, KPI, 1986, in English. In his recorded talk he covers much the same ground as in the latter book but with greater accent on his own work in Iraq. His thesis, that form is determined by the interaction of social technology and social need, offers a different approach to the usual historical analysis of architecture. He argues that architecture's future lies in lessons learned from the past, from man's way of dealing with regional variations in nature and in his means of production.This talk was recorded in 1988. P8800

Environmental Design is Our Task, by Serge Chermayeff

 Alexandra Road housing, London NW3, by Neave Brown (Borough of Camden). Photo © NEAVE BROWN

 

The late Serge Chermayeff was born in Russia and educated in Britain where he became a British subject and practised architecture before World War Two. But in 1940, he emigrated to the USA, became an American citizen and devoted his life to teaching environmental design. Many of to-day's leading architects have emerged from his courses benefited by his informed, analytical and incisive approach. First he was at Brooklyn College, NY. Then, in the 1940's, he went to work with Gropius at Harvard. In the 1960's, he joined Paul Rudolph at Yale where he remained until his retirement in 1970 with the title Professor Emeritus. At which point he felt free to travel and study planning in far-flung countries. All this he describes in his recorded talk. And he concludes: "As a teacher, my subject has always been 'environmental design', not 'architecture'. The experience gave me a clear view that professional involvements are not anything that can be frozen. They are constantly changing, growing, adjusting - a natural process, a constant inter-action between environment and the function. Nothing is ever finished, particularly in relation to planning. Everything obsolesces". Gropius once wrote to his students to the following effect: "Don't think that when you have done something it is of importance. Because what is important is that the thread of action behind your action will be picked up by somebody else. Your worth will be the judgement of those who pick up your work and carry it further".This talk was recorded in 1980. P8017

Aspects of Abstraction, by David Chipperfield

 Shop for Kyoto in London, 1990. Photo © ALBERTO PIOVANO

David Chipperfield, born in 1953, trained as an architect at Kingston Polytechnic and the A.A., before working for Richard Rogers and Norman Foster. In 1955 he started his own practice in London and in 1987 he opened an office in Tokyo. In the catalogue of a recent exhibition of his work, Rik Nijs writes: "The search for essential qualities is a major characteristic in David Chipperfield's work"? The density of light; the landscape and its visual integration; the dilution of the boundaries between in- and outside; the expressive potential of materials; technical simplicity and craftsmanship." Chipperfield himself affirms that a search for these basic qualities "is the cornerstone of his approach to architecture: qualities which transcend style, which demand that architecture does not get in the way". He has just won the 2007 Stirling Prize.This talk was recorded in 1992. P9203

Layering and Change, by Peter Cook

 Museum, Langen near Frankfurt 1986, with Christine Hawley

Photo © PETER COOK

Peter Cook, erstwhile partner in the well-known Archigram group, graduated from the Architectural Association in 1960. He has been on the staff of the AA since 1960 and guest professor at many international universities; and since 1984 he has headed the Architectural Department of the State Art Academy (Stadelschule) in Frankfurt. As a result there has been much interaction between all his students - also staff - from the various educational bodies including North East London Polytechnic's Architecture Dept presided over by his present partner Christine Hawley. Cook and Hawley have won many prizes and their designs have been exhibited and published worldwide. But it is only now that they have any work under construction - a housing block in Berlin. In his recorded talk Peter Cook discusses recent work and continues to be preoccupied with change and metamorphosis, layering, conditions of translucency and transparency. He does not see architecture pragmatically or spatially or organisationally with hard lines between. ‘So , although most of the projects start from a base of a grid or a series of grids, the edges then melt and they lap over one another'. Projects act as generators for subsequent projects as he tried to discover ‘a sort of rhetorical architecture'.
This talk was recorded in 1988. P8807

Melting Architecture, by Peter Cook

 Arcadian city, 1977, Sleek building, 1978. Photo © PETER COOK

Peter Cook, a founder member of the legendary group Archigram, practises in London with Christine Hawlet. He has taught, published and exhibited round the world, has won competitions and judged others. In his talk, Peter Cook traces the development of his work since 1964 to the Arcadian City project which has preoccupied him most recently. His exquisitely drawn illustrations are as witty as they are searching.
This talk was recorded in 1979. P7904

Form follows climate, by Charles Correa

 ECIL office building. Photo © CHARLES CORREA

Best known for his planning proposals for New Bombay, Charles Correa has practised architecture in India since 1958, and has received many awards and international recognition for his work. In the large variety of his projects there has always been a special emphasis on the crucial issue of climate control To build in India, he says in his recorded talk, is to respond to climate, as it has never been possible to squander the kind of money and energy necessary to air-condition a building under the tropical sun. He sees this as an advantage because it means that the building itself, through its configuration, must provide the controls that the user needs. This kind of climate control involves the section, plan, shape, and very heart of the building; even generating new lifetyles in the necessary inventiveness. He uses examples of his own work as well as ancient designs to illustrate the points he makes. He thinks that the energy crisis could well produce a response to climate that will give architecture the structure it so urgently needs.This talk was recorded in 1980. P8010

An Australian Architecture, by Philip Cox

 Joondalup; Railway Station; Western Australia; Photo © COX ARCHITECTS

The architect Philip Cox was born in 1939 and studied at Sydney University. Having started his own practice in 1967, the firm is now one of the biggest and best in Australia, with 10 partners and offices throughout the country. Cox grew up at a time when there was a swing away from European influence, a return to nationalism and a seeking of Australian identity, and this has remained his aim. As he says in his recorded talk, "We're trying to develop an architecture which is distinctively Australian, responding to the landscape, to the country's past, and to the various attitudes of what Australians thought", and to produce an architecture "that is different from elsewhere". His was one of the first practices in Australia to recognise their Aboriginal heritage,as well as the importance of the vernacular. Being commissioned to design the Yulara tourist resort at Ayers Rock was his first real test in determining an Australian identity. More difficult in these terms were the many sports centres he has undertaken. But here he says that they fitted not only the aesthetic and cultural side but also the economical and political sides of the equation. The centres in Sydney and Perth which he illustrates, exploring the minimalist use of steel, are beautiful examples. With public housing he always delights in finding solutions which give a better life to people, providing them with identity, self-esteem, privacy and some sort of expression of the human spirit. As well as endeavouring in his work to do something "perhaps more socially responsible and inspirational" and to continue an expression of structural exploration and elegance, the uppermost issue for Cox is to represent Australia in its minimal cultural sense, its response to Nature being the most important thing. This talk was recorded in 1995.  P9501

The Integration of the Arts, by Theo Crosby

 Richard Lippold sculpture in Lincoln Center, New York.                             Photo © THEO CROSBY

The late Theo Crosby - architect, sculptor, designer, author, editor - was a partner in the London multi-design firm Pentagram. He fought throughout his working life for the integration of the arts, the subject of his recorded talk. He says: 'Early modern buildings often contained a great deal of art. New modern buildings invariably have none'. Seeking the reason, he finds 'roots in the nineteenth century and implications that illuminate many contemporary attitudes.' For example, the Foreign Office in London which he has recently been examining is 'an exercise by a superb professional' (Gilbert Scott). 'The sculptures play two roles in the building ... as physical ornaments ... but they also carry a load of meanings and ideas which make the reading of the building more interesting'. This sort of approach was discarded by the Modern Movement in the 20th century. The idea of integration was replaced by the idea of confrontation, the work of art now standing in isolation from the building. But, pleads Crosby, art is cheap at the moment and 'an architect can very easily gather around him a team of artists, a great variety of capabilities which he can use of make a truly unique work'. This talk was recorded in 1979. P7911

Wood and Water, by Sylvia Crowe

 The wrong kinds of forest. Photo © Sylvia Crowe

The late Sylvia Crowe was among the most respected of Britain's landscape architects. Trained in horticulture before World War Two, she set up in private practice in 1945 in time to landscape the English new towns Harlow and Basildon. The designs she executed thereafter were generally on a large scale, such as the Commonwealth Park in Canberra, master plans for English new towns (Washington and Warrington), coastal reclamation, the setting for nuclear power stations and reservoirs. She was landscape consultant to the Forestry Commission for 14 years, and was the author of half a dozen books on landscape. She received many awards including that of Dame of the British Empire, and she held a number of high offices including that of President of the Institute of Landscape Architecture (UK), and was a founder member of the International Federation of Landscape Architecture. For her recorded talk she concentrated on the landscaping of forests and reservoirs, showing several of her projects and discussing the related problems she encountered. Not least has been to reconcile the landscape, with all its treasures and all the beauty of the past, with the new town-bred population who swarm over the country and need to be educated to respect what they have come to enjoy. “We are trying" she says “to make again a land which people can enjoy, a land, too, where wild life can flourish”. This talk was recorded in 1988. P8801

Red House to Ronchamp (in 3 parts), by Edward Cullinan

 Martin House, 1904; Frank Lloyd Wright. Interior and exterior.                   Photo © World Microfilms Publications

Edward Cullinan, RIBA Gold Medal Award winner in 2007, was born in 1931. He trained at Cambridge, the Architectural Association and Berkeley before starting to practice in 1957. His office is run as a co-operative. He has taught in England and North America, and his projects have been widely published and exhibited and have received a number of awards. His architecture has firm roots in the Modern movement, both in its design philosophy and in its sense of social responsibility. But he stresses simplicity of technique rather than of form, believing that it is the expression of its construction that gives a building its meaning. The clarity of the thinking behind his own designs is apparent in his recorded 3-part presentation of architectural development between about 1850 and 1960. He looks at the period not as traditional history but through the ideas that informed certain key buildings, seen against their social background and studied through the eyes of an architect and builder. His aim has been to develop a clear description of a few simple ideas and one dominant one, the interconnection of spaces and places. Three-part presentation: Part 1: 1850-1895, P8310; Part 2: 1900-1910, P8311; Part 3: 1920-1960, P8312.This talk was recorded in 1983. P8311

Creative conservation, by Trevor Dannatt

 Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Surrey. Photo © Courtesy Trevor Dannatt & Partners

 Trevor Dannatt was born and reared in Greenwich in a local family steeped in architecture and building. He trained at the then Regent Street Polytechnic where one of his tutors was Peter Moro who remained a life-long colleague. He joined him in 1948 to work on the Royal Festival Hall in London, under Leslie Martin. In 1952 he started his own practice with Colin Dollimore. He has since fathered many university buildings, housing, schools, etc. in Britain; though his best known work in the '60s was the conference centre, hotel and mosque in Riyadh, won in competition. However, in his talk he is mainly concerned with the conservation and change of use of buildings which are national monuments, notably the Royal Naval College at Greenwich. He is a dedicated professional who strives he says, 'for an organic entity which is the essential basis of architecture'. He is consistent in his control of form, detail, materials and relation to environment. This talk was recorded in 1992. P9902

Intelligent Buildings, by Mike Davies

 Willis Faber building, Ipswich, Photo © MIKE DAVIES AND RICHARD ROGERS PARTNERSHIP (Bottom), JOCELYNE VAN DEN BOSSCHE

The British architect Mike Davies studied architecture at the AA School of Architecture and at UCLA. While in Los Angeles he was a partner in Chrysalis, a multi-disciplinary design practice. In 1972 he joined Piano & Rogers to work on the Centre Pompidou and Pierre Boulez's IRCAM. He has remained with Rogers and is a director of the Richard Rogers Partnership in London. He has taught at many schools of architecture in Europe, Asia and America. His passion is astronomy and making telescopes and visiting the world's largest ones. His speciality in the partnership being the impact of technology on buildings, he describes its development through time, leading to the sophisticated building energy management systems of today (as in the Lloyds of London building). The climax is a new development for façades of building, an electrochromic panel which changes its transparency and transmission properties under the control of a very small electric current. He envisages that its use, combined with the present energy management systems will lead to the production of the intelligent building.
This talk was recorded in 1987. P8711

Architecture and Human Needs, by Giancarlo De Carlo

 UrbinoUniversity Photo © GIANCARLO DE CARLO

An architect of social commitment, "Giancarlo De Carlo is constantly looking for new ways and new forms with which to answer today's problems... He has become one of the most articulate polemicists in the whole of Western Europe... He wants to build for the individual so as to give him a sense of value in his everyday existence... He is an inspiring teacher." (John Furse, "Contemporary Architects". Macmillan 1980.) De Carlo himself says "You do not solve the problems of society with grand gestures; but multiple small things can solve some problems of society." Recipient of the British Royal Gold Medal in 1993, he is best known for the work he has been carrying out for both the town and university of Urbino, and he discusses this and other work in his recorded talk.
This talk was recorded in 1994. P9401

The Great Court, by Spencer De Grey (Foster)

 Education Department below the Great Court Photo © RICHARD DAVIES

Norman Foster's partner, Spencer de Grey, talks about a major project in his charge, the transformation planned for the British Museum after the British Library moved out to new premises at St Pancras. The Foster scheme provides a major new heart to the building and a clear pattern of movement for the first time in the Museum's 150 years of existence. De Grey did his architectural training at Cambridge. After a two-year break in Canada, and a period of work with the London Borough of Merton, he joined Foster and worked on a number of their well-known buildings, such as the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank and Stansted Airport. In 1982 he became a partner and has since controlled schemes such as the Sackler Galleries and the recently completed Law Faculty in Cambridge. The BM project not only considers the transformation of the building itself but also the impact of the Museum to north and south, with the creation of a public route right through the building which remains open until late in the evening. The exemplar is the Galleria in Milan which links key parts of the city centre and is very much a social focus for people. This talk was recorded in 1996. P9603

A Gateway for Venice, by Jeremy Dixon & Edward Jones

 Venice Bus Station . Photo © DIXON JONES

Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones trained at the A.A. and worked together in the 1970's but only resumed partnership in 1989 in London. In the meantime they had separately won open international competitions, Jones the Mississauga City Hall in Ontario (completed 1987) and Dixon the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1983, which they are both now working with BDP. In 1981 they won the international competition for the Venice Bus Station, "A Gateway for Venice". In their recording, which is in the form of a dialogue, they use this scheme as a vehicle to express some of their ideas such as "We like to work by finding practical reasons for everything that could be turned to poetic ends - the way buses move, the way people move.."; "Harnessing the banal through a geometry to transform it into some more interesting possibility."
This talk was recorded in 1992. P9206

Architecture Through the Lens, by John Donat

 Island Church of Holy Cross, Photo © JOHN DONAT

John Donat started life as an architect and has become, without training but through experience, Britain's best known architectural photographer. As a student, he was surprised to discover that the then-fashionable black and white photography in no way conveyed the reality of buildings he later visited. As a result, his own pictures always try to show a building in its context and inhabited by people. He believes that anyone who has seen one of his pictures and then visits the building should feel they have been there already. If someone sees one of his pictures and says "what a marvellous building" it is a good photograph. If they say "what a marvellous photograph" it is a failure. The content, the objective, has become subservient to the ego and imagery of the photographer. Patience, and the capacity to take care, are qualities he reveals as he describes how he has solved some of his photographic problems. He stresses that it is not equipment that takes photographs, but the human eye: the heart, mind, skill, observation and compassion of the photographer. This talk was recorded in 1980. P8006

Identity for Indian Architecture, by Balkrishna Doshi

 Doshi residence, Ahmedabad Photo © VASTU SHILPA

Doshi is a truly architectural architect, one of the best alive today. He had worked with Le Corbusier on his Indian buildings before starting to practise in Ahmedabad 25 years ago, and learned from him how to use space, form and light. He extended his feeling for the interplay of these three ingredients of his art while working with Louis Kahn on the Institute of Management in his city. But he has always striven to achieve more than that. His search has been for a building form closer to Indian sensibility, reflecting the elusive synthesis of structure, form, space and symbolic value which make up the old Indian buildings he has tirelessly studied. How he has succeeded can be seen in his work which uses traditional patterns of settlement and construction to provide a language for his design, producing a flowing continuity of volumes and spaces. In his role as founder and Dean of the Centre for Environmental Design and Technology in Ahmedabad, he attempts to further his concern for the everyday problems of architecture and planning, and the relevant skills of vernacular building. This talk was recorded in 1980. P8020

An Act of Dissimulation, by Peter Eisenman

 Ohio State Visual Art Centre Photo © EISENMAN ROBERTSON

Peter Eisenman was born in New Jersey and studied atchitecture at Cornell University (1951-55), Columbia University (1959-60) and Cambridge, England (1966-63). He taught at Cambridge until 1967, then at Princeton for a year, followed by brief spells at Cooper Union, NY, the American Academy in Rome and the University of Maryland, and then at Harvard. But it was as founder-director of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, from 1967-82, that he had the greatest influence. It provided a forum for discussion and became the most public and polemic voice on the East coast, extending its influence through its learned magazine "Oppositions", launched in 1973, which Eisenman edited during the decade of its existence, as well as through its monthly newspaper "Skyline". Eisenman ran his own practice during these years and exhibited in, or organised exhibitions in the USA, Italy and England dealing with urban design and renewal, housing, Rationalism, drawing, as well as showing the houses he has designed. In his recorded talk he says that, whereas Post Modernism simulates a fervour for simulation and a return to history, he seeks to create a "topos", a place for invention, not representing anything, just being. He illustrates this with his most recent work, the building won in competition for the Ohio State Visual Art Center in Columbus, Ohio. This project, he says, invents its origins, its site, its program, even its history, thus being an act of dissimulation; and it invents its own representation, thus becoming a text, a record of its own history, the history of the act of making the architecture. The talk was recorded in 1985. This talk was recorded in 1985. P8504

20th Century Landscape, by Michael Ellison

 General Motors technical centre, Warren, Detroit, by Eero Saarinen, Thomas Church and Alexander Calder. Photo © Michael Ellison

Michael Ellison, who at the time of this talk was President of the Landscape Institute in the UK, wanted to be an architect but, believing that "the way you group things is much more important than individual objects", he became a landscape architect after training at London University's planning school, but he retains an abiding interest in architecture. His work experience has included a year with RMJM's York University team, a short period on the landscape team at Wisconsin University, and up to 4 years on the CLC's Expanded New Towns programme, before he joined the British government's Property Services Agency in 1978. Recently the Agency passed into the hands of Tarmac Ltd where at the time of this talk he was building up an in-house team and attaching small practices to the Agency project by project.
His recorded talk is full of amusing asides and anecdotes and is an account of visits to some of his favourite parks and gardens, notably in Holland. UK, Denmark, Germany and the USA. This talk was recorded in 1995. P9503.

A More Plastic Form, by Terry Farrell

 TV am, London NW1. Photo © R. BRYANT

Terry Farrell, born just before World War II, received his education as architect and planner at Durham University and the University of Pennsylvania then worked in the USA and England before becoming partner with Nick Grimshaw in the Farrell/Grimshaw Partnership* in 1965. This partnership was dissolved in 1980, since when Farrell has headed the Terry Farrell Partnership based in London. He has taught and lectured in Britain, America and Germany, has written in many leading architectural magazines, and is hailed as Britain's leading Post Modernist. His work has taken on, he says, a more plastic form since 1980 as can be seen in the buildings he describes in his recorded talk ranging from curvaceous plastic greenhouses to fanciful interiors, from simple houses and small factories to sleek industrial buildings, culminating in the most notorious building of the 80's in London, the building for the new independent breakfast-TV organisation, "TV-am". Of this creation the client stated publicly "Terry created something out of nothing - out of a grotty nineteenth century garage in Camden backland. He has rediscovered delight." See also hi earlier 1983 talk "Transport and Urban Design". *The work done by the F/G Partnership is described by Nick Grimshaw in his 1979 talk INDUSTRIAL ARCHITECTURE (P7906).
This talk was recorded in 1983. P8306

Transport and Urban Design, by Terry Farrell

 Climatron. Photo © TERRY FARRELL & PARTNERS

In his recorded talk (see also his earlier recording 'A more plastic form' P8303), Terry Farrell concentrates on that aspect of his work to do with transportation systems and their connectedness to other parts of the cites they are in, and how this can be improved by their design. He describes work already completed and work as yet incomplete or still on the drawing board at the time of the recording. Farrell has always been fascinated by the problems of transportation, even for his student thesis; and he tells us of later ideas he has promoted: for linking railway stations across the River Thames, for example, so as to provide double access for passengers. He is a great proponent of travel for pleasure and in this category we have the huge symbolic structure he was completing on Hong Kong's 'Peak', reached by a cable-drawn tram much enjoyed by tourists. Also for Hong Kong is the Kowloon railway station which will rise on reclaimed land and will connect to the new airport, the Metro and local lines. But the most integrated piece of transportation design that he has been involved in is for a transport centre for Seoul airport, the arrival and departure point for all passengers by whatever method of transport, and is highly specialised in its relationship with air travel. Terry Farrell received his architecture education at Durham University and the University of Pennsylvania. Before setting up his own practice in London he was in partnership with Nicholas Grimshaw from 1965-1980. He is a master of three-dimensional planning and has built many very large scale buildings in Britain.
This talk was recorded in 1996. P9604

A tale of two cities, by Kathryn Findlay

 Amenity Centre, Kasahara. Photo © Katsuhisa Kida.

After graduating from the AA, the Scottish born architect Kathryn Findlay spent 20 years in Japan. In 1987 she set up in partnership there with Eisaku Ushida. Now she is back in London, faced with the switch in cultures and its influence on her work. The Japanese, she says, see the creation of space as a total design involving all the senses. "What is solid and what is temporary becomes much more gradual and fused, and begins to make you more aware of invisible forces, energy, factors that create spaces." Curvilinear, fluid and flowing forms are the basis of most of Ushida Findlay's work, merged with spiral geometry into one organic object. Continuous primary surfaces link the interior and exterior of a house whose shape is formed around a meandering route generated by the circulation system. Large spaces may dissolve into smaller spaces and merge into the landscape. Familiar materials are used in unfamiliar ways to give a twist to the sense of reality. The invisible is made tangible. Such concepts are illustrated in the projects described by Kathryn Findlay in her recorded talk. This talk was recorded in 2002. P0203

The Idea of Design, by Alan Fletcher

 Symbol for Stravinsky festival. Photo © PENTAGRAM

Alan Fletcher, one of Britain's top graphic designers, was an art student in London in the 50's. But it was not until he studied and worked in the USA that he found his vocation. This in time led to his becoming design consultant to the Time Life group in London. At this point he also teamed up with Colin Forbes and Bob Gill to form the immediately successful partnership Fletcher Forbes & Gill. Later Gill left and the architect Theo Crosby' and the product designer Kenneth Grange' joined them, and the group changed its name to Pentagram and was able to offer a much enlarged range of services. They have numbered most of the world's prestigious industrial companies among their clients. In Fletcher's recording he is concerned with taking out of context the essential idea of his designs. Graphic design being a method of communicating ideas to people, he describes and illustrates many ways in which he has done this, demonstrating his fertile and innovative approach. This talk was recorded in 1987. P8700

Vodafone World Headquarters, by Michael Fletcher & Keith Priest

 Aerial photo of site Photo © FLETCHER PRIEST

For Michael Fletcher and Keith Priest, one of the interesting parts of architecture is the sheer number of things that are involved apart from the design process. They discuss this in the recorded talk about their project for the headquarters for Vodafone, the largest mobile phone company in the world, whose new offices occupy a 30-acre site outside Newbury, a small town west of London. 3500 people have moved there from their previous accommodation in 54 separate buildings in the town, with a company bus service assuring them of continuing connection to the town. The development of the site includes the restoration of a former forest as well as design of the bus system - not to mention considerations of sustainability. All come within the architect's domain. Fletcher and Priest have been practising together in London since 1980, after training at the AA and working with Wolff Ollins on the corporate identity of large organisations.
This talk was recorded in 2001. P2001

Conserving Energy In Building, by Max Fordham

 Sir Joseph Banks building, Kew Gardens, Surrey. Photo © Max Fordham & Partners

Max Fordham is senior partner of Max Fordham & Partners, a practice involved in many award-winning designs. Educated at Cambridge (physics) and the National College of Heating and Ventilation Engineers, he then worked with Weatherfoil and Ove Arup & Partners before setting up his own practice in London in 1966. He is a Chartered Engineer, has published many papers, teaches at the AA School, and is a Visiting Professor at Bath University. The amount of light and heat inside a building is one of the main things that affect the amount of energy used by the building. How to control and conserve these under different circumstances and climates and in different sorts of buildings is what concerns Fordham in this recorded talk. This talk was recorded in 1992. P9208

More with Less, by Norman Foster

 Willis Faber Dumas insurance HQ, Photo © FOSTER ASSOCIATES

Norman Foster and his wife/partner started practising architecture in 1962 with Richard Rogers (as 'Team 4'). Separating from him in 1967, they established Foster Associates and rose straight to the top of profession, winning the international Reynolds Aluminium Prize in both 1978 and 1979. The work of the practice has always shown a steady progression and development of ideas. Flexibility to accommodate change, the social implications of design, energy conservation and harvesting, the full integration of services, interior and furniture design, the application of new technologies in an appropriate way, and project management techniques have been developed through many buildings. There is continuing interest in the separation of the short-life systems or parts of a building from the long-life ones. The relationship between theory and design is a recurring theme. And the close collaboration with Buckminster Fuller (over the twelve years before this recording) in the USA and Europe further inspired the desire to do more with less in the search for higher performance solutions. In this context there has been an increasing tendency to utilise the potential of newer technologies, particularly the aerospace and automobile industries, but also shipbuilding.
This talk was recorded in 1979. P7913

Exploring the City, by Norman Foster

Foster: Commerzbank, Frankfurt / Stansted / Reichstag / Engadine House

In this abridged version of a talk given by Norman Foster at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University of London, on 15 June 2001, he explores his interests and identifies four themes: spaces and routes, lights and lightness, ecology, and density and sprawl. Using examples of the work of his practice to illustrate how these interweave, he goes into considerable detail in cases that range in scale from airport to a wind-turbine; from the plan of a whole section of a city to how to heat or cool a building The major proposition is about how seeking higher quality of urban life through higher densities liberates open space. And he concludes that "in terms of qualify of environment, those higher density settlements probably account for some of the most affluent areas on the planet”. This talk was recorded in 2001. Ref P0106

The Isms of Architecture, by Kenneth Frampton

 Piazza d'ltalia, New Orleans, Photo © C. MOORE

Peripatetic Ken Frampton, best known for his lectures and scholarly writing, is the author of "Modern architecture: a critical history" (Thames & Hudson, 1980). Trained as an architect at the AA School, London, he is Professor at the Graduate School of Architecture at Columbia University, N.Y., a Fellow of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, N. Y., and a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art, London, and various other universities. In his recorded talk, he categorises architecture today under five isms “ productivism, rationalism, structuralism, populism, and regionalism”. He does this, not only to put some order into the confusion of the present situation, but as a way of suggesting what might prove to be the most fertile method for continuing with architectural culture in the future. He thinks that productivism and populism, abundantly evident, and the spontaneous building production of our time, are somewhat incapable of significant elaboration. But rationalism and structuralism, though not extensively realised, are capable of constituting the basis of a critical regionalism open to endless creative development as the fundamental principle of architectural form. This talk was recorded in 1982. P8205

Learning from the Tropics, by Maxwell Fry

 Chandigarh - High Court by Le Corbusier. Photo © MONICA PIDGEON

The late Maxwell Fry - pioneer of the Modern Movement in architecture in Britain and Royal Gold Medallist- was working in West Africa in the Forties and Fifties with his wife/partner Jane Drew. New conditions made the traditional, annually-renewed, mud and thatch of African villages inappropriate. New materials had to be considered. They experienced for the first time the difficulty of protecting buildings from the sun, colossal heat, extreme humidity and near horizontal heavy rain. In the process of dealing with these and other problems, they developed a series of rule-of-thumb solutions which have since become the norm for tropical building. This produced a quite new kind of architecture that responded to tropical conditions, harnessing nature even for 'air-conditioning' a university library. In Chandigarh, where Fry and Drew worked with Le Corbusier in the Fifties, the same principles applied, except that here the sun proved a greater enemy than humidity. Additionally, there was a dust-laden breeze to contend with. Fry and Drew's recipe for a future in which energy sources are drying up is that we must learn to obey Nature's laws. 'We have come to the end of the era of the faceless box completely supplied with artificial climate and artificial light.
This talk was recorded in 1979. P7915

How Modern Architecture Came to England, by Maxwell Fry

 Ekco radio: Wells Coates. Photo © Maxwell Fry

The late Maxwell Fry began practising architecture in the early Thirties, a pioneer of the Modern Movement in Britain. Instrumental in engineering Walter Gropius' escape from Nazi Germany and bringing him to work in London, he designed with him a number of buildings before Gropius departed for America. Fry conveys in his recorded talk something of the excitement and optimism he and his colleagues experienced in the Thirties, with new materials coming on the market, and new ideas filtering from the Continent of Europe. He tells of the birth in 1928 of CIAM (Les Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne) and in 1934 of its British offspring the MARS Group (Modern Architectural ReSearch), and of their subsequent influence. This talk was recorded in 1980. P8000

The Story of a Quest, by R Buckminster Fuller

 The USA Pavilion at Expo 67 Montreal. Photo © R BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Richard Buckminster Fuller, who was born in 1895, committed himself in 1927 to the service of all humanity, especially ‘to reforming the human environment by developing tools which cope more effectively and economically with evolutionary challenges, in concert with the proposition that Nature is always giving off energiesa and is therefore continually transforming the environment'. He set out over half a century ago to discover ‘what one little individual by himself could do for humanity’. The present recording (distilled from a talk he gave at the International Design Conference at Aspen, Colorado, in June 1980) gives some idea of the breathtaking nature of this quest. He says that he now has ‘a large logistic control of environment all around the world’ by which we will be able ‘to phase out the use of fossil fuels and atomic energy’. And in the realm of construction: ‘There are already 200,000 geodesic domes around the world, most of them in places where no other structures would do at all. We are on the brink of being able to air-deliver domes wherever we want’, Like his early Dymaxion House, these will be self-sufficient autonomous units. ‘We have reached the dead end of the old way of building buildings’. After his talk Professor Fuller continued to travel the world, sharing his knowledge with whoever sought it. This talk was recorded in 1980. P8018

Counter Statements, by Frank Gehry

 Loyola Law School; downtown Los Angeles. Photo © FRANK GEHRY

Frank Gehry has lived in California since 1947, and practises and teaches architecture in Los Angeles. He likes to be involved with designing the less expensive kind of American housing, particularly the 'tract' house, i.e 'the 2-car single family plus swimming pool on its own 50 x 150 foot lot'. He approaches each work as a sculptural object, seeking to develop one aesthetic for the shell (or one building) and then making a counter-statement with another personal aesthetic - in other words, two personal styles in one building project. But the buildings must always fit into their neighbourhood. Recently he has also been concerned with the total physical separation of the various rooms or areas of a building. All the posturing and classification that's going on now in architecture - Post Modern, Late Modern, etc. - infuriates him. 'You can make gestures with anything' he says, and suits his work to his words. This talk was recorded in 1981.

P8106

Building Compound Shapes, by Frank Gehry

 Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles: Photo © FRANK GEHRY and ASSOCIATES INC.

Since PAV last recorded Frank Gehry his architectural language has developed enormously. Charles Jencks calls him "the Picasso of architecture, picking up one new idea after another." While James Steel says "he is the lodestone which others use to navigate whether in similar or opposite directions... Sometime muse to successive generation of architects". Gehry relates his individual style to strong personal links with the American art world. He fights against symmetry and is the master of unfinished surfaces, colliding geometries and dislocated shapes. But he is a maker of spaces first, sculpture second. In his recorded talk he states his delight in pursuing the idea of movement using inert materials to build compound shapes. Over the years he has learned how to perfect and, what is more, how to build them economically. It is a fascinating story. This talk was recorded in 1997. P9707

Architectural Constants, by Romaldo Giurgola

 Parliament House, Canberra, 1981-87 Photo © Mitchell & Giurgola

Romaldo Giurgola is an academician trained in Europe and reared in the Beaux Arts tradition. Born in Italy, he was educated in the University of Rome and then at Columbia, NY, and became an American citizen in 1958. He acknowledges a deep debt to his teacher Louis Kahn about whom he subsequently wrote a book. Since 1958 he has been in practice in Philadelphia and New York with Ehrmann Mitchell (Mitchell & Giurgola), winning many awards, and he has taught in many US universities and at the American Academy in Rome. In his recorded talk he speaks of his convictions about architecture and its four constants - the definition of place, space as a fundamental of architecture, the link with the past, and the aesthetic environment - and he illustrates these with some of his own work including the competition-winning Parliament buildings at Canberra. This talk was recorded in 1984. P8405

In Paris in the Twenties, by Erno Goldfinger

 Notre Dame de Raincy. Interior. Photo © Ernö Goldfinger.

Hungarian born Erno Goldfinger spent the formative years of his life in the Twenties in Paris. He moved to England in 1933 where he has re-mained ever since. He studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Students could form a 'commune' and choose a maitre. Goldfinger, on the advice of Le Corbusier who never taught, chose Auguste Perret who generously gave space to the atelier in his newly-built Palais de Bois. Even while studying, Goldfinger was designing furniture, interiors, exhibitions, and entering competitions, from 1925 to 1928 in partnership with Andre Sive. As in London later on, he was always involved in the promotion of modern art and architecture; and when the French branch of CLAM was formed, he became the Secretary. He counted among his friends Pierre Jeanneret, Jean and Andre Lurcat, Adolf Loos, Amedee Ozenfant, Charlotte Perriand, Georges Badovici (publisher of the influential "L'Architecture Vivante") Pierre Chareau, Max Ernst, Man Ray, and so on. His recorded talk gives a vivid picture of the architectural life in Paris. This talk was recorded in 1980.P8013

The Visual Solution, by Myron Goldsmith (SOM)

 Oakland arena and football/baseball stadium, 1962. Photo © SKIDMORE OWINGS and MERRILL

Chicago-born architect engineer the late Myron Goldsmith trained first at the Armor Institute of Technology, then at Illinois Institute of Technology under Mies van der Rohe. Later, after working as an engineer for several offices, followed by seven years in Mies' office from 1946-53, he went to the University of Rome to study under the engineer Pier Luigi Nervi. In 1955 he joined Skidmore Owing & Merrill where he was a partner from 1967 until his retirement in 1983. After 1961 he was Professor of Architecture at IIT's Graduate School of Architecture.. He acknowledged Mies and Nervi as the two greatest influences in his career. Both taught him that structure is the basis of architecture. From Mies he inherited structural purity. From Nervi he learned to shape structure to express the forces within. The work which Goldsmith did with both men proved to be the basis of his subsequent work with SOM where his input of ideas were often incorporated by other SOM designers. He was the recipient of many honours and awards and came to be known as a prime theorist of the Chicago school of thought. His skill as a sensitive architect is apparent in the illustrations he shows with his recorded talk, particularly with his more modestly-scaled buildings. He says that the goal in all his work had been to solve in a visual way the engineering problems. "The visual solution has always been uppermost". This talk was recorded in 1984.
This talk was recorded in 1984. P8406

Lutyens: Dream Houses, by Roderick Gradidge

 Orchards, Munstead, Surrey, 1897-9. Photo © GAVIN STAMP

Sir Edwin Lutyens was the last great architect of the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain. His vast output of over 300 buildings and projects showed a continuing devotion to traditional techniques of construction and borrowing from the past. There has recently been a revival of interest in his work, leading to an Arts Council Lutyens exhibition in autumn 1981 at London's Hayward Art Gallery. To coincide with this, PAV published three talks on Lutyens covering the span of his work. They are all by members of the organising committee of the exhibition. In the first talk, Roderick Gradidge (P8102) discusses Lutyens' great country houses built between 1889 and 1902. The second talk, by Peter Inskip (P8103), is devoted to the houses of 1900 to 1914. The third, by Gavin Stamp (P8104), concentrates on Lutyens' monumental work of the period 1912 to 1939 starting with Viceroy House in New Delhi. Roderick Gradidge, an architect in private practice, is the author of the a Lutyens monograph ('Edwin Lutyens, Architect Laureate' published by Allen & Unwin) as well as of the book 'Dream Houses' (Constable), a study of the early houses of Lutyens and his contemporaries. Gradidge is also one of the few architects privileged to have restored, altered and extended a Lutyens house (Fulbrook), an experience which gave him tremendous insight into Lutyens' immensely clever use of architectural forms. This talk was recorded in 1981 P8102

Context and Architecture, by Vittorio Gregotti

 University of Palermo. Chemistry department. Photo © GREGOTTI ASSOCIATI

The Italian architect Vittorio Gregotti graduated from Milan Polytechnic in 1952 and set up in practice. First it was with L.Meneghetti andG. Stoppino, then on his own, and since 1974 with P. Cerri and H. Matsui as Gregotti Associati in Milan. From 1964-78 he taught at Milan Polytechnic and since then he has been teaching at the School of architecture in Venice University. He was editor of "EdiliziaModerna" from 1962-64, co-editor of "Lotus" since 1974, and is currently editor of both "Casabella" and "Rassegna". He is the author of the books "Territorio dell'architettura" and "New directions in Italian architecture". Recent well-known works of his include the Rinascente in Milan 1970, the IACP Zen housing in Palermo 1970, the University of Calabria in Cosenza 1972-75, the Italian Cultural Institute in Tokyo 1980, and the University of Palermo. It is the University of Palermo that he uses to illustrate his recorded talk. It was the first application of his theory of design of the large-scale landscape and the relationship between architecture and its context. He defines context as everything that can be deduced about the formation of the site, i.e. the physical aspect of its history, the structural truth. In the University, the Greek culture of Sicily is reflected in its geometry; the Arabic architecture of Sicily is echoed in the simple exterior enclosure of a complicated interior with filtered daylight; and the reduced height of the building is used to measure or define the undulating terrain. The new and the context are irreconcilable but he expresses the characteristics of the particular context.
This talk was recorded in 1984. P8508

Industrial Architecture, by Nicholas Grimshaw

 Herman Miller Photo © JOHN DONAT

Nick Grimshaw set up in practice in London in 1965 with Terry Farrell as the Farrell / Grimshaw Partnership, and they immediately attracted attention with a tower of capsule bathrooms added to the back of a students' hostel in a Victoria building in London. They came to be numbered among the few outstanding young architects who combine in their work a high level of technological innovation with a fundamentalist attitude to problem-solving. Their commissioned work has fallen into most categories, but in his recorded talk, Grimshaw confines himself to the industrial side. He speaks about flexibility, amenity, environment, and the users, and he illustrates his themes with the work of his firm. This talk was recorded in 1979. P7906

Thirteen architectures, by Amancio Guedes

 Train Tower Photo © AMANICO GUEDES

Guedes is a man of many faces, many names. He says that Pancho Guedes is the inventor of all the art and architecture; Amancio Guedes is the spirit of Pancho Guedes; A. d'Alpoim Guedes is the real Guedes who was born Portuguese, educated in South Africa and lived and worked for 25 years in Mozambique before being forced into exile. He was Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. In Lourenco Marques, Guedes 'invented and built enough buildings to make up a good-sized city'. Everything he built was imaginative, economical, and had a strong presence. Now he has become a teacher whose self-appointed task is 'to explore the borders of architecture, to expand its territories, to illuminate the new lands and signpost them for his students and himself.' He says: 'I believe that buildings grow out of each other, that each artist invents his own precursors, that there is an incessant dialogue with many pasts'. 'I have worked in many styles simultaneously ... I have classified my architectural inventions into a number of families and filed them... into a catalogue of twenty five architectures . . . my Vitruvius Mozambicanus'. For his recorded talk he has chosen thirteen of these architectures: Stiloguedes. The American-Egyptian style. How Frank Lloyd Wright used to help me in the beginning. Bargains in a bush style. A collection of disparate churches. Grass houses. Temporary towers, slabs, and slices of street face. Buildings with walls twisting and turning this way and that. My arched and somewhat Roman manner. Parts of villages remembering other villages, far away in my mother country. Euclidian palaces. The passages, steps, places, squares and monuments of the imaginary city. Learning machines of all sizes. This talk was recorded in 1980. P8019

Perception and Realisation, by Kathryn Gustafson

Gustafson: Model, Morbas / Auditorium / Crystal Palace / Shell HQ   

Contemporary landscape architecture

The American-born Kathryn Gustafson went to art school in New York then trained in fashion before turning to landscape architecture which she studied in Versailles, France where she set up her own studio in 1979. At first her work was mainly in that country but now it has spread to Britain and the USA.

In her recording she talks about contemporary landscape, what that means, the methods she tries to work towards, and what she feels is important to establish in contemporary landscape. She aims to restore garden textures into her work - not just visual textures - and creates working layers topped by layers of concept and idea, to convey meaning.

She starts with words and issues, followed by sketches and clay models. From that point, plaster positives are made, the moulds are digitalised and, from them, working drawings are made.

Learning from the past is important but she does not try to recreate history. She concentrates on doing only built environments, leaving natural environments to the ecology specialist. A number of her projects illustrate her personal very perceptive sensitive aesthetic. Ref P9801

An architecture of abstraction, by Charles Gwathmey

 Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo © Dan Cornish/Esto Photographies Inc

American born Charles Gwathmey studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and at Yale between 1956 and 1962. In 1966 he set up in practice with George Henderson. Robert Siegel joined them in 1970, Henderson left the following year. Gwathmey, Siegel have received very many awards for their work, and Gwathmey himself has taught in most of the major architecture schools in the USA. He first became known internationally as one of the "Five Architects" in the exhibition of that name at Princeton, 1972, which subsequently travelled to Europe. Of late the partnership has been much in the public eye over its proposals for extending the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In his recorded talk, Gwathmey discusses the problems of designing an extension to such a masterpiece. Their scheme completes a 20-year cycle of work that began with the design of his parents' house. Gwathmey Siegel adhere to the ideas and aesthetic of Modernism but not to the dogma. In relation to painting they would like to be referred to as Cubist. Their architectural vocabulary is reductive and abstract, expressing Corbusian forms in an Americanised way, with exterior and interior space interspersed and overlaid, establishing a sensibility of place as opposed to object.
This talk was recorded in 1987. P8709

The Three Ways of Seeing the Built Environment, by John Habraken

 Areas under public control. Piazza San Marco, Venice. Early Italian painting. Photo © N J HABRAKEN

The Dutch architect N. John Habraken was born in Indonesia and trained at Delft University, where he also taught from 1958-60. After five years of practice in Holland he became Director of the Architects' Research Foundation (SAR) in Eindhoven. Concurrently he was Chairman of the Department of Architecture and Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Eindhoven's Technical University, until he left for America in 1975 to become Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at MIT, Cambridge, Mass, where he was still working in 1985. He is author of several books and many articles on urban design and mass housing, in which he proposed using prefabricated "support structures" which could be individually filled in and given identity by the users. It was to further these ideas that the SAR was formed. His studies have continued in America, and in his recorded talk he discusses the built environment and identifies the three ways in which it can be seen. One has to do with territorial order, one has to do with enclosure and resources, and one has to do with personal expression; three networks of social inter-connection that are inseparable and that need to be understood. This talk was recorded in 1985. P8503

The Roosevelt Memorial, by Lawrence Halprin

 Room 3 devoted to the war years. Photo © LAWRENCE HALPRIN

Lawrence Halprin won the competition for a Memorial to FDR in Washington DC some years ago, but it was actually realised and completed at the end of 1997. For the site alongside the Potomac River, LH's solution was, not a monument but a long processional experience stretching between Lincoln and Jefferson Monuments. The route is divided into four linked outdoor rooms, each devoted to one of FDR's terms in office, enclosed by a 12ft high granite wall which becomes the spine of the experience. On this wall are engraved quotations from FDR's Fireside Talks and hanging from it are sculptures and cascades of water. The 4000 stones of different size, shape and thickness that comprise the wall had each to be designed in clay before going through the complicated manufacturing processes leading to the final manageable sizes in granite. This is the second talk recorded by the Californian architect Lawrence Halprin (see P8206). This talk was recorded in 1997. P9701

The Ecology of Form, by Lawrence Halprin

 Manhattan Square Park, Rochester, New York. Photo © LAWRENCE HALPRIN

The plant world was the subject of Lawrence Halprin’s early studies at Cornell University before he came under the spell of Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin East, then moved to Wisconsin and eventually Harvard, under Gropius and Tunnard, to become a landscape architect. Since he started to practice in San Francisco in 1964, his work, especially the fountain plaza in Portland, Oregon, has been admired the world over. Recipient of innumerable awards, he is the author of many articles and several books of which "RSVP cycles" and "Taking Part" are the ones that best illuminate his methods of helping people to participate in the creation of their own environments. Halprin is profoundly influenced by the process by which natural environments arise. In his recorded talk, he explains how he translates this into our everyday lives, not by copying nature’s shapes and materials, but by producing abstractions of the processes. He endeavours to capture the essence of what the landscape, be it urban or rural, has to offer and, moreover, to create an environment that contributes to the creative enlargement of human life. This talk was recorded in 1982. P 8206

Nature Of Engineering (in 2 Parts), by Ted Happold

 Quba Mosque, Medina. Architect A. El Wakil. Photo © LOANED BY BURO HAPPOLD

This talk is in 2 parts: Part 1: The nature of engineering -- images 1-24; and Part 2: Engineering in nature -- images 25-48. The late Ted Happold, born in 1930, read geology at Leeds University. Then, after several years of on-site building experience, he returned to the University to study engineering. In 1957, he joined Ove Arup & Partners, engineers, but left for a spell in New York with Severud Elstad & Krueger. Back with Arup in 1961, he rose to become by 1967 Executive Partner of one of the three structural divisions. In 1971 Happold left Arup's and set up his own partnership named Buro Happold and based in Bath. This was because he had been offered a new Chair of Building Engineering at Bath University and the opportunity to develop a joint school of architecture and engineering. As he had for long been involved in education for the building industry, he happily accepted. The course is such a success that it has now added construction studies to the curriculum. He believes strongly that the building industry would be improved by such an amalgam of studies. Happold has played a leading role in many of the organisations concerned with structural matters both in the UK and internationally, and he is someone who really understands what architecture and design are about, for which reason no doubt he was elected a Royal Designer for Industry in Britain in 1983. The Institution of Structural Engineers, the professional body of which he was a member, several times honoured him with their awards and in 1986 voted him President. Both while at Arup's and later under his own name Happold has collaborated with very many outstanding architects including Richard Rogers to whom he had proposed that they enter the competition for the Pompidou Centre, joined by Renzo Piano and Peter Rice. Happold has always worked closely with Frei Otto, researching in the field of long-span structures, and they have carried out many seminal projects together in various parts of the world for which they have received awards. The two parts of Happold's recorded talk are complementary. They cover different ground but overlap in some of the illustrations described. The different aspects are distinguished by their titles. Structural engineering is primarily concerned with learning from nature about the forces of action, of wind or of people. It's also to do with the ecology, the characteristics of the available materials and the creative use made of them. All this Happold discusses at some length, illustrated by work in which he has been involved. The idea of designing like nature, he says, is probably our best chance of ensuring that what we do is compatible with nature. This talk was recorded in 1987. P8701

A Visual Eye, by Graham Haworth & Steve Tompkins

 Open air theatre, Regent's Park Photo © PHILIP VILE:

Graham Haworth and Steve Tompkins have been in practice together in London since 1991 and have been celebrated for their design of theatres (the Royal Court and the temporary Almeidas) and for housing completed for the Coin Street Community Builders. They try to keep their practice small and have won a number of awards as well as competitions, the most recent being for the Young Vic, London. When discussing their approach to architecture they say that they are “searching in an intuitive way for a language which engages people directly... building out of a very direct materiality with direct constructional techniques". "Buildings should be beautiful and fun” they say “as they are there to make life more enjoyable”. Now in their early 40's, Graham graduated from Cambridge University, Steve graduated from Bath University, and they met while working with Rab Bennetts in the late 80's. This talk was recorded in 2002. P0202

Visual Communication, by FHK Henrion

 For War Office, for liberation of Europe. Photo © FHK HENRION

The late German-born FHK Henrion, doyen of the British graphic designers, trained in Paris but was brought to England by the Crown Agent for the Colonies in the late 30's to design propaganda posters. Thereafter he remained in London, rising to the top of his profession. He has been President of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers, of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and of ICOGRADA (the International Council of Graphic Design Associations); Vice President of the Royal Society of Arts and Master of the prestigious Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry. He has received many awards, he has lectured widely in Europe and America, he has written books on design; and, in addition to the graphic design for which he is best known, he has designed exhibitions, sculpture, jewellery and product design. In his recording he describes his major work. He finds visual design a most fulfilling occupation, especially as it can do so much in explaining complex ideas in a simple way; and, he says, with the advance of electronic communication, the challenge of visual control, creativity, unity and continuity is enormous.This talk was recorded in 1987. P8703

A Quiet Technology, by Ron Herron

 Sets fit for the Queen', mid 70's Photo © RON HERRON

Londoner the late Ron Herron was best known as one of the famous Archigram group of architects of which he was a founder member in 1960 and with which he actively collaborated till the mid 70's. He worked with practices in the UK and America, and taught through the years in colleges in both countries. In 1977 he became a partner in Pentagram Design, London, but left in the early 80's to work with Derek Walker before setting up in his own practice. Archigram - representing the swinging 60's, youth culture, mobility, prefabrication, mass-media - has ceased to be influential. But its members, especially Peter Cook and Ron Herron, continued to produce visionary ideas and drawings. Herron's recorded talk traces the course of his thinking, through the days of his 'Tuned suburb' and 'Sets fit for the Queen', to his 1992 project, a rehearsal space for the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith in London, where he was able at last to put into effect some of the ideas that always preoccupied him. One of these ideas is the separation and identification of public and private spaces by the use of what he calls 'sets' which are changeable and thus under the user's control. Another is the use of today's available technology not only to 'tune' the building but also to make it moveable. He is fascinated by technology: not a technology that shouts at you but one that is going on behind the scenes. This talk was recorded in 1982. P8218

Reciprociy of Human Life and Habitat,by Herman Hertzberger

 Apollo Schools, Amsterdam Photo © HERMAN HERTZBERGER

Herman Hertzberger, born in Holland, graduated in architecture in 1958 at the Technical University of Delft, and has run his own practice ever since. He has been Professor of Architecture at his Delft 'alma mater' since 1970 and at the University of Geneva since 1986. He has also been visiting professor at many American universities over the years. From 1959-63 he was one of the group (with Aldo van Eyck and J. Bakema) which edited the important Dutch magazine 'Forum'. He has completed a great number of projects, among them the famous Central Beheer in Apeldoorn, the Vredenburg Music Centre in Utrecht, the Apollo Schools in Amsterdam, housing for the IBA, Berlin. These and other projects he described recently at a talk at the Architectural Association in London and the PAV recording is a condensed version of this talk, which accounts for the background sounds. Introducing him, Peter Buchanan said: 'Herman Hertzberger is one of the few architects whose work amounts to an oeuvre that is consequent... His work is full if ideas, full of commitments by the architect, something you can analyse and ponder over years. It has nothing to do with style or fashion, it's about life itself and the reciprocity of human life and habitat'. This talk was recorded in 1988. P 8806

Refining the Structure, by Antony Hunt

 British Antarctic base, Halley Bay Photo © PAT HUNT

Anthony Hunt, born in 1932 and trained as a structural engineer, is senior partner in the practice which he established in England in 1962. Having previously worked for the engineer Felix J. Samuely in London, he acknowledges how much he was influenced by him, and by Charles Eames and Konrad Wachsmann in America, as well as by high performance yacht designers. Hunt sees himself as providing a necessary challenge in the design process, and this he has done with leading architects like Foster Associates (IBM and Sainsbury Centre), Richard Rogers & Partners (Inmos), Michael Hopkins (Patera system and Schlumberger, Cambridge), to name but a few. He has been involved in projects of many types in the UK, France, Middle East and the USA. What interests him most in his work, he says in his recorded talk, is trying to refine things down, trying to join things beautifully, trying to use minimum structure in an elegant and clear way?. He describes how this was achieved in a number of the jobs on which he has worked.
This talk was recorded in 1986. P8612

Ritual and Transformation, by Hans Hollein

Hans Hollein, Viennese born and educated, continued his architectural studies in the USA during the 50's and then worked in Australia, South America, Sweden and Germany before starting to practise in his hometown. Here he was also Professor of Architecture at the Academy of Applied Art. He was for many years editor of the magazine “Bau”, actively criticising, in words, drawings and projects, the functionalism of the Modern movement, protesting that "everything is architecture” and that “we give back to man the joy of building”. Artist as well as architect, and leader of the avant-garde, he has lectured, worked and organised major exhibitions in his own and other countries. Among the awards he has received was the coveted Pritzker Prize in 1985.

In his designs he exaggerates the Viennese tradition for altering old meanings by means of new relationships, doing this with consummate skill and wit. He sees architecture as ritual - in addition to being a means of preserving body temperature - and he uses transformation, whether of size, scale, materials or function, as a basic design tool.

In his recorded talk, he enlarges on these ideas, illustrating them with some of his work, culminating in the beautiful art museum at Monschengladbach. This, his first large completed building, represents a synthesis of his thoughts. This talk was recorded in 1986. Ref P8604

Lutyens: The Metaphoric Castle, by Peter Inskip

 Great Dixter, Northiam, Sussex, 1910 Photo © P.INSKIP

Sir Edwin Lutyens was the last great architect of the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain. His vast output of over 300 buildings and projects showed a continuing devotion to traditional techniques of construction and borrowing from the past. There has recently been a revival of interest in his work, leading to an Arts Council Lutyens exhibition in autumn 1981 at London's Hayward Art Gallery. To coincide with this, PAV published three talks on Lutyens covering the span of his work. They are all by members of the organising committee of the exhibition. In the first talk, Roderick Gradidge (P8102) discusses Lutyens' great country houses built between 1889 and 1902. The second talk, by Peter Inskip (P8103), is devoted to the houses of 1900 to 1914. The third, by Gavin Stamp (P8104), concentrates on Lutyens' monumental work of the period 1912 to 1939 starting with Viceroy House in New Delhi. Peter Inskip, an architect in private practice, is the author of a Lutyens monograph (published in 1979 by Academy Editions) and of articles on Lutyens country houses and on English Renaissance architecture. He has taught architecture at several British universities. In his talk, he advances the view that Lutyens' houses are indeed metaphoric castles that are related to the site by the extension of the geometry of the house out to the garden, or by the treatment of garden elements as fictive fortifications to protect the houses against hostile surroundings.
This talk was recorded in 1981. P8103

Hunt The Symbol, by Charles Jencks

 Thematic house, London, UK, by Charles Jencks Photo © Charles Jencks

American Charles Jencks took degrees first in English in 1961 and then in architecture (BA and MA)at Harvard University before coming to Britain where he acquired a doctorate under Reyner Banham at London University's Bartlett School of Architecture. There followed a stream of books -- Meaning in Architecture, Architecture 2000, Modern Movements, Le Corbusier, and Adhocism. In the 70's, discerning a style breaking with the Modern movement, he named it Post Modernism and published a book and many articles describing its characteristics. He has since discerned, written and lectured worldwide about several other composite isms, and has become the most popular explainer of later 20th century styles. Now he looks for symbolism in architecture, something that used to be quite common in the West when religion held sway, but lacking in our present-day commercial and agnostic society. People like Venturi, he says, who support a symbolic architecture, believe in 'the decorated shed' where signs are added to a finished building. Whereas Jencks maintains that the structure, the construction, the history of the building, the desires of the inhabitant, should all be woven into a totality, using some kind of semantic language such as that provided by the five Orders of architecture. In his recorded talk, he describes how, in his own work, he has tried to order the building site and the different parts of the building into an overall story, so that one can walk through them and play the game of Hunt the Symbol.
This talk was recorded in 1985. P8510

Forms Follow Function, by Eva Jiricna

 Joseph Tricot shop, Draycott Ave. Photo © Martin Charles

Eva Jiricna was born in Czechoslovakia and studied architecture in Prague, first at the University from 1956-62, then at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1963-67, while teaching at the University and then at the Institute of Industrial Design. In 1968 she came to London where she qualified to practise in Britain. She spent one year in the GLC schools division, then joined the Louis de Soissons Partnership to work 11 years on Brighton Marina, designing viaducts, land reclamation, breakwaters, housing schemes, locks, and whatever is related to large marinas?. There followed a couple of years in partnership with David Hodges and three years as team-leader with Richard Rogers designing before she set up her present partnership Jiricna Kerr Associates in 1985. Though a highly-trained and experienced architect, it is as an interior designer that she has acquired international fame, particularly for the beautiful shops, restaurants and flats she has done in London for Joseph Ettedgui. Yet, as she says in her recorded talk, this has been a completely unexpected development in her career. The most modest of people and totally committed to architecture, she does not pretend any high-flown philosophical approach to her work, maintaining that it is from her function as architect interpreting the client's brief that her designs evolve. This talk was recorded in 1986 P8616

Future Realities, by John Johansen

 Inflated bubble. Close view of the model. Photo © MONICA PIDGEON

John Johansen has been practicing and teaching architecture in the USA ever since World War II and is famous for his Oklahoma Theatre Center (see his 1983 Pidgeon Digital talk "Ad Hoc Architecture", P8306), which was completed in 1983. But in recent years he has been thinking about the look of architecture in the future, based on developments in the scientific world. In this second recording made by Johansen for PAV, he dwells exclusively on his futuristic ideas, showing seven projects which have already appeared in an exhibition in 1996 at London's Building Centre and in a monograph on his work (John M Johansen: A life in the continuum of Modern Architecture -- L'Arca Edizione, Milan). He delights, he says, "in founding, from building methods, new building methods that have never been investigated before...and out of that, ending up in what I call a true new aesthetic which is not stylistic...but one which honestly grows from new ways of building." Being at the time of this talk already 80 years old, he does not expect to see any of his ideas realised in his lifetime, but hopes that they may inspire others to find a new architecture for themselves. This talk was recorded in 1997. P9704

Ad Hoc Architecture, by John Johansen

 Resort hotel, Miami Beach. Model. Photo © J.M. Johansen.

John Johansen, a Harvard-educated New Yorker, has practised architecture since World War Two and since 1970 with A.M. Bhavnani. He taught at Yale, Columbia and the American Academy in Rome before becoming in 1976 Professor of Architecture at Pratt Institute, New York. Designer of many USA exhibitions and recipient of many of his country's top awards, he is the author of "The new urban aesthetic" (1972) and a number of provocative articles. Johansen sees architecture not as a fine art but as a service art, serving people's needs. He does not "compose" his buildings, he "rigs" them. First comes the framework, and onto this he hangs the functional components (rooms etc). He does not start off with a pre-conceived idea of form; he produces ad hoc architecture geared to change. Furthermore, he sees all buildings as theatre, as the setting for Man's daily rituals. The users become part of the completion of the building. In his recorded talk he uses three of his very individual creations to illustrate his ideas. This talk was recorded in 1983. P8306

In The Spirit of Ernest George, by Philip Johnson

 Johnson/Burgee: (left) Garden Grove Community Church, L.A; (right) chapel in Thanksgiving Square, Dallas. Photo © Tim Street-Porter (left), Richard Payne (right)

The late Philip Johnson, one-time partner of Mies van der Rohe, and possibly the most renowned architect of the time, was accused of turning his back on modern architecture in favour of Post-Modern. This he denied, saying 'There's absolutely no way I can get functionalism, structural clarity, simplicity, non-ornament, flat surfaces out of my system ... the whole paraphernalia of the International style'. In his recorded talk he goes on to state that he sees no reason why Modern can't embrace some of the richness and fun he finds in the designs of Sir Edwin Lutyens or, better still, Sir Ernest George, Lutyens' first employer. He elaborates on this idea and shows how he has taken advantage of it in some of his own recent work. As a preamble he takes a look at the streets of London and also tells us what he appreciates about recent British architecture.
This talk was recorded in 1980. P8016

The participatory process, by Lucien Kroll

 Technical School complex, Belfort, France. Photo © Atelier Lucien Kroll

The Belgian architect Lucien Kroll received his architectural education at the Ecole Nationale Superieure de la Cambre, Brussels, and studied city planning at the Institut Superieure de la Cambre and at the Institut Superieure Internationale d'Urbanisme, Brussels. In 1951, he started to practise, first for 6 years with Charles Vandenhove and then as Atelier Kroll. Since 1970 he has taught at L'Ecole St Luc de St Giles, Brussels. He was a founder in 1956 of the Institut d'Esthetique Industrielle in Brussels. He has exhibited widely, is the author of many articles, and is a Member of the Order of Belgian Architects. The architecture and planning practised by Kroll is, as he says, " ... organic. It's made of uncertainties, it's unlimited, it's open-ended, it leads to evolution, it creates complexity", it takes account of energy conservation. It uses basic means and materials that weather well and his buildings seek not to impose themselves on their occupants. From his very large output of work, he chooses to illustrate his recorded talk with only 4 projects. One of these is the Medical Faculty of the University of Louvain-la-Neuve near Brussels with which he received international recognition in 1970. Probably the first building in Europe to be built with participation of the community, in this case the students, it so shocked the university authorities that they sacked him.
This talk was recorded in 1987. P8710

An All-Inclusive Symbiosis, by Kisho Kurokawa

 Model of part of plan for South Friedrichstadt, Berlin. Photo © KISHO KUROKAWA

The late Kisho Kurokawa has been called 'one of the boy-wonders' of modern Japanese architecture. In 1960 he gained international fame with the architectural theory of Metabolism which he developed while working with Kenzo Tange. He has since been responsible for some fifty outstanding buildings, and written many books. He also featured regularly on Japanese television. He describes, in his recorded talk, characteristics of Japanese culture: acceptance of impermanence and the need for change; integration of different cultures and ideas into a symbiotic relationship; provision of intermediary space between opposing elements. His greatest concern is how to apply these aspects to modern architecture, and he believes that Japanese culture offers keys to the problem. His work has always included the elements of growth and change. At the end of his talk, Kisho Kurokawa makes a short statement in his native Japanese. This talk was recorded in 1981. P8105

Architecture of Urban Landscape, by Denys Lasdun

 University of East Anglia, Norfolk; elevated walkway giving access to all buildings Photo © MONICA PIDGEON

The late Sir Denys Lasdun evolved an architectural approach and vocabulary now widely recognised and which can be seen in his major post-war works. He was awarded Britain's Royal Gold Medal in 1977 and a Knighthood in 1976. In his recorded talk he explains that he subscribes to a set of ideas relevant to himself, reasonable in quality and which engage with history. These ideas are about an architecture of urban landscape, which is an extension of the city or the landscape and which indeed seek to promote and extend human relationships. His buildings are related to other buildings which may be close in space however far off in time, but they do not make stylistic concessions to the past. The buildings in fact are often a metaphor for landscape and he tries to express this through a visual organisation of 'strata' and towers. As the architectural historian William Curtis has pointed out in 'A language and a theme' (RIBA Publications, 1976), this architecture of urban landscape turns its back on the transience and brashness of a merely mechanistic world and tries to elicit basic responses and to unearth fundamental human meanings. This talk was recorded in 1980. P8003

Tension Structures, by Ian Liddell (Buro Happold)

 Mannheim Multihalle, 1974: Photo © BURO HAPPOLD

The Scottish engineer Ian Liddell trained at St John's College, Cambridge and Imperial College, London, in between he was for 3 years at Ove Arup & Partners, where he was one of the group working on the design of the Sydney Opera House Then he spent 5 years doing industrial concrete structures for contractors Holst & Co before returning to Arup's in 1968. In 1976 he and Ted Happold left to set up Buro Happold in Bath, Liddell is one of the world's leading experts in the field of lightweight tension and fabric structures, and he describes some of these, culminating in the giant Millennium Dome on the Greenwich peninsula, an 'umbrella' to shelter the exhibition which opened on January 1 2000, The architect is Mike Davies of Richard Rogers & Partners. This talk was recorded in 1998. Ref P9803

The Community Chooses, by Alex Lifschutz

 Tower block and Oxo tower beyond. Photo © J PECK AND JO REID

This is the story of the design and realisation of a prize-winning social housing scheme by the young architects Lifschutz Davidson for the local group Coin Street Community Builders Ltd, on London's South Bank, a few steps from the National Theatre. Working with the resident-to-be, a mixed population, LD achieved an environment in which anyone would be happy to live. This is what the CSC Builders say about the project: "Beautiful new homes. Constructed to the highest standards, allocated to people in need, managed by the tenants, and with superb views over the Thames and a riverside park". Alex Lifschutz and Ian Davidson had worked respectively for Foster and Rogers before setting up in practice together in London. They built their glass-enclosed office on top of the Rogers office in Hammersmith, and at the time of this talk were working on the development of a former warehouse and the Oxo tower adjacent to the housing, to include shops, restaurants, workshops, etc. Having won the competition for the housing scheme - Broadwell by name - Lifschutz describes the flexible approach they took with the future tenants and how the design evolved accordingly. This talk was recorded in 1995. P050

A Coherent Eclecticism, by MBM

 Scola Catalunya, Sant'Adria del Besos, nr. Barcelona, 1981-82. Photo © MARTORELL BOHIGAS MACKAY

Josep Martorell and Oriol Bohigas started working together in 1951 in Barcelona after graduating from the local school of architecture. David Mackay, who trained at North London Polytechnic, joined them in 1962. Martorell was President of the Architecture Congress of Catalunya 1980-81 and is a member of the Architectural Heritage Commission in Barcelona. Bohigas is personal advisor on urban affairs to the Mayor of Barcelona, has been teaching architecture all over the world since 1964, and has written prolifically on the subject. Mackay has taught architecture in Barcelona and the USA and is author of numerous articles and books. In their recorded talk they describe how, in their work, they have incorporated typologies for dwellings as established by the Modern movement yet have maintained the traditional concepts of urban form, succeeding in combining rationalism and regionalism, using both craftsmen and industry where appropriate. David Mackay speaks in English in combination with the images, and then at the end Martorell and Bohigas take up the thread in Spanish. Photo above: left to right, the partners Martorell, Bohigas, Mackay, 1985, by Monica Pidgeon.
This talk was recorded in 1986. P8602

Ideas Beyond the Brief, by Richard MacCormac

 Garden Quadrangle St John's College, Oxford. Photo © MACCORMAC JAMIESON PRICHARD & WRIGHT

The British architect Richard MacCormac trained at Cambridge in the 60's and is the senior partner in the London practice MacCormac Jamieson Prichard & Wright. In 1988 PAV recorded him (P8812) talking about his design for Spitalfields, an area to the east of the City of London, a project which sadly was never built. Since that time, he has been President of the RIBA and responsible for setting up its very successful Architecture Centre, while at the same time he has continued to design buildings for educational establishments. He uses four of these to illustrate the present recorded talk. But he describes his sub-theme as being "about the power of ideas which are outside the obvious description of the architectural problem or the brief for each of them. To some extent these are historical ideas and to some extent they are rather unexpected; but in each case they are formative." This is not to say that the practical exigencies of the projects did not exist, each in their way highly exacting in terms of the purposes they fulfil. But, he says, "that's another story.This talk was recorded in 1995. P 9504

Urban Design in Action, by Richard MacCormac

 Palladio's Teatro Olimpico Photo © MACCORMAC JAMIESON PRICHARD AND WRIGHT.

The British architect Richard MacCormac trained at Cambridge University in the early 60's and, after some travel in the USA and practical experience in England, established his own practice in London in 1969. He is now senior partner in MacCormac Jamieson Prichard and Wright. Concurrently he has always been involved in architectural education, mainly at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh, which has led to a series of important university commissions in England. He has published many articles on urban design, housing and architectural history, and he is a member of Britain's Royal Fine Art Commission. The largest and most recent urban design scheme that he has undertaken, together with a developer and the architects The Fitzroy Robinson Partnership, is for Spitalfields, an area on the edge of the City of London. There were three contending proposals but MacCormac's was the one selected. In his recorded talk he distinguishes between what he calls 'foreign' and ’local' urban transactions. 'Foreign' are those that do not relate to the locality (banking, warehousing, factories, etc), 'local' are those that do relate (shopping, eating and drinking, housing, etc). He explains how he has reconciled these public and private interests in his design for Spitalfields. This talk was recorded in 1988. P8812

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (in 2 parts), by Andrew MacMillan & Isi Metzstein

 Glasgow  School of Art. Library   bay-window space seen from above.

 Photo © ANDY MACMILLAN AND GLAS¬GOW SCHOOL OF ART

Andrew Macmillan and Isi Metzstein both studied architecture at Glasgow School of Art and both have been partners since 1968 in the firm Gillespie Kidd and Coia. Metzstein first served an apprenticeship in that firm, but MacMillan gained his early experience in Glasgow City Corporation and then at East Kilbride New Town. Though Metzstein was born in Berlin, both architects are Glaswegians and both teach at the Mackintosh School of Architecture where MacMillan has been Professor and Head since 1973. The Mackintosh School is part of the School of Art, and it was for the latter that Charles Rennie Mackintosh built what was to become probably his finest work. For their recorded talk, they have chosen to concentrate on this one building, using it as a vehicle to study CRM's architectural intentions and his exploration of themes, and to show how his understanding and his ability developed from the start of the building in 1895 to the finish in 1909. MacMillan sometimes says he is the reincarnation of Mackintosh having been born in 1928, the year CRM died. Be this as it may, certainly no two people are more favorably equipped to speak about Mackintosh as Architect than MacMillan and his partner, constantly involved as they arc, not only with Scottish architecture and CRM's native city but intimately with his famous School of Art. This talk was recorded in 1983. P8315

Expressing materials and components, by Angelo Mangiarotti

 Bronze vases. Photo © Angelo Mangiarotti (on loan).

The Italian architect Angelo Mangiarotti trained at Milan Polytechnic and was in partnership with Bruno Morassutti for five years before setting up his own practice in 1960 in Milan. He has been a visiting professor at universities in Australia, Switzerland and the USA as well as in his own country. He is the author of many articles and the subject of two monographs. Mangiarotti's architectural language expresses the characteristics of materials and components, and his construction methodology is founded on a search for a new and properly motivated relationship between man and environment. In his recorded talk, he begins by describing small objects he has designed, showing how the nature of the materials determines both form and construction. The same is true at a larger scale. Of his structures he says that none are the same, yet in a sense none are different, because his conceptual approach is constant. Only the form or image varies, which in turn affects the way components are designed or assembled. And it is this which gives a Mangiarotti building its satisfyingly enduring quality. A short statement in Italian by the speaker is added on the reverse side of the cassette. This talk was recorded in 1983. .P8302

A Constructive Point of View, by Leslie Martin

 Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow, 1987. Photo © KEITH GIBSON

The late Sir Leslie Martin started his architectural practice in 1933. In 1937 he collaborated with the painter Ben Nicholson and the sculptor Naum Gabo to produce Circles, an international review placing the work of sculptures, painters and architects side by side in an attempt to illustrate a constructive attitude in the art of that time. From 1948-53 he was Deputy Architect to the London County Council, working on the Royal Festival Hall, and from 1953-56 was Architect to the Council. From 1956-72 he was Professor of Architecture in Cambridge. He received a Knighthood in 1957, was a Royal Gold Medallist and has a number of honorary degrees and awards and is the author of numerous publications.. He continued his practice until 1987. In a talk recorded at his home near Cambridge, he describes three recent and very different projects. The first for the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow involves highly complex and differing requirements. In the second, also for Glasgow, a large concert hall and associated buildings proved the opportunity to regenerate a derelict area of the city. The third, the Gallery of Modern Art for the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, is a building in a landscape. All have their roots in specific tasks. These are understood and solved by the imaginative organisation and control of form. These limited examples illustrate a way of thinking about architecture. But when this point of view is extended by others into the wide range of architecture that is being produced, we can begin to see the process of creating out of our present problems an architecture of and for our own time. This talk was recorded in 1988. P8810

A Garden is Like a Poem by Roberto Burle Marx

 Candido Guinle Paula Machado garden. Photo © ROBERTO BURLE MARX

The late Roberto Burle Marx was the first Brazilian ever to become a landscape architect, a career suggested to him while he was still an art student in Rio. While previously studying painting in Berlin in 1928, he had been enthralled by the exotic Brazilian plants he found in Dahlem Botanical Gardens, and he immediately started to plant native plants in the family garden on his return to Rio. His first commission for a garden design came from Lucio Costa and this led to his working on the gardens of the famous Ministry of Education building in Rio by Le Corbusier, Niemeyer, et al., and then to the job of creating public gardens in Pernambuco - by which time he had established a completely new approach to landscape design, soon to become world famous, celebrating the glories of the exotic Brazilian flora. He created one park after another, each more beautiful than the last, while he continued to paint, draw, sculpt, make jewellery and sing, each art form inspiring the other. To make a garden is an art, he says. You have not only to know the plants, but to understand the landscape and to organise nature on the basis of aesthetic laws. A garden is like a poem or like music and must be constructed as such, with crescendos and dramatic moments, but with simplicity and density, and the plants used must be native to the locality. Not always able to find the plants he needs, he has established his own nursery to multiply the precious specimens he has collected, as part of his fight to ensure the survival of Brazilian flora.
This talk was recorded in 1982. P8207

Heat and Light in Context, by Rick Mather

 Now and Zen, London W1 Photo © Peter Cook

The Canadian born architect Rick Mather, who has had his own practice in London since 1973, trained in Oregon in the 50's and at the AA Department of Planning and Urban Design in the  mid-60's. He has taught at the AA and Central London Polytechnic and his work has been widely published and presented. He is an architect of Modern Buildings. Of his approach he describes four main aims: to design buildings which make a positive contribution to the city; buildings that are low in energy consumption; buildings that are, above all, interesting and exciting for the user to enjoy; and designs that exploit the technology of glass. His innovative use of glass, exploring its structural and sensuous qualities, is a hallmark of his work, especially in the series of spectacular Zen restaurants in London, Hong Kong and Montreal. This talk was recorded in 1992. P9207

Expression and Restraint, by John McAslan

 Redhill station, Surrey Photo © PETER COOK

The Scottish architect John McAslan was a partner in the London practice Troughton McAslan since 1983. Trained at the University of Edinburgh, he then travelled and worked in the USA, followed by three years in Richard Rogers' office where he met his future partner. In the practice, McAslan took responsibility for design and Troughton for management and overall strategies. In his recorded talk McAslan points out that their work evolved through a high-tech period and tentative experiments with modernism in the 80's to a more direct modernist vocabulary. They adopted a rigorous and rationalist approach to their work in both the fields of refurbishment and new-build, ever conscious of tradition, restraint, climate, materials, economy and practicability.
This talk was recorded in 1992. P9209

Schindler in California, by Esther McCoy

 Beach house for P.M.Lovell, Newport Beach, 1926 Photo © ESTHER McCOY

R. M. Schindler, born and educated in Vienna, came to the United States in 1914 and, after a period in a Chicago office, worked for Frank Lloyd Wright before starting to practice on his own in 1921 in Los Angeles. Coming to know him first in the 40's when she was a draughtswoman in his office, architectural critic Esther McCoy was the first to bring his full work to the attention of the world by her writings. Best known on the subject are her books 'Five California Architects' (1960) and the recent 'Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys', which contains the letters of Louis Sullivan to Schindler, and those between Schindler (in the USA) and Neutra (in Vienna). But whereas the latter book throws light on Schindler's early years in America, Esther McCoy's recorded talk deals entirely with the years after he set up on his own in his first house in King's Road, LA. This talk was recorded in 1980. P8008

Seven Themes, by Niall McLaughlin

 Painting of Annunciation. Photo © NIALL MCLAUGHLIN

The young architect Niall McLaughlin identifies seven themes underlying his work: the use of light, the history of place; materials and making determining the architecture, buildings as metabolisms or ecosystems; building space in the landscape, landscape providing metaphors for buildings, and collaboration. This last he says is a way of 'ambushing his own imagination' and 'a route into originality'. Each of the themes is discussed in relation to one or more of his projects, each solution unique and innovative: small wonder that early in his career he received the accolade of Young Architect of the Year. Born in Geneva, McLaughlin was raised in Ireland. After his architectural training at University College, Dublin (1979-84) he worked for Scott Tallon Walker in Dublin and London, and in 1991 set up his own practice in London while teaching at Oxford Brookes University and later at the Bartlett School of Architecture.
This talk was recorded in 2002. P0205

Interplay of Time and Space, by Richard Meier

 Smith House. Photo © Loaned by RICHARD MEIER

Richard Meier received his architectural education at Cornell University, N.Y between 1957 and 1963 he worked for F.Grad, Davis Brody & Wisniewsky, SOM and Marcel Breuer; then started his own practice in New York. He has taught in many American schools of architecture and at the American Academy in Rome; he has been the author or subject of several books and innumerable articles; his work has been included in a great many exhibitions; and he has received innumerable awards including, in 1984, the Pritzker Prize. In his recorded talk, Meier confesses to being irritated if he is referred to as a Post Modernist as he cannot believe that the great promise and richness of some of the formal tenets of Modernism are exhausted - the technological advances, the free plan, the free façade, the separation of skin and structure, all that fostered a new kind of volumetric exploration and held many more possibilities. Meier's own work is a preoccupation with space, neither abstract nor scaleless but space, whose order and definition are related to life, to human scale and to the culture of architecture. He works with volume and surface and manipulates form in light, changes of scale and view, movement and status. His goal is presence, not illusion. Many of his sources are from architectural history but his quotes and allusions are never literal. His buildings are conceived in a complementary relationship to their natural setting. His search for clarity begins with the plan. This talk was recorded in 1985. P8506

Space and Community, by John Miller

 University of East Anglia, Norwich. Photo © 8. Copyright in this image John Miller & Partners.

The British architect John Miller trained at the AA School of Architecture. Then followed three years working for Lyons Israel & Ellis where he met his future partner Alan Colquhoun. They set up a practice together which lasted from 1961 to 1989. Since then Miller has been in partnership with Richard Brierley and Su Rogers. Work has included art galleries, educational and community buildings, houses and housing. In his talk Miller describes a small but representational selection of projects. In all their work the concern has been to give space and light and enjoyable sequences. At the same time there is a continued interest in construction, down to the simplest details. And then, as he says, ideas for a building can "be nourished and taken over from one job to the next, and old ideas dropped when they've ceased to be necessary". This talk was recorded in 1999. P9904

Designing for Cricket, by David Morley

 Indoor Cricket School Photo © DENNIS GILBERT, ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHS

The English architect David Morley trained at Cambridge and the AA. Working with Norman Foster on several projects, he set up their French office which was responsible for the Carre d'Art at Nimes. In 1987 he started his own practice in London and has designed a variety of buildings including a hospital extension, housing, halls of residence for two Oxford colleges and, not least, the award winning work at Lord's Cricket Ground, the subject of his recorded talk. Cricket is quintessentially an English game and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) which owns Lord's is the premier cricket club in the world. In the 1980's it recognised that its leading role should be reflected in the building environment it created. The Mound Stand by Michael Hopkins & Partners, the first example of this attitude, was such a success that they were encouraged to pursue excellence in architectural design in all the subsequent projects that they commissioned; also recognising the importance of unifying and linking individual separate buildings with a clear master plan for the entire grounds. David Morley & Partners were chosen to design three buildings and the master plan while Hopkins, Grimshaw and Future Systems are the authors of the remaining new structures.
This talk was recorded in 1997. P9714

From Nowhere to Somewhere. A dialectical lyric, by Eric Owen Moss

 "Samitaur"offices, Culver City: Location plan and the building. Photo © Eric Owen Moss Architects

Eric Owen Moss, born in New York, is a Californian at heart. He trained as an architect at UCLA, Berkeley and Harvard and opened his own office in Los Angeles in 1976. His work has won many awards and he is internationally recognised as one of the mainstays of the avant garde. Moss is no ordinary architect. Not for him contexturalism or conservation. From 1987 he has worked with an equally un-ordinary client, the developer Frederick Samitaur Smith and his wife Laurie Samitaur Smith, and together they have changed the face of a run-down industrial area of LA, Culver City, transforming it into a place that tempts self-respecting corporations away from up-market districts like Century City. Moss expresses enormous admiration for the vision and tenacity of the Smiths and shows, among other projects, a number of innovative buildings they have conceived together. He ponders the perennial question "What is truth?" and concludes that possibly it is the tension between opposing issues. Thus, in his architecture, he revels in contradiction. This talk was recorded in 1997. P9706

Architecting the Plumbing, by Sean Mulcahy

 Scottish Widows Society Insurance Co., Edinburgh by Spence Glover Ferguson. Photo © Sean Mulcahy

Sean Mulcahy trained as a mechanical and electrical engineer. He took his first engineering job in 1947 with the Danish services engineer, Jorgen Warming, advising the Dublin architect Michael Scott on a programme of post-war buildings in Ireland. Mulcahy's practice now extends over Britain and Ireland, with links to Denmark and Australia, and he has worked with most of the best-known British and Irish architects on hundreds of major buildings. He has lectured extensively (a number of his papers have been published) and he teaches at University College, Dublin, and Edinburgh University. Though recognising the architect as leader of the building design team, he stresses that it is useless for him to think of design form before seeking close engineering advice. The brief must include matters of performance as well as of space and budget.
He illustrates his recorded talk with some of the work he has done, and says 'If architecture is art with plumbing, then you must architect the plumbing.' This talk was recorded in 1982. P8212

Transforming architecture, by Richard Murphy

 House extension, Abbotsford Park Photo © Richard Murphy

Richard Murphy is one of the outstanding young architects currently practising in Scotland. English-born, he did his architectural training in the universities of Newcastle and Edinburgh and, except for a year in London with Richard MacCormac, he has spent most of his working life in Edinburgh. After setting up and running a Scottish office for Alsop & Lyall, he started his own practice in 1992 on the strength of a competition win. During a period of teaching at Edinburgh he was doing research on Carlo Scarpa's work in Castel Vecchio, Verona, and Querini Stampalia. Venice, about both of which he has written books, curated exhibitions, collaborated on a fiim, and become a recognised Scarpa expert. In 1996 his firm won a competition for Dundee Art Gallery and they have recently completed houses in Eire and Holland. But before that, most of their work was to existing buildings in Edinburgh which he describes in his recorded talk. There are recurring themes in their work: transforming the skin or the internal elements of a building, using sliding panels or screens to open or close in summer or winter, and contriving to bring light into the centre. To express or over-express the making of a building or its elements, they believe gives architecture its potential richness.
This talk was recorded in 1997. P9713

Scarpa, the Venetian, by Richard Murphy

 Venetian Pavilion, Italia 61, Turin. Photo © Richard Murphy

The late Carlo Scarpa is considered by architects as the great authority on how to intervene creatively in existing structures. His architectural language is entirely of the twentieth century yet incredibly rich and uniquely interested in surface texture and the minutest detail. He has been called 'the jeweller of the small'. Though primarily a museum and exhibition designer, and mainly in existing buildings, he broke with tradition in that he treated every object exhibited as unique and therefore to be considered for itself in relation to other objects, and to background and light and people. The architect Richard Murphy, a known authority on Scarpa's work and author of a book about it, has chosen in his recorded talk to examine how Scarpa has underststood the nature of Venice, the city of his birth and life, and how he has reproduced in his architecture a contemporary re-interpretation of Venetian phenomena: the presence of water and the potential disaster of its overflowing; the brick palaces lined with exotic and precious materials; the asymmetrical Gothic composition, colour, layering, detail, and so on. Above all, detail and how to draw attention to the very tiniest little things.
This talk was recorded in 1997. P9712

Why, Where, What? by Frank Newby

 Aviary, London Zoo, with Lord Snowdon and Cedric Price. Photo © FRANK NEWBY OF FELIX J SAMUELY & PARTNERS

The late Frank Newby was one of Britain's most eminent structural engineers. He joined the practice of Felix J. Samuely on completing his studies at Cambridge, and became a partner in 1956 at the age of 30. In 1952 he won a scholarship to the USA for a year where he worked variously with Konrad Wachsmann, Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen and Buckminster Fuller, from all of whom he acknowledges he learned a great deal. Back in England, he speaks of work he did with Edward D. Mills on the British Industrial Pavilion at Brussels Expo 58, with Stirling & Gowan (See Stirling P8012) on their Leicester and Oxford University buildings, with Cedric Price (see Price P7908) on the Aviary for London Zoo, with Percy Thomas Partnership on Clifton Cathedral at Bristol, and with Spero Daltas on a number of major buildings in the Middle East. His portfolio contains a host of award-winning buildings designed with award-winning practices like Ahrends Burton & Koralek (See Ahrends P8603), SOM, YRM, and on the strength of this he was presented in 1985 with the prestigious and rarely-awarded Gold Medal of Britain's Institution of Structural Engineers. Newby organised exhibitions and wrote and lectured widely. A lot of his effort was directed towards the introduction of courses for engineers, the history of engineering in architecture, and for architects, the explanation of structures. In his recorded talk he says that his basic ideas did not change over the years but merely developed. He refers to routes of stiffness and the creation of structures by producing frameworks which have to be stable and which are made up of small pieces. And he maintains that the architect should use the engineer as his tool, the more so as techniques develop. This talk was recorded in 1986. P8611

Concrete Expression, by Oscar Niemeyer

 Communist party HQ, sculpture, Paris Photo © MONICA PIDGEON

The Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer sprang to international fame with his collaboration with Le Corbusier on Rio's Ministry of Education building in the late 30's. This was followed by his curvaceous concrete Pampulha buildings - and then by Brasilia. But, disagreeing with later government thought, he came to Europe and worked in France, Portugal, Israel, Libya, Algeria; yet always continuing to build in Brazil. His output was great. Being a very socially-conscious person, he is sad that his commissions have always come from governments and institutions or the rich, whereas he would like to have been instrumental in easing the conditions of the poor. Much has been written by and about this unassuming and humble man, this poet of the visual world. But in PAV's recorded talk, you have Niemeyer himself, speaking haltingly in English to describe his work, plus a few words in French which comes more easily to him; and then making a statement in his native Portuguese. "When architectural form becomes beauty it becomes functional and therefore becomes fundamental", he says. He chose to build with concrete because it allowed him to design curves like the curves of the whole universe. For him, architecture is the expression of our time. This talk was recorded in 1981. This talk was recorded in 1981. P8107

Symbolic Statements, by Jean Nouvel

 Nemausus flats, Nimes. 1984-1987 Photo © VON SHAEWENE.

Jean Nouvel is the leading figure among the French architects who were the product of the 1968 revolution, and he is certainly the most interesting architect in France today. He started to practise in Paris in 1970 and in 1981 he won the competition to design the first Presidential 'grand project' in the capital, the building for the Institut du Monde Arabe. In 1988 he was awarded the French Grand Prix d'Architecture for this building and in 1989 it received an Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Now in his mid-forties, he is a polemical innovator and a modernist whose work is expressed with 'high tech' construction. He avoids commonplace solutions, seeking rather to make symbolic statements within the context of his buildings. Light and transparency are their main ingredients. In this talk, which was recorded in his Paris office (hence the background sounds), he describes the Arab Institute as well as the first major block of flats he has built. Since making the recording, he has won the competition for the tallest office building in Europe, a circular tower to be erected at La Defense in Paris near the Grande Arche. He is also involved with the redevelopment plans for Kings Cross, London. The talk was recorded in 1989. This talk was recorded in 1989. P8900

Artifice, Not Nature, by Laurie Olin

 Exchange Square, Bishopsgate, London. Second Photo © OLIN PARTNERSHIP

Reared in Alaska, Laurie Olin studied architecture at the University of Washington in Seattle. He added urban design and landscape when he started to practice in Philadelphia with Robert Hanna. Most of his work has been in the public sector. Olin has also been active in teaching and lecturing and is a Professor in the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Distrusting the idea of a personal style, he discusses the limitations to what landscape architects can achieve but on the positive side, where they get their ideas from. He aims to present the most natural things in the most unnatural way. Among his many completed landscape projects are the open spaces at Canary Wharf in London and the new Esplanade for Battery Park City in New York which has added breathing space to the area west of the World Trade Center. Recorded by Pidgeon A/V, against background sounds, in the Furness Library of the Graduate School of Fine Arts, at the University of Pennsylvania.
This talk was recorded in 1997. P9710

Building with Mud, by Paul Oliver

 Earthquake damage to adobe house, Van Caldiran, E. Turkey Photo © YASÉMIN AYSAN

Paul Oliver is an architect He was teaching for a number of years at the Architectural Association in London (in charge of art and history before heading the Graduate School) and then at Dartington College of Art (as Head of the Department of Art and Design) before taking up his present post as Associate Head of the Department of Architecture at Oxford Polytechnic. Here he also leads a research project with Ian Davis on post-disaster housing in earthquake-prone areas in Turkey, together with the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. He is author of a number of books on shelter. �Shelter in society', �Shelter in Africa', �Sign and symbol'. He has also designed a number of exhibitions for the UK Arts Council: �African shelter', �English cottages and small farmhouses' and �The village green'. Paul Oliver is particularly interested in simple techniques and the rational use of natural materials. Having spent much time travelling in Africa, the Middle East, America and other parts of the world, he has come to respect the work of those who build with available resources. Earth is one for the oldest and cheapest of building materials and it has a continuing future once its vulnerability to earthquakes shock, seismic tremor, erosion, salts and chemicals can be overcome. In his recorded talk, he discusses the problems and current solutions. This talk was recorded in 1982. P8217

Self-Designing Structures, by Frei Otto

 Munich aviary. With Architect Gribl. Wire mesh structure. Photo © FREI OTTO and the INSTITUTE FOR LIGHTWEIGHT STRUCTURES

German born architect Frei Otto started practice in Berlin in 1952, but in 1968 moved to Warmbronn near Stuttgart. Since 1964 he has been Professor and Director of the Institute of Lightweight Structures at the University of Stuttgart, and he has been a visiting professor at universities all over the world. Although he trained as an architect, his heart is in natural science. He seeks to understand how structures are made by Nature, how much energy and materials etc. are required, and the process by which these come together. His research has led to the design of tented structures that are remarkable for their diversity and inclusiveness - membrane structures, mesh-steel cable-nets, tree structures, asymmetrical self-supporting shells - built for any climate and in any shape or size. He has revived the tent as a leading species of modern tensile architecture. But, as he explains in his recorded talk, he does not only design 'tents'. The ideas developed for his own all-weather, indoor-outdoor, minimum-energy house have led to the ecological multi-storey housing he designed for the 1984 Berlin International Building Exhibition.. Man, he says, must stop destroying Nature and start to see himself as part of it. His opportunity is a nature-oriented technology; natural structures. Professor Otto adds a short statement in German at the end of the talk. This talk ws recorded in 1982.
This talk was recorded in 1982. P8213

The Idea of the Column, by John Outram

 Harp Heating HQ. Photo © John Outram

John Outram, who spent his youth in India, was an airforce pilot before studying architecture in the 50s at Central London Polytechnic and the Architectural Association, qualifying in 1961. Thereafter, for 12 years, he merged into large organisations (the Greater London Council, Fitzroy Robinson, Louis de Soissons) while developing his own ideas. He wanted to get away from the neo-modernism of the period and succeeded in devising a personal architectural language after analysing the work of Le Corbusier, Buckminster Fuller and Mies van der Rohe. In 1973 he started his own practice. For him, architecture is a culture, not a formula; a culture, moreover, that can't be separated from nature. To make a beautiful idea is more important to him than to make a beautiful thing, and he would even like to be able to convey a beautiful idea with an ugly thing. An o
utstanding architect, he is probably the most original working in England today, his designs encompassing myth and reality, classicism and modernity. In his recorded talk he describes his more outstanding commissions, how they were conceived and how executed. This talk was recorded in 1986.P8605

Hospital: Mid-Kent Oncology Centre, Maidstone. BUILDING CASE STUDIES No. 4. by MOYA POWELL

 A canopy marks main entrance. Photo © John Peck & Jo

A cancer treatment centre, added to an existing hospital, is the fourth of PAV's Building Case Studies in which the development of a building is discussed by all those concerned with its design and construction. The main requirements of the project related to the shortest time-scale to bring the centre on stream in 1993, at the same time using the most advanced equipment and diagnosis. The building won an RIBA Award in 1993. The recorded discussion took place in Powell Moya's Chelsea office, hence some background sounds. The speakers were: Roger Burr, Architect Partner/ Powell Moya Partnership; Andrew Mason, Project Architect / Powell Moya Partnership; Jeremy Leyer, Landscape Architect; Chris Baxter, Services Engineer; R.W.Gregory; Ian W.Menzies, Structural Engineer/Charles Weiss Partnership; Gerald Stone, Project Manager/ AYH HEALTH; Anthony Field, Quantity Surveyor/ AYH Partnership; Wendy Pitts, Project Manager/ J.Mowlem Construction. This talk was recorded in 1993. P6005

A Poetics of Place, by Eric Parry

 Stanhope offices, London, 1989 Photo © Martin Charles

Eric Parry is one of Britain's younger architects of whom Richard MacCormac has written: "We look to people like Parry to extend the language possibilities and range of enjoyment that Modernism has not yet delivered." Parry trained in the 80's at Newcastle University, the Royal College of Art and the AA before setting up his practice E P Associates in London. He is also a university lecturer in architecture at Cambridge and has taught at Harvard under Moneo. In his recording he says: "My buildings do not have an immediately recognisable style or signature. But they are spatially and materially consistent. My starting point with a project is the notion of cultural situation. To understand architecture as the creation of settings for deeply-rooted archetypal situations is essential to my interpretation of form". The projects he shows illustrate the poetics of passage from the public to the private domain and the transformation of space from one world to another. This talk was recorded in 1992.P9204

Simplicity, by John Pawson

 Runkel Hue Williams gallery, London. Photo © JOHN PAWSON

John Pawson trained at the AA and started to practise architecture in the 80's. His work is much influenced by four years spent in Japan, which led to his being known as a Minimalist. He prefers the word 'simplicity'. He says 'If you reduce the elements and you pare down the materials and the form and everything to its absolute minimum, you tend to produce spaces which become in themselves works of art. But you have to know when to stop in the business of subtraction'. For example, if you subtract anything from a beautifully proportioned Georgian interior, you 'damage its seamlessness'. That for him is the definition of Minimalism. In his talk he describes showrooms that he has designed as well as a house in Mallorca and his own house in London. Their very simplicity produces exquisite results. This talk was recorded in 1996. P9605

Skin and Bones, by Cesar Pelli

 Bene STABILE buildings, Houston. Model. Photo © CESAR PELLI and ASSOCIATES

Argentine-born Cesar Pelli studied architecture at Tucuman University and the University of Illinois. He worked with Eero Saarinen from 1954-64 and then with DMJM before becoming a partner in Gruen Associates in 1968, and then setting up his own practice in 1977. He is currently Dean of the School of Architecture at Yale University. He is particularly interested in 'thin skin' buildings. whose roots go back to man's earliest huts and tents; simple structures of 'bones' with 'skin' wrapped round - an architecture of enclosure, not an architecture of weight as in stone buildings. He is equally preoccupied with transparency and flexibility. He illustrates his ideas with his own designs, buildings all over five storeys high. The talk was recorded in 1980.
This talk was recorded in 1980. P8007

Culturalising Today's Technology, by Renzo Piano

 Top: Church of San Lorenzo. Bottom: In factory in Milan Photo © RENZO PIANO

As Massimo Dini says in his monograph on Renzo Piano (Electa/Architectural Press), Piano's designs defy classification, being bewilderingly varied, ranging from early space frames to an experimental car, to museums, from new buildings to rehabilitated old ones and the restoration of entire neighbourhoods. Renzo Piano was born in Genoa in 1937 and graduated from the School of Architecture at Milan Polytechnic in 1964. His grandfather, father and brother were all builders so, he says, he came to architecture through the construction for which he has an almost physical love. For him conception and realisation are integral. Five years in England with Professor Z.S. Makowsky, from 1965-1970, experimenting with materials, geometry and space frames added the conviction that a scientific understanding of materials and their behaviour is an essential part of an architect's profession. Working on the Centre Pompidou from 1971-1977 with Richard Rogers confirmed for him the value of the feedback in teamwork. His offices in Genoa and Paris are run as multi-disciplinary workshops for research and experiment. As he says in his recorded talk, science and technology are more and more part of the cultural scene today and architecture must reflect this. The architect has the job of culturalising what is not culture. Renzo Piano has taught and lectured in many cities in Europe, USA and Japan and there have been exhibitions devoted to his work in Italy, Paris, and London. A close collaborator since 1971 has been the engineer Peter Rice with whom he even had a partnership in Paris. 'Atelier Piano and Rice', from 1977 for a few years. This talk was recorded in 1986. P8613

The Marriage of Past and Present, by Paolo Portoghesi

 Mosque, Rome, 1976. Photo © PAOLO PORTOGHESI

Paolo Portoghesi, born and educated in Rome, has practised architecture in that city since 1958 - in partnership with Vittorio Gigliotti since 1964. He has been Professor of Architecture at Rome University and Professor of Architectural History and Dean of Faculty at Milan Polytechnic; has organised many exhibitions, written countless books and articles; has been Director/ Editor of "Controspazio" from 1969 until its recent cessation; and has won many awards. He is currently President of the Venice Biennale where he attracted world attention with the 1981 "Strada Novissima". Portoghesi, originally inspired by Borromini, seeks to produce in his architecture a marriage between Baroque and Modern, between past and present. The Modern movement, he says in his recorded talk, should not have abolished the past, the collective memory. He looks for popular images to express this memory. A city is a phenomenon like a living organism; it cannot be created by simply throwing buildings together. Reconstruction requires careful study of the old city, not to copy it but to find what gives it its identity, and then introduce new buildings that have an organic relationship to it so as to preserve that essential identity. In his designs he adopts the principle that a house is like a small city and a city must be like a large house. The continuity of tradition is always stressed. Professor Portoghesi adds a short statement in Italian on the reverse side of the cassette. This talk was recorded in 1983. P8305

The enhancement of life by Christian, De Portzamparc

 School of Dance for Opera, Nanterre Photo ©  MONICA PIDGEON

The French architect Christian de Portzamparc, born 1944, studied at the Beaux Arts in Paris. Since 1971 he has won many competitions, like the Rue des Hautes Formes in 1975, the Opera Dance School in 1983 and the Cite de la Musique in 1984. His output has been prolific and he has received many awards including, in 1992, the National Award for Town Planning and Urban Art. Charlotte Ellis, writing in the Architectural Review, refers to his "lasting preoccupations with fragmentation and space, transparency and light, plurality and tension". His work is unique in the panorama of French architecture At the end of his recorded talk, adding a few words in French, he says that his architecture's greatest achievement is that it gives people freedom and adds to their happiness, and it is this which spurs him on to do more building.
This talk was recorded in 1993. p9302

Magic and the Ordinary, by Sunand Prasad & Greg Penoyre

 Charter School, Dulwich, London Photo ©  PENOYRE & PRASAD

Penoyre and Prasad have a love for the gritty everydayness. They distinguish a couple of keen passions in their work. One is about the ordinary, an architecture rooted in, but rising about function; while the other is about the magic of structure and fabric and its effect on the making of space. And they illustrate this with their design for a large school in South London. Their backgrounds are very dissimilar. Prasad, excited by the space programmes, eventually turned to architecture as a way of combing science, engineering and art, and studied at Cambridge and then the AA where he was involved in a political unit devoted to process and people. There followed eight years work with Ted Cullinan, and a PhD about the structure of the North Indian city. Penoyre, son of architects, studied at Sheffield University, worked with Chamberlin Powell & Bon, and then also with Cullinan, His interest was to release the potential of social and site values. In1988 he and Prasad set up in practice together in London. This talk was recorded in2002. P0204

Ten Californian Architects, by Cedric Price & Ron Herron

 Charles Moore: Miglio I, Sea Ranch, 1985. Photo © RIBA Heinz Gallery

The work of 10 Californian Architects seen through the eyes of Cedric Price and Ron Herron at an exhibition in the RIBA Heinz Gallery in 1992. Rebecca L Binder, Arthur Dyson, Steven Ehrlich, Joseph Esherick, Ray Kappe, Kendrick Bangs Kellogg, John Lautner, Donald William Macdonald, Charles Moore.
Biographies of the architects are at the beginning of the CD/DVD. This talk was recorded in 1992. PCAL

Technology Is The Answer But What Was The Question? by Cedric Price

 Shortlife mobile airport. Photo © CEDRIC PRICE

The late Cedric Price was, according to one of his clients, 'the most cerebral of British architects... He is frequently consulted on the relationship of architecture to policy and planning in the fields of education and energy in both the USA and the UK.' The title of Price's talk is typical of the man - someone constantly searching, questioning rethinking. Though he was in practice in London from 1960, the number of his built projects was small. But his output of professional activities, published work, and feasibility and research projects, was varied and prodigious. This talk was recorded in 1979. P7908

Exploring the Boundaries of Design, by Peter Rice

 Sydney Opera House, with Jorn Utzon Photo ©  RICE and OVE ARUP AND PARTNERS

The late Peter Rice liked the title by which he was known in France, 'geometre', for he was as much a thinker and strategist as an engineer. He began his professional career with Ove Arup & Partners working on Sydney Opera House, and later formed part of the team that won the competition for the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Since then he has collaborated with Renzo Piano or Richard Rodgers (members of that team) as well as, briefly, with Frei Otto, and recently with Martin Francis and Ian Ritchie at La Villette. He has always been interested in the scale and detail of a building, detailing being a way of breaking down scale. With Piano he had the object of exploring the whole building process; also of working outside the building industry, for example investigating what a Fiat car might be like in the 1990's. He explored the extent to which computers and software technology can be used to predict and control the performance of a building, and the way in which different materials are expressed and how this influences their use in buildings - cast iron, steel, concrete, Ferro cement, glass, polyesters and plastics, polycarbonate. By continuing to experiment with different materials he hoped to maintain his inventiveness and avoid becoming repetitive as a designer.
This talk was recorded in 1986. P8610

Objectives and Concepts, by Ian Ritchie

 Teflon roof over the Museum, 1986. Photo © MARTIN FRANCIS

Ian Ritchie, British born, trained at the Schools of Architecture in Liverpool and Central London Polytechnic between 1965 and 1972, and worked for four years for Foster Associates. In 1976 he set up as an independent designer in France and in the UK. In 1979 he was a founder partner of Chrysalis Architects with Alan Stanton (P0101) and Mike Davies (P8711) but left in 1981 to join the engineer Peter Rice (P8610) and the naval architect/industrial designer Martin Francis in a Paris partnership, at the same time setting up his own firm Ian Ritchie Associates in London. The latter has particular interests in lightweight structures, passive solar energy, art and technology, and initiating community projects in the Wapping area of London where the studio is based. All this he describes in his recorded talk, including work in Paris at the Parc de la Villette Museum of Science and Technology, the Louvre, etc. He enjoys side-stepping conventional approaches to design. His work has received many awards and been widely published and exhibited, and he has lectured and taught in the UK, France and Japan.
This talk was recorded in 1988.

City Context and Culture Revalued, by Miguel Angel Roca

 University houses, Cordoba, 1971. Photo © Miguel Angel Roca

Miguel Angel Roca, in 14 years of professional practice before 1982, produced over 100 projects, half of them built, the majority in his native Argentina, in the city of Cordoba where he teaches at the National University and where he is Secretary of Public Works for the City Council. For him, public space is the raw material and basic setting for the life of a city, as evidenced in his transformation of Cordoba. Hitherto a typical Spanish colonial town laid out on an orthogonal grid with central square, cathedral, town hall and river, the centre has been turned by Roca into shaded pedestrian malls, the historic buildings celebrated by projecting their shadows in marble onto the paving in front of them. He has converted the sluggish river into a formal park and he has made visual and physical links between the centre and other restyled urban features - squares, cultural centres, etc. He has given the city a language, an image, a coherence. The innovative quality of his architecture is equally striking, as can be seen in the branches he has built for the Bank of Cordoba. This talk was recorded in 1982.

Genesis of the New Lloyd's Underwriting Room, by Richard Rogers

 Working model seen from north and Leadenhall Street Photo © Richard Rogers Associates

It was fitting that Lloyd's, the world's leading international insurance market, in 1979 appointed one of the world's leading architects, Richard Rogers, to redesign their premises in the heart of the City of London. Lloyds was expanding fast and needed more space. Rogers proposed to replace their building on the west side of Lime Street with a new Underwriting Room, a great top-lit atrium encircled by galleries. When completed, around the mid-80's, the building became the architecturally most exciting in London's City. Rogers first set up in practice in 1962 with Norman and Wendy Foster. In 1967 they split up and in due course Rogers linked with Renzo Piano with whom he won the international competition for the Centre Beaubourg (later Pompidou) in Paris. Now he is back in London practising as Richard Rogers & Partners. This talk was recorded in 1979. P7909

People Places, by Richard Rogers

 National Gallery project. Photo © RICHARD ROGERS PARTNERSHIP

Richard Rogers, best known for his designs for the Centre Pompidou (PAV 8613, 8610, 8701) and for Lloyd's of London (see PAV 799, 8616), is a Royal Academician in both the UK and Holland. He is also a Royal Gold Medallist (1985), Chairman of the Board of the Tate Gallery, London, and a member of the UN Architects Commission, among other honoraria. Born in 1933 in Florence, and educated at the AA School of Architecture in London and at Yale University, he went into practice with Norman Foster (as Team 4) in 1963 (See PAV 7913). From 1970 to 1977 he was in partnership with Renzo Piano but after they parted he set up Richard Rogers & Partners, subsequently renamed Richard Rogers Partnership Ltd. The practice has received many awards for its work which has been exhibited, filmed and published in many countries. Rogers himself has taught at various universities. In 1986 he had the distinction of being the subject of a biography by Brian Appleyard. In this recorded talk (the second to be published by PAV, the first being P799) he expresses his primary interest in people, his planning architecture being first and foremost for them. Consequently the Centre Pompidou is the most visited and enjoyed building in Europe. The other projects he describes all reflect the same concern. He considers himself part of the Modern movement, 'a period which is trying to re-evaluate its role...recognising the value of the past and the fact that the present and future are built on the past'. This talk was recorded in 1987. P8704

Imbibing Lakota ideas, by Michael Rotondi

 Hexagon building Photo © RoTo Inc

Architect-educator Rotondi was for many years Head of the Southern California Institute of Architecture. After some time as partner in Morphosis, he set up his own firm RoTo Architects in 1991 with Clark Stevens. In Part 1 of his recorded talk he describes how his outlook was altered while designing the first university in the USA for Native Americans. This talk was recorded in 1997. P9702

The space between -- The Carlson-Reges house, by Michael Rotondi

 Entrance side of house. Photo © MONICA PIDGEON

In Part 2 of Rotondi's recorded talk he describes a recently completed house in Los Angeles, designed for an industrial builder Richard Carlson and his wife Kathy Reges. The brief required kennels for Kathy Reges' dog breeding and a gallery for her art collection, as well as a comfortable home. Richard Carlson was to build it and it had to incorporate materials he had saved from previous demolitions. The house is built within, around and on top of an existing 19th century building. Rotondi relates the unusual process by which it was realised. This talk was recorded in 1997. P9703

The Orders of Architecture, by Joseph Rykwert

 Unfinished temple at Segesta, Sicily, c.430 B.C. Photo © JOSEPH RYKWERT

Joseph Rykwert, architect-trained, was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University. He has lectured and published articles all over the world, and is the author of " Idea of a town", "On Adam's house in Paradise" (1972) and "The First Moderns" (1980). He is currently working on a book about the Orders of architecture. Rykwert's recorded talk discusses how the Orders were once part of the normal architect's education, but that was more than 30 years ago. Yet now, once again, we are interested in them. This is because the situation for architects has changed so much that anything as definite and secure as the Orders acquires a new and forceful appeal. So it is important to understand how these Orders - traditionally 5 of them - came into being.
This talk was recorded in 1982. P8202

Isamu Noguchi, by Shoji Sadao

 Sculptures in the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, NY. Photo © Shigao Anzai, by courtesy of The Isamu Noguchi Foundation Inc.

The architect Shoji Sadao, partner of Buckminster Fuller, met Isamu Noguchi through him and worked with both of them for many years, eventually becoming a partner also to Noguchi. He is now Director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation in Long Island City, New York. Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), the world-famous Japanese American sculptor, transformed landscapes and sculpted space into places of symbolism, mythology and abstraction. Sadao describes some of the landscape work they did together. He also relates how Noguchi came to design the bamboo and paper Akari lamps. Noguchi, he concludes, "always wanted to do something timeless"... "eternal verities were what Noguchi looked for". This talk was recorded in 2001.

Safdie in Jerusalem, by Moshe Safdie

 Yeshiva Porath Joseph (Rabbinical College) Photo © MOSHE SAFDIE ASSOCIATES

Moshe Safdie's international fame began with his Habitat housing scheme in Montreal, completed for Expo '67. Since then he has worked in many countries other than Canada - USA, Puerto Rico, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Iran - and has offices in Montreal, Boston, Baltimore and Jerusalem. At the time of this talk he directed the Urban Design Program at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. Born and reared in Israel, Safdie returned to that country in 1969. Now Jerusalem boasts a completed monumental building designed by him - the Rabbinical College near the Western Wall - and several lesser works; whilst other important projects have been undertaken since 1979, including the Western Wall Precinct and the outstanding recently completed Yad Vashem (Holocaust Memorial) project. He discusses his work before 1980 in this PAV recording (extracted from a talk he gave to the Royal Institute of British Architects in May 1979). This talk was recorded in 1979.P 7907

Architecture as Human Geography, by Stanley Saitowitz

 Rabin House in Tiburon. Photo © STANLEY SAITOWITZ

Stanley Saitowitz is South African born and educated but received his Master's degree in architecture at Berkeley University, California in 1977 and has been in practice in San Francisco since then. He continues to teach at Berkeley and has taught and lectured extensively elsewhere in the USA and abroad. In his recorded talk he details his architectural preoccupations and describes the many houses he has designed, as well as the California Museum of Photography and his latest completed project at the time of his talk, the exquisite New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston which he won in competition. This talk was recorded in 1997.P8708

Learning from the Self Builders, by Walter Segal

 Houses in Lewisham, London. Photo © Loaned by WALTER SEGAL

Swiss-born Walter Segal was reared in an artists' commune in Ascona. He studied architecture in Delft, Berlin and Zurich. Since 1936, he has practised in England. Author of several books, he has taught in London and Philadelphia, becoming very popular with the younger architects who are disenchanted with the increasing detached role of the architect. Some years ago, Segal gave up using bricks and mortar in favour of a quick and simple, low-cost construction system which he devised based on a timber frame and standard materials in their market sizes, After it had been successfully tried out by several clients and owner-builders, Segal became involved with a self-build public-housing program in the London Borough of Lewisham. Lewisham provided the land and the Government provided the cost of the materials, for a selected group of homeless families to build their own homes, using the Segal system. Segal tells, in his recorded talks, how he ran an evening school to teach these families - father, mother and older children - how to handle tools and so on, how they subsequently helped each other o the site, and how he himself received a belated education in working jointly with people. He sees this approach to self-buildings as the one form in which housing could be provided in the future; so long as great support can be enlisted. This talk was recorded in 1983.P8301

Architecture Responding to Nature, by Harry Seidler

 Hong Kong Club and offices. Central space and top floor Photo © HARRY SEIDLER and ASSOCIATES

The late Harry Seidler was Australia's best known and most prolific architect, yet he resided and practised there only after 1949. Born in Vienna in 1923, he studied at Manitoba University and Harvard, and from 1946-48 he worked with Marcel Breuer, followed by a short spell with Oscar Niemeyer in Brazil. But it was his collaboration with the Italian engineer Pier Luigi Nervi which proved a turning point in his approach both in the expression of structural form and the use of materials. Always a modernist, building technology is paramount for Seidler. In his recorded talk, he concentrates on just two contrasting works: the Hong Kong Club built with local materials and taking advantage of the local labour-intensive construction industry: and the Capita office tower in Sydney in which he braces the face with a concrete filled steel trust, uses rich materials, and brings Nature into a spiralling atrium. The talk was recorded in London by Monica Pidgeon. This talk was recorded in 1993. P9301

Signs of Occupancy, by Alison and Peter Smithson

 Painted box on terrace of 2 Priory Walk, London, 1968. Photo © ALISON & PETER SMITHSON

Signs of occupancy talks about two things: firstly how the language of architecture can indicate its use, and, beyond that, how it can invite the affection and the design activities of its occupiers and their successors. A & P S's first essay under this title appeared in Architectural Design No.2,1972. The late Alison and Peter Smithson were a husband and wife team who started in architectural practice in London in 1950. They were widely known for their buildings and for their many articles and books, including Team 10 Primer and 'Beyond Rhetoric. This talk was recorded in 1979. P7903

A Sensorial Technology, by Ettore Sottsass

 Memphis products, 1981-83. The sofa was designed for Knoll. Photo © ALDO BALLO

The late Ettore Sottsass, who died in December 2007, was, he says, though Italian, conditioned culturally and visually by the work of the great architects of Vienna like Wagner and Hoffmann. He was destined by his architect father to follow in his footsteps, and he trained in Turin. But World War Two intervened and when he returned to Italy, times were hard and he was too restless to start a practice. However, from 1959 he headed Olivetti's electronics division where he was responsible for the design of a continuous flow of elegant electronic machines - computers, type¬writers, teleprinters, and so on. At the same time he was designing for other companies - furniture, small objects, ceramics - pursuing an idea he always had of designing environment starting from microcosm, from small possibilities, fragile materials like paper, and not necessarily with big monuments or town plans. This led to the idea that the environment could also be read through the senses - a sensorial technology of colour, materials, dimensions, rhythms, on which he worked for some 15 years, emphasising the sensorial rather than the structural aspect of whatever he designed. Among the people with whom Sottsass collaborated, loosely grouped under the name Memphis, the sensorial approach was further developed, and decoration was added as yet another means of sending messages to the viewer. Sottsass always rebelled against institutionalised cultures. 'Get rid' he says 'of the sum of intellectual memories that are conditioning you. Culture is life, and life is always developing, changing, and is always new.' So Memphis invented, took ideas from the air, from everywhere and anywhere, and put them together in unexpected unrelated ways. Memphis probably evolved as a result of Sottsass' attitude of seeing life as a continuous dynamic collage of informations.
This talk was recorded in 1984. P8401

Lutyens: New Delhi, by Gavin Stamp

 New Delhi. Secretariat building, by Sir Herbert Baker Photo © COUNTRY LIFE

Sir Edwin Lutyens was the last great architect of the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain. His vast output of over 300 buildings and projects showed a continuing devotion to traditional techniques of construction and borrowing from the past. There has recently been a revival of interest in his work, leading to an Arts Council Lutyens exhibition in autumn 1981 at London's Hayward Art Gallery. To coincide with this, PAV published three talks on Lutyens covering the span of his work. They are all by members of the organising committee of the exhibition. In the first talk, Roderick Gradidge (P8102) discusses Lutyens' great country houses built between 1889 and 1902. The second talk, by Peter Inskip (P8103), is devoted to the houses of 1900 to 1914. The third, by Gavin Stamp (P8104), concentrates on Lutyens' monumental work of the period 1912 to 1939 starting with Viceroy House in New Delhi. Gavin Stamp, architectural historian, writer and lecturer, is the author of 'The temples of power'(pub1ished by Architectural Press) and, with Colin Amery, of 'The Victorian buildings of London' (published by Architectural Press). He has arranged several important exhibitions: 'Silent Cities' (which included Lutyens' war memorials); 'London 1900' in 1977 and 1978 at the British Architectural Library's Heinz Gallery; and 'The English House' in 1980 at London's Building Centre. In his talk, he speaks of Lutyens' increasing devotion to Palladio, and how, in New Delhi, he managed to fuse the monumental classical tradition of Europe with Indian features. For Viceroy House he transmuted the Doric order and made it into something new, a Delhi order; and even with this he played unorthodox tricks. While for the remarkable war memorials he designed an almost abstract Elemental mode. Lutyens' extraordinary career moved from his early picturesque to monumental classical buildings of a sort which had never been designed before. This talk was recorded in 1981. P8104

A Caring Tradition, by Colin Stansfield Smith

 Portland Street building, Portsmouth University. Photo © Hampshire County Council, Dept of Architecture

Colin Stansfield Smith heads the leading centre for public architecture in Britain, the Hampshire County Architect's Department. Before he took over in 1974, the building programme was dominated by system-building and there was little mature design talent in the Department. He changed all that, designing some of the work with his own 'in-house' teams and commissioning other work from leading architects and consultants. The buildings emerging from his Department have received many awards and the Department itself was awarded the Royal Gold Medal for architecture in 1991. A confirmed Modernist, he says in his recorded talk that his architecture is about the caring tradition that was started by Aalto in Paimio. The work of his office has been about themes such as the celebration of pitched roofs. For a long time Stansfield Smith was also Head of the School of Architecture at Portsmouth Polytechnic (now Portsmouth University) where he remains a Professor and has designed the new School as well as the master plan for the new campus. This talk was recorded in 1992. P9210

The Presence of the Past, by Robert Stern

 Lawson residence, by RAMS. Photo © Monica Pidgeon

At the time of this talk Robert Stern practised architecture in New York and taught at Columbia University. His ideas and work have been widely publicised in recent years, his Post-Modem style always the subject of heated debate in architectural circles. He is the author of several books - 'New directions in American architecture' and 'The architect's eye: American architectural drawings 1977/78' - and has arranged a number of exhibitions. In this recorded talk Stern, provocateur par excellence, expounds and illustrates his approach. Post Modern buildings, he says, are designed to mean something. Post Modernism accepts diversity, prefers hybrids to pure forms, borrows from the past, layers space. He finds all these characteristics in his favourite building, Sir John Soane's Museum in London. 'I admire Soane extravagantly. He brought together in one building so many complex strands of what it means to be an artist or architect and a citizen of the world - the need to make a statement within a context. Rather than "less is more", Soane seems to be saying "more is not enough".... Architecture is about everything ...That is what it must be, must move toward.' At the International Design Conference at Aspen in 1980, Stern's wide-ranging presentation acted as the necessary irritant, it left some people fuming, some indifferent, but no-one uninvolved.
This talk was recorded in 1980. P8015

Oscillating, by James Stirling

 History Faculty Library, Cambridge University, 1964/67 Photo © JAMES STIRLING OFFICE

"James Stirling's reputation is based on a sequence of closely related buildings, projects and drawings over the past 25 years. His influence amongst students and fellow architects alike can be seen world-wide." (From his Royal Gold Medal citation in 1980). Probably the most important work to emerge from Stirling's partnership with James Gowan (1956-63) was the Leicester University Engineering Building, a symphony of glass, industrial framing and red brick and tile: a manner which continued in his independent work in the 1960's at Cambridge and Oxford. In 1971, Stirling formed his partnership with Michael Wilford and their commissions came mainly from abroad: Germany, where they won two important competitions, and the USA. In this recorded talk he describes how his ideas had developed since his student days; and he illustrates his projects past and present. A thread of continuity runs through them all, despite the fact that he says "I see ourselves going into the future oscillating between formal and a-formal, between restrained and exuberant". This talk was recorded in 1980. P8012

Sir John Soane's Museum, by Sir John Summerson

 Dome. Looking towards colonnade. Photo © JOHN DONAT

On the first Saturday of every month, the late SIR JOHN SUMMERSON himself used to conduct visitors round Sir John Soane's Museum, the museum over which he lovingly presided as Curator for over three decades. PAV'S recording is an edited version of one of his guided tours, with photographs specially taken by JOHN DONAT, Britain's 'number one' architectural photographer.Sir John Summerson is the author of definitive books on Soane, John Nash, Wren, Georgian London, and Architecture in Britain. He was awarded Britain's Royal Gold Medal for services to architecture in 1976.
This talk was recorded in 1979. P7902

Nash's London, by Sir John Summerson

 All Souls, Langham Place, today. Photo © MONICA PIDGEON

Nash's architecture is among the greatest of London, yet few people realise that John Nash was a great entrepreneur without whose drive, sense of urgency and unfailing invention none of it would have been realised. Only one architect before Nash's time had proposed a London re-planning on such a scale, and that was Wren. Wren's proposals failed, Nash's succeeded. The London he shaped started in 1812, in his 60th year, and ended in 1832. His plans gave London new life, a great new system of circulation, a new equilibrium, and indeed a new sense of pride and self-confidence as the capital of a great nation. The late Sir John Summerson, formerly curator of Sir John Soane's Museum in London and author of 'The Life and work of John Nash', tells the story, in his recorded talk, of Nash's incredible achievement. This talk was recorded in 1980. P8021

Feeling the Structure, by Neil Thomas (Atelier One)

 Demountable set for Pink Floyd. Architects Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park. Photo © MARK FISHER

The young structural engineer Neil Thomas, after working with, and being influenced by Buro Happold and then Anthony Hunt, set up his own firm Atelier One. He has enormously enjoyed working on projects of great variety, ranging from sets designed by Mark Fisher for Pink Floyd and for The Rolling Stones, to the "House" project by artist Rachel Whiteread, the roof of Singapore Art Centre by Michael Wilford, the Cardiff Visitor Centre by Will Alsop, and a bridge by Lorenzo Apicella for London Docklands. But no matter what the structural problem is, he does not attempt to solve it until he can understand it and feel it. He likes to be physically involved in the actual building, to understand how far you can push materials. Having studied architecture as well as engineering, he feels able to understand more, in terms of conversations with architects, about what he calls the emotional side of architecture. For him engineering is a part of architecture and one has to comprehend its nature and how it works. He feels happiest working with people who don't have the need to define a separation between the roles of engineering and architecture except, of course, where there are very different tasks to be done. This talk was recorded in 1995. P9506

Space, Event, Movement, by Bernard Tschumi

 Glass video gallery, Groningen, Netherlands Photo © BERNARD TSCHUMI

Bernard Tschumi defies categorisation. He is an author, architect, urbanist researcher and teacher, based in New York where he carries out the dual role of practising architect and Dean at Columbia University, while regularly crossing the Atlantic to deal with his European projects. Son of a Swiss father (the architect Jean Tschumi) and French mother, he was educated at the ETH in Zurich. He taught for many years at the AA School in ARCHITECTS London under Alvin Boyarsky before going to New York. Deeply influenced by film makers like Eisenstein, he came to realise that the simultaneous transcription of image, movement, sound and narrative was a parallel to what architecture was; space and action. This idea he explored in his book "The Manhattan Transcripts", and later tested in the scheme with which he won the international competition for Parc de la Villette, Paris, in 1982. His next prize-winning project, the design for Lausanne, consisted mainly of four inhabited bridges that span the valley, connecting both sides from top to bottom. For his Groningen video gallery project, he explored the idea of the dematerialisation of architecture by building it entirely of glass. For Tschumi, constantly questioning and challenging architecture is the most interesting part of his research. This talk was recorded in 1996. P9601

Perception and Proportion, by Anne Tyng

 Spiral symmetry (top); Nautilus shell. Photo © ANNE TYNG

Anne Tyng, long-time collaborator of Louis I. Kahn in his Philadelphia office, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. She currently has a Graham Foundation Grant to do research on 'human scale' in cities'. She says: "We see as a result of how we are made. A similar geometry orders natural form and human perception. An order based on a sequence of geometric principles underlies the evolution of natural forms. The same ordering sequence appears in architectural history as the underlying geometry of changing 'styles'. What has been called 'styles' of architecture occurs as the result of shifting phases of form empathy in human consciousness. As an extension of the evolution of natural forms, the evolution of human consciousness follows the same geometric ordering system Out of these fundamental patterns of perceiving, the human spirit has transformed the geometry of natural systems to symbols in architecture, in science and in art" This talk was recorded in 1980. P8014

Ornament, Scale & Ambiguity by Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown

 Wu Hall, Butler College, Princeton University. Photo © VENTURI RAUCH SCOTT BROWN

Architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown got married in 1967 and have practised architecture together ever since. RV was born in Philadelphia and trained at Princeton University and the American Academy in Rome. Between 1950 and 1958 he worked with O. Stonorov, Eero Saarinen and Louis Kahn before setting up on his own with Cope and Lippincot and Short. In 1964 he was joined by John Rauch and in 1967 by Denise Scott Brown, the three of them together still. His book 'Complexity and Contradiction', published in 1966, won him worldwide recognition. DSB was born in Zambia and trained at the University of Witwatersrand, the AA and the University of Pennsylvania. She worked in various practices in London, Rome and Johannesburg before moving to the USA. She was the widow of architect Robert Scott Brown when she married RV. Both RV and DSB have taught and exhibited all over America, the practice winning many awards including the AIA Gold Medal. Both have written extensively about the amazing and contradictory landscape of built America, about the inclusion of the ordinary, about the richness of architectural meaning through the adaptation of conventional forms and through pattern, and about issues of social conditions in their relation to architecture and planning. All this is elucidated in their recorded talk, illustrated by some of their current work, ranging from an urban plan to a mosque, to a house, to a teapot. In all that they design, the form and spatial quality are very simple, direct and conventional, with the aesthetic excitement coming from the ornamentation, from contrasted scales and from ambiguity. This talk was recorded in 1985. P8505

Design Is One, by Massimo Vignelli & Lella Vignelli

 Artemide Inc, Dallas, Texas. Photo © Vignelli Associates

Massimo & Leila Vignelli are an Italian husband and wife partnership who have been practising in New York as Vignelli Associates since 1971, though they began their collaboration in Milan in 1960. They specialise in interiors, furniture, products and exhibition design. Massimo, who was born in Milan and studied architecture in Milan and Venice, has taught in many universities in America and elsewhere. He has been president of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Vice-President of the Architectural League and a member of the Industrial Designers' Society in America. Leila was born in Udine, Italy, and studied architecture at the University of Venice and later at MIT. The Vignellis' work has been widely published, exhibited and televised, and they have received many prestigious awards. In their recorded talk they take turns describing a variety of commissions they have carried out in the fields of graphics, furniture and interiors. They say? Whatever we have done is basically rooted in a sense of rigorousness, appropriateness and ambiguity or contradiction". This talk was recorded in 1987. P8708

The Art of Joining,by Konrad Wachsmann

 Art and craft of joining in the 13th century: Chartres Cathedral Photo © KONRAD WACHSMANN

Konrad Wachsmann was proud of the fact that he began his working life as a carpenter; though he later studied under Polzaig in Berlin where he also practised architecture until the Prix de Rome took him to Italy. After this he worked in Spain and then in 1971 emigrated to the USA. Wachsmann is famous for his design of industrialised building components, and of a system for constructing large aircraft hangars with prefabrication parts; and for his book ‘The Turning Point of Buildings' (1961) which has indeed engendered turning points for many of its readers. In the Fifties he directed Advanced Building Research at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago; and since 1965 he has directed the Building Research Division at University of Southern California. John Entenza, former director of the Graham Foundation, once said of Wachsmann “He is a creature of science as it inadvertently approaches poetry”. His recorded talk, which he calls a Mini Manifesto, overviews and illustrates the development of his ideas, and ends on an optimistic note, looking to the future as is his wont, foreseeing an abundance of energy everywhere, and posing questions which we should be asking now - for this future lies just round the corner. This talk was recorded in 1980.P8009

In Tune with Architects, by Jane Wernick

 London Eye Millennium Wheel, 1999. Architect Marks & Barfield   Photo © NICK WOOD

 

The structural engineer Jane Wernick was with Ove Arup & Partners off and on from 1976 until she set up her own practice in 1998 in London. She has worked with top architects - Foster, Rogers, Chipperfield, Wilkinson - and in her recorded talk she describes her contributions to projects with Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid and, above all, with David Marks and Julia Barfield with whom she helped to design the “London Eye” Millennium Wheel (See P 0102). She says that what she really enjoyed was “the process of collaboration, that is, trying to understand what the different architects' intentions are, and being allowed to contribute and toss my ideas into the pot right from the beginning This talk was recorded in 2001. P0103

The Eden Project by Andrew Whalley (Grimshaw & Partners)

 Aerial photo of the project. Photo © GRIMSHAW

The Eden Project is an ongoing project in a disused quarry in Cornwall, where the largest plant enclosure in the world has been erected. The principal structures on the site are a sequence of great transparent domes or biomes - providing two climatic zones, humid-tropical and warm-temperate; a building linking them and a hilltop visitor centre; all designed by Nicholas Grimshaw& Partners His partner Andrew Whalley, who is in charge of the project, describes the development of this remarkable and beautiful scheme. Since this recording a third biome is being added, to house the desert environment. This talk was recorded in 2001. P0104

Transfer of Technology, by Mark Whitby

 Bridgewater Canal bridge Photo © JAN SCHEDIK

Son of an architect, Mark Whitby (b.1950) graduated in engineering at King's College, London. After a spell of work with Harris & Sutherland and four years experience with a building contractor, he spent a year looking at buildings in the USA. There followed work for Alan Baxter briefly, then Buro Happold and Tony Hunt for two years each, before starting work on his own. Bryn Bird joined him in 1984 and they are among the bright young British structural engineers who empathise with the architect's approach. They have worked with most of the major British architects. In his recorded talk. Whitby describes projects he has been involved in with them, as well as bridges whose design he and Bird have generated themselves. They are enormously interested in the development of aeronautical engineering and the resulting spin-off or transfer of technology. They look at the total engineering of a building, from all points of view - structural, mechanical and electrical, physical and dynamic. This talk was recorded in 1996.P9606

Glass in architecture, by Michael Wigginton

 Window, Chartres Cathedral Photo © Chartres Sindicat d'Initiative

The architect Michael Wigginton has had a long interest in the relationship between glass and architecture, and has written a major work "Glass in Architecture" published by Phaidon Press. After graduating from Cambridge, UK, he worked for SOM, then YRM, and from 1986-1994 with Richard Horden as co-principal in Richard Horden Associates. He has taught in schools of architecture in the UK, Europe and America and is the author of many articles and books. His current research work includes the development of a refractive glazing system with a major European manufacturer of glass. In his recorded talk he discusses float glass and the chemistry of its colours; the transmission of light and energy by glass; thin film coating of glass with liquid crystals; and the ultra-strong ceramic glass. In his opinion, the future lies in integrating such strong glasses with the thin film electrochromic chromogenic glasses to produce skins for buildings that are as efficient as human skin. This talk was recorded in 1988. P9404

Propriety and Continuity, by Colin St John Wilson

 Forecourt. Plan, sketches and west-facing flank of model. Photo © COLIN ST JOHN WILSON, REPRODUCED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE CONTROLLER OF HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE

The late British-born architect Colin St John Wilson studied architecture at Cambridge and London University. After working in the London County Council in the 1950's under the then Chief Architect Leslie Martin, he joined him in private practice in Cambridge from 1956 to 1970, and then set up his own practice, all the time continuing to lecture widely and write about architecture. In 1975 he became Professor of Architecture at Cambridge University. From his long experience he built up, he says, an unshakeable conviction that it is essential to pursue "the patient elaboration of whatever technique is suitable to ensure a proper dialogue between architect and user of the building". Upon this foundation, the architect can then submit his design to controlled criticism and revision. And the design must serve "not only at the level of utility and visual pleasure, but also at a deeper psychological level where both the reality and the image of wholeness and of structure in the environment restore us to a measure of balance amid all our contradictions". "Only then does a building become architecture". Fine examples of such are his early buildings in Cambridge (Caius Harvey Court, Peterhouse, his own house). But the building for which Wilson is most widely known is the huge British Library complex recently completed in London, despite having been on the drawing-board since 1970. Wilson has written at length about the architecture of democracy (as opposed to the architecture of power demonstrated in the monuments of the past). His design for the British Library presents us with such an architecture.
This talk was recorded in 1982. P8215

Keep It Simple by John Winter

 House in Norwich Second building for Morley College. Photo © JOHN WINTER

All the work discussed in this talk by the British architect John Winter has a consistent theme in that the architectural expression relates directly to the way the buildings are built. He acknowledges the influence of two architects. One was Erno Goldfinger from whom he learned a commitment to the quality of architecture that goes far beyond that which is reasonable. The other was Myron Goldsmith (SOM) from whom he learned that structure is always the basis of architectural design. Winter developed a profound admiration for Mies van der Rohe who, he says, "gave an intellectual basis to the poetry of assembled components"; and he adds "I believe that the architect should put his love and care into the things that will last: structure, skin, the plan form, and the general shape". Winter trained at the AA School of Architecture and Yale, and travelled in the USA and the Far East before settling down to practise in London in the late 1950's. Of the many one-family houses that he has built, each based on a structural theme, three have been for himself and his family. New commercial and educational buildings have also formed part of his work, and his skill is well exemplified in the sensitive additions and insertions that he has made to the twelfth century Rochester Castle. His ideal is to "take the approach of the simple, straightforward but high performance, problem- solving that one finds in small boat builders. This talk was recorded in 1992. P9200

Restoring Modern 30's Houses, by John Winter

 “Torilla”, Hatfield, Herts, 1935. Architect F R S Yorke. Photo © JOHN WINTER

Since the last PAV recording of John Winter (PAV 9200) he has been much sought after for restoring 20's modern houses in England which have, for one reason or another, fallen into disrepair. In this present recording he describes the sort of problems that confront him and how he has dealt with them in six of the best known houses. Often it is to do with materials used which have ceased to exist or with the carbonation of thin concrete walls, or lack of weathering or the rusting of ungalvanised steel windows frames. Buildings of the 20's and 30's were often brightly coloured but, because they were only photographed in black and white, they were assumed to be white. So Winter feels free to use colour where appropriate, though he considers that the houses when kept white are very beautiful. This talk was recorded in 1999.P9901

Architecture as Language, by Bruno Zevi

 Habitat 67, Montreal, by Moshe Safdie Photo © BRUNO ZEVI (loan)

Bruno Zevi is Professor of History of Architecture at the University of Rome, editorial director since 1955 of the magazine “L'Architetettura”, and author of many books as well as monographs on Frank Lloyd Wright, Lous Sullican, Eric Mendelsohn, Theo van Doesburg, and the De Stijl movement. He also writes a weekly architectural column in “L'Esperesso”. The title of his most recent book “the modern language of architecture” is not to be confused with the subject of his recorded talk in which he distinguishes between the two main languages of architecture, the “classicist” and the opposite “human, organic anticlassicist” which is based on content rather than appearance, The classicist language, emanating from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in the nineteenth century, spread throughout the world and persists to this day. It is a language symbolic of power, authority, oligarchy, bureaucracy. The modern organic movement which rebelled against it, has no a priori form of symmetry or balance of volumes; it merely enumerates contents and functions; volumes grow to envelope the spaces occupied by people. Present-day architecture is accused of ruining the fabric of our cities. But, says, Zevi, it is the buildings programmes that are wrong, and they lead to classicist-modern solutions instead of modern. This talk was recorded in 1980.P8001

PLEASE ENQUIRE IF THERE IS ANY OTHER SPECIFIC TALK FROM THE PIDGEON AUDIVISUAL LIBRARY YOU WOULD LIKE TO PURCHASE ON CD/DVD.

Section 2. From MASTERS OF ARCHITECTURE (can be supplied on DVD if required)

Image sets from the MASTERS OF ARCHITECTURE series, now

incorporated in the MASTERS OF ARCHITECTURE online subscription website at http://www.mastersofarchitecture.com.

The following 60, on pp. 104-133, are available separately on individual CDs or DVDs. They can be purchased for the prices shown and can be incorporated in a Library system provided copyright is observed.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT   1867 –1959

 Taliesin West. Photo copyright Alan Blanc

 

There is only one publication which illustrates all the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, and that is William Allin Storrer's 'Complete Catalog’ (MIT Press). It lists 433 projects dating from 1885 to 1959.

Our slides offer work from all his periods. But the five groups into which they are divided do not reflect his development or the genealogy. Wright's inspiration came from the earth and the products of natural growth. Seeking to produce tension-free environments, he invented new concepts of flowing interior spaces. He broke away from the right angle both in plan and in elevation, and he based these on a unit system that governed all elements in a design.

He developed what became known as the Prairie House. Later in California he moved towards more solid forms. 'Falling Water’ and the Johnson Wax Building followed in the 30’s and led to the Usonian (United States-ian) house for the lower-middle-income bracket family. In the last period of his life came the Guggenheim Museum and Taliesin West, both experiments in unorthodox shape.

130 images           Ref WPA  £170/$250/€190                                                                   

MUSEUMS SERIES 1: BY HANS HOLLEIN, RICHARD MEIER AND JAMES STIRLING 

 High Museum Atlanta, USA. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon

HANS HOLLEIN: STADTISCHES MUSEUM ABTEIBERG, MONSCHENGLADBACH, GERMANY
For Hans Hollein, architecture is ritual and he uses transformation, whether of size, scale, materials or function, as a basic tool.
RICHARD MEIER: ARTS AND CRAFTS MUSEUM, FRANKFURT-AM-MAIN, GERMANY; THE HIGH MUSEUM ATLANTA, USA
The American architect Richard Meier is preoccupied with space whose order and definition are related to human scale. He works with volumes and surfaces and manipulates forms in light, changes of scale and view, movement and stasis. His buildings are conceived in a complementary relationship to their natural setting. His search for clarity begins with the plan.
JAMES STIRLING: NEUE STAATSGALERIE, STUTTGART
The British architect James Stirling (Stirling and Wilford) won the competition, for the City Gallery and a new theatre and music school in Stuttgart in 1977. After taking part in, but not winning, two other limited competitions in Germany, he had to incorporate historical building into his scheme, the old neo-classical gallery and theatre. Furthermore, the site being on a slope, he had to make provision for the public to traverse it from Konrad Adenauerstrasse at the lower level to Urbanstrasse at the upper. This he brilliantly achieved by means of a ramped walkway encircling the drum round the sculpture court at the centre of the scheme. Stirling says 'the museum is a sort of collage of old and new elements, Egyptian-like cornices, Romanesque windows, Constructivist canopies - a kind of union of elements from the past and the present’.

 72 images                Ref WPG   £100/$150/€110                                               

OTTO WAGNER 1841-1918
 Post Office Savings Bank, Vienna. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon

Villa Wagner 1
Stadtbahn: City railway
Linke apartment houses
Post Office Savings Bank
Steinhof Church
Kaiserbad Dam Control Building
Villa Wagner 2

Otto Wagner was born in Vienna. He studied architecture at, first, the Polytechnic Institute in Vienna, then at the Konigliche Bauakademie in Berlin and, from 1861-3, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He started his career building blocks of apartments and won several major competitions. He became artistic advisor to the Viennese Transport Commission and the Commission for the regulation of the Danube Canal, and this led to the construction of the city railway system and quayside installations on the Danube Canal and the Kaiser Dam. But only a fraction of his prolific designs were actually executed. In 1904 he accepted the Chair at the Academy.

 35 images        Ref WPK.   £60/$85/€70

TWENTIETH CENTURY HOUSES. SERIES 1.  

 Charles Eames House and Studio, Santa Monica. Photo copyright Robert Hughes

HOUSES by Le Corbusier, Pierre Chareau, Alvar Aalto, Carlo Scarpa, Mies Van Der Rohe, Greene & Greene, Charles Eames and Richard Neutra.

LE CORBUSIER:
Villa Savoie
Villa La Roche-Jeanneret
PIERRE CHAREAU:
Maison de Verre
ALVAR AALTO:
Villa Mairea
CARLO SCARPA:
Villa Ottolenghi
MIES VAN DER ROHE:
Tugendhat House
Farnsworth House
GREENE & GREENE:
Gamble House
CHARLES EAMES:
Eames House and Studio
RICHARD NEUTRA:
Neutra Residence

 

143 images            Ref WPL            £190/$240/€210

ALVAR AALTO (1898-1976)

 Library, Technological University, Otaniemi. Photo copyright Tadeusz Barucki

Alvar Aalto worked in partnership with his first wife, Aino, from 1924 until she died in 1949, and with his second wife, Elissa, from 1952 until he died in 1976. The buildings shown are in approximate chronological order, and where not otherwise indicated, they are all in Finland. The Villa Mairea, which has been omitted, is included in "Twentieth Century Houses: Series One" in the Masters of Architecture series (see above).

185 images   Ref WPR         £235/$350/€260

KARL FRIEDRICH SCHINKEL 1781-1841

 Church of St Nicholas, Potsdam. Photo copyright Robert Hughes

In Berlin: The Altes Museum, the Theatre and the New Guard House; Glienecke Palace group, Humboldt House, St. Paul's Church, Peacock Island.
In Potsdam: Charlottenhof Palace, Garden House etc. at Sans Souci.

108 images           Ref WPS             £140/$210/€160

ARNE JACOBSEN 1902-71

 Chain house, Soholm, Klampenborg. Photo copyright Tadeusz Barucki

Forty-four buildings or complexes - mainly in Denmark - including the Town Halls for Aarhus and Rødovre; Aalto's summer residence; the SAS Hotel; schools at Gentofte and at Rødovre; the National Bank of Denmark; Elsewhere St Catherine's College, Oxford; and a school in Hamburg.

96 images           Ref WPT     £130/$190/€150    

LOUIS KAHN 1901-74

 Hostel at Sher-e-Banglanagar, Dacca Bangladesh. Photo copyright Tadeusz Barucki

The Yale Art Gallery, the Salk Institute, California, the Kimbell Art Museum, Texas and the Bangladesh Capital complex in Dacca are all featured.

116 images           Ref WPU      £150/$225/€170

MARIO BOTTA (1943- ) IN THE TICINO

 Metal bridge to house at Riva San Vitale. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon

Nine private houses are included along with a secondary school, the Bank of Gothard, the Ransila office building, a Capuchin library, a municipal gymnasium, an artisan centre - all in the Ticino, Switzerland.

109 images          Ref WPV.                            £135/$200/€155                                          

ARATA ISOZAKI IN JAPAN (1931- )

  Waseda Sho-Theatre and Amphitheatre at Togamura. Photo copyright Krzysztof Ingarden

A pupil of Kenzo Tange, Arata Isozaki set up his own practice in Tokyo in the 1960’s. His early work is clearly influenced by his master in the brutalist manner. But with the Fukuoka Bank his own language emerged and by the 1970's he had become leader of Japan's avant-garde. The Gunma Museum was his most outstanding work of that period. In the 1980’s Isozaki’s first work was the Waseda Sho-Theater and Amphitheater at Togamura, 1980-82. With the Tsukuba Centre building, designed to enliven the very dull Tsukaba Science City north of Tokyo, he embarked on his "schizo-eclectic" phase. Part 1: Work in Japan between 1964-1979, buildings with which Isozaki became leader of Japan's avant-garde. Part 2: Work in Japan between 1980-1985.

162 images           Ref WPW.          £215/$320/€240

ERIK GUNNAR ASPLUND 1885-1940

 Lister County Courthouse, Solvesborg. Photo copyright Rolfe Kentish

Asplund worked only in his native Sweden, and his is the most famous Swedish name today in the history of early twentieth century architecture.

He developed architecturally from a rustic vernacular tradition to an academic classicism but he reinterpreted both in a quite radical way. Two competitions which he won occupied him throughout his career. The first was the Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm won in competition in a joint submission with Sigurd Lewerentz (the architect with whom his name is always coupled); the second was for the rebuilding and extension of the Gothenburg Law Courts.

 115 images   Ref WPY    £150/$225/€170                                         

SIGURD LEWERENTZ 1885-1975

 St Peter's Church, Klippan. Photo copyright Dennis Sharp

Included are the two cemetery chapels (at the Woodland in Stockholm and at Malmo) and two churches (St Mark's, Stockholm and St Peter's, Klippan), also the Villa Edstrand, and social security offices in Stockholm.

68 images   Ref WPZ           £90/$135/€110                         

ANTONI GAUDI I CORNET 1852-1926

 

 Church of the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona. Photo copyright Carlos Flores

The Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi i Cornet was by far the greatest and most unusual among Spain's architects. All of his buildings are in his native land, most of them in or around Barcelona.

Working within the cultural period known in Catalonia as ‘Modernisme’ (the equivalent of Art Nouveau), he built only in accordance with his own highly original principles, constantly referring to Nature. He was preoccupied with structural truths and invented models to show exactly what loads and stresses his buildings would have to bear, and he relied on numbers of assistants, craftsmen and artists to realise his ideas in wood, metal, ceramics and glass.

Most of Gaudi's work is included, much of it in Barcelona (with photos by Carlos Flores). The Guell Palace, Pavilions, Chapel and Park; the Casas Vicens, Calvet, Battio, Bellesguard, Mila; the Sagrada Familia Temple; the Teresian Convent; etc.

116 images.         Ref WQA          £150/$225/€170            

RALPH ERSKINE 1914 – 2005

  Stockholm University. Photo copyright Peter Collymore

The British-born architect Ralph Erskine lived and practised in Sweden from 1939. In his book (1982) about him Peter Collymore calls him 'a romantic functionalist'. Erskine, he says, 'designs his buildings to be useful and usable, and not subject to some outside aesthetic idea.' ‘The impetus for the design originates from the problems, both social and functional, that must be solved.'

‘With Erskine, technology is a means to an end: the aim of reconciling the individual and the community. Technology is used to help provide a range of experience within the building which would have been impossible to obtain before the last quarter of the 20th century.’ ‘In his lifelong pursuit of an architecture intended to enhance humanity, he has never worshipped the machine and its products.’ (Peter Davey, Architectural Review 8/1953).

Part 1: Work mostly in Sweden between 1941 and 1969.

Part 2: The Byker housing estate and the Stockholm Frescati University Union Building, Sports hall and Library, along with some more housing estates both in Sweden and England - all between 1969 and 1986.

160 images Ref WQB                      £210/$315/€235                               

PHILIP JOHNSON 1906-2005

 Shelden Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska. Photo copyright Tadeusz Barucki.

 The British architect and critic, John Winter, said of Johnson that “he occupies a unique position in the architectural world. A man of unequalled taste. whatever we may make of his flamboyant later buildings, consistent qualities remain: a certain exquisiteness, an instinctive understanding for quality in artificial lighting, and a sure sense of the way a building is walked through”. Part 1(1942-1971) includes Johnson's buildings at New Canaan and the Kline Science Tower at Yale.Part 2 (1972-87) includes the AT&T Building, New York and the Crystal Cathedral in Los Angeles.

150 images    Ref WQD   £200/$295/€225                                         

EERO SAARINEN 1910-1961

 Milwaukee County War Memorial. Photo copyright Tadeusz Barucki.

Dulles Airport, Washington DC, the TWA Terminal at Kennedy Airport, MIT Chapel in Cambridge, the John Deere offices in Illinois, General Motors Technological Centre in Michigan and many other buildings.

93 images.   Ref WQF.    £125/$185/€140                           

LE CORBUSIER 1887 – 1965

 Unité d'habitation, Firminy, France. Photo copyright Judi Loach

Part 1: Houses, apartments and hostels, including the Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles, the Maisons Jaoul in Paris, and houses in India.
Part 2: Ronchamp, La Tourette, Chandigarh and other buildings in Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Ahmedabad, Firminy, Zürich and Cambridge, Mass.

204 images    Ref WQG     £270/$395/€305                                      

LOS ANGELES Part 1: Residential

 White Tower House, Santa Monica Canyon, by Brian Murphy. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon

"Los Angeles represents, more than any other city, the American Dream - of wealth, speed, freedom, mobility". "Nowhere are there so many superb buildings, designed by top-flight domestic architects". "Such a city is not one on which anybody who cares about architecture can afford to turn his back". (Reyner Banham, "Los Angeles: the architecture of the four ecologies").

The following selection of images is but a fraction of the architecture on offer but gives some idea of the variety in this city where 'anything goes'. (The Eames House and Studio, Neutra's House and the Barnsdall "Hollyhock" House by Frank Lloyd Wright are not included here. They are all available in the Image set Twentieth Century Houses: Series 1. Ref WPL, elsewhere in this website).

Residential is subdivided into three parts as follows: Part 1: Craig Ellwood, Frank Gehry, Arata Isozaki, John Lautner, Morphosis, Eric Moss, Brian Murphy, Richard Neutra. Part 2: R M Part 3: Frank Lloyd Wright

132 images    Ref WQL     £180/$250/€200                                       

LOS ANGELES Part 2: Non-Residential

 Loyola University Law School Building, by Frank Gehry. Photo copyright Duncan Webster

Features the work of Michael Graves, Philip Johnson, Frank Gehry, Cesar Pelli, Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler, Eric Moss, and others.

Non-residential is subdivided into three parts as follows:

Part 1: Frank Gehry

Part 2: Bruce Goff, Arata Isozaki, Philip Johnson, Richard Neutra, Cesar Pelli, R M Schindler, Lloyd Wright

Part 3: Craig Ellwood, Michael Graves, Morphosis, Eric Moss, Frank Lloyd Wright

126 slides Ref WQP   £175/$240/€195                                

IEOH MING PEI (1917- )  

  Glass pyramid and new entrance to the Louvre. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon

I.M. Pei's firm has designed some 60 major buildings, mostly in America but also in Singapore, Hong Kong, Tehran and, most recently, in Paris where his glass pyramid new entrance to the Louvre was the subject of heated debate before the Parisians settled down to loving it. Though aware of contemporary architectural styles he demonstrates a greater concern for a rational and structural architectural approach.

110 images Ref WQT    £130/$210/€155                                                                             

KENZO TANGE 1913-2005  

  Sports Arena, Takamatsu. Photo copyright Tadeusz Barucki

Educated at Tokyo University's Department of Architecture, the late Kenzo Tange set up in practice in Tokyo in 1961 as Principal in the firm Kenzo Tange & Urtec, Urbanists and Architects. Until 1974 he was also Professor of Architecture at Tokyo University and he received every top award the architectural world can offer throughout his long career. During the ‘60s he was associated with the Metabolists, most famous of whom were Kiyanori Kikutake and Kisho Kurokawa who had worked in his office (as have most of the next generation of Japan's best architects). Since the 1970 Osaka Exhibition - for which he provided the master plan and the theme pavilion - his work has been increasingly outside Japan. But it is the National Gymnasia for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics that remain his best work and the peak of 20th century Japanese architecture.

70 images Ref WQW                       £85/$135/€100                            

JOSEPH MARIA OLBRICH 1867-1908

  Decoration and door handle,Ernst Ludwig Haus, Darmstadt: Photo copyright Ian Latham

In 1897 Olbrich (Otto Wagner's assistant) and Joseph Hoffmann (Wagner's most brilliant pupil) came under the influence of the Viennese painters Gustav Klimt and Koloman Moser and together they founded the anti-academic Vienna Secession movement. The following year Olbrich built the Secession building in Vienna, after a sketch by Klimt symbolic of the unconscious and pan-eroticism. From then on Olbrich began to evolve a style of his own. In 1899 he was invited to Darmstadt by the Grand Duke. Here, with six other artists including Peter Behrens, they held an exhibition in 1901 entitled Das Zeichen (The Sign) on the steps of Ernst Ludwig House, a building Olbrich had completed for his colony of artists. It was undoubtedly the most progressive work that he produced during his remaining years though he continued his search for a uniquely expressive manner.

66 images Ref WQX                         £80/$130/€95                               

FINLAND   Part I: pre-1914

  Helsinki Railway Station, by Eliel Saarinen. Photo copyright Richard Weston

Finland had been created a Grand Duchy of Russia in 1809 following the defeat of Sweden by Russian and French forces. But towards the end of the 19th century the programme of Russification provoked a conservative nationalist movement which became the focus of cultural activity. Architecture played a key role in this movement known as National Romanticism -- and this image set includes the most important buildings by the leading architects of the period, Gesellius, Lindgren, Saarinen and Lars Sonck. Their work combines influences from international Jugendstil, the English Arts and Crafts and the Massive neo-Romanesque of H.H. Richardson, with motifs drawn from vernacular timber buildings and Medieval stone churches and castles. The favoured materials were native granite and timber, and many of the buildings are decorated with the work of the leading artists and craftsmen of the period. The work of Erik Bryggman is also included in this set of images, but not that of Alvar Aalto who is featured here in the image set Alvar Aalto 1898-1976.

63 images Ref WQY                        £75/$125/€90                               

HERMAN HERTZBERGER (1932-)  

  Central Beheer offices, Apeldoorn. Photo copyright Richard Weston

The Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger builds formal frameworks for informal daily use. His work has nothing to do with fashion or style; it's about the reciprocity of human life and habitat and it is full of ideas and full of commitment by the architect. See also his 1988 talk Reciprocity of Human Life and Habitat on the PIDGEON DIGITAL website at www.pidgeondigital.com (also available as a CD).

70 images Ref WQZ                        £85/$135/€190             

CARLO SCARPA 1906-1978   Ref WRA

 Museum of Castelvecchio, Verona: equestrian statue Cangrande. Photo copyright M. Pidgeon

Though the Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa started practising in 1927, it was not until the ‘50s that his work began to be appreciated internationally, when he remodelled the Museo Castelvecchio in Verona. Nearly everything he designed was in Italy. He was ahead of his time with his ideas of conservation, respect for the past, love of materials and the possibilities of decoration. Influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, his work is nevertheless rooted in the Venetian tradition. Michael Browne says of Scarpa's work "a simple device becomes a celebration that explains an action, focuses the eye on an element of decoration, and speaks of the care and skill with which the building has been designed and put together".

132 images Ref WRA                £170/$255/€195                                                                

BALKRISHNA DOSHI (1927- )  

 Housing for Life Insurance Corporation, Ahmedabad, 1973-76. Photo copyright B.V. Doshi/Vastu-Shilpa Foundation

Balkrishna Doshi is a key person in the development of a modern Indian architecture that has its roots in tradition. A former associate of Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn in India, he practises in Ahmedabad where he is Director of the Vastu-Shilpa Foundation for Research in Environmental Design. His partners Joseph Allen Stein and Jam Rattan Bhalla are based in New Delhi. It was Doshi who founded and first directed the Schools of Architecture and of Town Planning, later combined in the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, in the Gujarat University of Ahmedabad. See also his 1980 talk Identity for Indian Architecture on the PIDGEON DIGITAL website at www.pidgeondigital.com (also available as a CD).

77 images Ref WRB                        £95/$145/€110

CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH (1868-1928)

  Glasgow School of Art. Photo copyright Richard Weston 

Influenced in turn by C.A. Voysey, Norman Shaw, Ruskin and the Vienna Secession, the effective years in Charles Rennie Mackintosh's practice were from 1897 to 1909 when he completed the library wing in the Glasgow School of Art. After this, he and his wife Margaret MacDonald moved from Scotland to England. The last years of his life were ones of progressive decline. Yet he had been the first British architect since Robert Adam to acquire an international reputation, and the only one who has ever become the rallying point for a European school of design. All the buildings in this image set are in or near Glasgow. Included are two views of the 'House for an Art Lover' now realised for the first time. See also the two-part 1983 talk on Mackintosh by Andrew Macmillan and Isi Metzstein on the PIDGEON DIGITAL website at www.pidgeondigital.com (also available as a CD).

123 images Ref WRC       £150/$235/€170                         

MUSEUMS 2: BRITAIN   Ref WRD

 Tate Clore Gallery, Liverpool by Stirling Wilford Assoc. Photo copyright Richard Weston

This second collection of Museums includes: Extensions to the Royal Academy of Arts in London by Foster Associates; The Burrell Museum in Glasgow by Barry Gasson Architects; The Tate Clore Gallery in Liverpool by Stirling Wilford Associates & Tate North, Albert Dock, Liverpool; The National Gallery Sainsbury Wing in London by Venturi Scott-Brown & Associates; and the Design Museum in London by Conran Roche. 

77 images Ref WRD                        £95/$145/€110

LONDON PART 1: LARGE COMMERCIAL COMPLEXES  

 Stockley Park 1 – Ove Arup & Peter Foggo. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon

BROADGATE: Broadgate lies at the eastern edge of the City of London, to the east and west of Liverpool Street Station and over the railway tracks to the north. The developers were Rosehaugh Stanhope. The architects of the master plan and of the first four phases to be built were ARUP ASSOCIATES and of the remaining phases were SOM. STOCKLEY PARK: This is a business park developed by Rosehaugh Stanhope and master-planned by ARUP ASSOCIATES, who also designed the first phase of speculative office buildings and laid down flexible ground rules for future buildings. Landscaping is by Ede Griffiths Partnership. The complex includes a golf course and sports facilities. CANARY WHARF: Canary Wharf, on the Isle of Dogs in Docklands, was developed at great speed by the Canadian firm Olympia and York.

86 images Ref WRE                         £110/$170/€135

LONDON Part 2: Commercial buildings   Ref WRF

  Embankment Place station platform by Terry Farrell. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon

This second part on LONDON focuses on individual commercial buildings, including work by Arup Associates, Peter Foggo, John S Bonnington Partnership, Ralph Erskine, Terry Farrell & Co., Norman Foster Associates, Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners Ltd, Ron Herron Associates, Michael Hopkins & Partners, and Richard Rogers & Partners Ltd.

88 images Ref WRF                         £110/$170/€135          

NÎMES AND MONTPELIER   Ref WRG

  Le Colisée, Nîmes. By Kisho Kurokawa and François Fontes. Photo copyright Elizabeth Young

Nîmes and Montpelier lie 25 miles apart near the south coast of France and are the administrative and tourist capitals of Languedoc-Roussillon. Nîmes (130,000 inhabitants) owes its Roman and eigtheenth century splendour to a natural water source. Montpelier (212,000) is an old university town and erstwhile port. Both owe their recent renaissance to the energy and ambition of their respective mayors, Jean Bousquet of Nîmes and Georges Frêche of Montpelier. NÎMES : A major axis of development was designated north-south right through the city and into the countryside (planned by Norman Foster in association with the local Agence d'Urbanisme), and star architects were invited to design various buildings.
MONTPELIER: Since the 80's, like Nîmes, Montpelier has been inviting signature architects to work in the city. The first was the Catalan Ricardo Bofil Taller de Arquitectura who completed a whole area, Antigone, and has a further project in hand, Port Marianne further south, for 20,000 inhabitants, in which Christian de Portzamparc and Rob Krier are to participate. Claude Vasconi's Le Corum, a bunker of a building, terminates the vista at the end of the Esplanade park leading from the vast pedestrianised Place de la Comédie. And Richard Meier is building near the Place Royale du Peyrou.

81 images Ref WRG                         £100/$160/€125                          

MUSEUMS Series 3. EUROPE & NORTH AMERICA  

  Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, by Arthur Erickson. Photo copyright  Peter Blundell-Jones

The Architects and Museums in this image set are: ALVAR AALTO North Jutland Museum Of Modern Art, Denmark; GAE AULENTI Musée D’Orsay, Paris, France; BRIAN AVERY Museum Of The Moving Image, London, UK; GUNTHER BEHNISCH Post Museum, Frankfurt-Am-Main, Germany;BO & WOHLERT Louisiana Museum, Nr. Copenhagen, Denmark; MARCEL BREUER Whitney Museum Of American Art, NY, USA; ARTHUR ERIKSON Museum Of Anthropology, Vancouver, Canada; EVANS & SHALEV Tate Gallery, St. Ives, Cornwall, UK;HANS HOLLEIN Museum Of Modern Art, Frankfurt-Am-Main, Germany; LESLIE MARTIN Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal; MIES VAN DER ROHE National Art Gallery, Berlin, Germany; PIANO & ROGERS Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France;W.G.QUIST Kroller-Muller Museum, Nr. Arnhem, Holland; GERRIT RIETFELD The Rietfeld Pavilion at the Kroller-Muller Museum, and the Zonnehof Museum, Amersfoort, Holland; T.A.C. Bauhaus Archive Museum, Berlin, Germany; O.M. UNGERS Architecture Museum, Frankfurt-Main, Germany.

176 images. Ref WRH.   £195/$350/€230                                         

NORMAN FOSTER (1935- )

 Cranfield Institute of Technology Library. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon

Norman Foster is England's leading architect and is a Gold Medallist in Britain, France and USA. The buildings in this image set are: Sainsbury centre, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK; Renault Building, Swindon, Wiltshire, UK; Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, Hong Kong; Stansted Airport, Hertfordshire, UK; Cranfield Institute of Technology Library, Bedfordshire, UK. See also his 1980 talk More with Less and his 2001 talk Exploring the City on the PIDGEON DIGITAL website at www.pidgeondigital.com (also available as a CDs).

68 images Ref WRI                          £85/$135//€110                           

JEAN NOUVEL (1945- )

  Némaussus, Ave du General Leclerc. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon 

All Jean Nouvel’s work shown here is in France where he is one of the leading architects. FONDATION CARTIER, Boulevard Raspail, Paris 14.
An all-glass building surrounded by a small garden. A glass screen in front of it maintains the continuity of the street frontage. Above are offices and below are storage and car-parking. The double-height ground floor and first basement house changing exhibitions of contemporary art. ARAB INSTITUTE, Quai St Bernard, Paris 5. With P.Soria, G.Lezenes and Architecture Studio. This was the first of the Presidential, "Grands Projets”. The Institute is a cultural centre. The building is in two parts linked by a patio and a top-level bridge. The part facing the river matches the curve of the Bvd St Germain. The entrance façade on the other side matches the height of the Sorbonne which it faces across a great space. It pays lip service to Arab geometry (the mushrabiya) in aluminium. (See P8900 in www.pidgeondigital.com for a description of the project by Nouvel himself). OPERA HOUSE, Place Tolozan, Lyon. The vaulted glass roof that Nouvel added to the 19th century opera house covers the dance studio and offices. NÉMAUSSUS, Ave du General Leclerc, near Peripherique Salvador Allende, Nîmes; and CLM/BBPQ OFFICES, Ave P.Poli, St Germain, Issy-Les-Moulineaux, Paris. See also his 1989 talk Symbolic Statements on the PIDGEON DIGITAL website at www.pidgeondigital.com (also available as a CD).

45 images Ref WRJ                         £60/$95/€75 

PARIS 1994

 Christian De Portzamparc. Dance School for Paris Opera Nanterre. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon

The work shown here is a sampling of some of the most interesting architecture currently visible in Paris. Despite the economic recession, whole new areas have been carved out or are under construction - such as Les Halles, rue Manin, Parc Citroen, La Villette, La Défense, the Louvre, where leading architects are involved. Work by Le Corbusier has not been included here because it is in the image sets WPL and WQG. Similarly, Jean Nouvel has been omitted as his work in the image set WRJ. The series is in two parts: LARGE ENSEMBLES -- LA VILLETTE: Tschumi, Fainsilber, De Portzamparc, Huet, Decq, Vasconi, Nunez. PARC CITROEN AREA: Berger, Meier, Kagan. LES HALLES: Arretch, Huidobro/Chemetov. BERCY: Andrault & Parat with Prouve, Huidobro/Chemetov, Gehry. LA DÉFENSE: Camelot, De Hailly & Zehrfuss, Spreckelson with RER. LE GRAND LOUVRE: I.M.Pei with Peter Rice /RER. INDIVIDUAL WORKS by: Bisset & Lyon, Niemeyer, Ott, Perrault, Piano, Piano & Rogers, Pingusson, Porro, De Portzamparc, Seidler, Tange.

168 images   Ref WRK    £190/$335/€225          

HARRY SEIDLER  1923-2006

 Harry and Penelope Seidler House, Killara. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon 

Harry Seidler was born in Vienna in 1923, went to school in England, and studied architecture at the Universities of Manitoba and Harvard (under Gropius). He was much influenced in his work by Albers, Breuer, Nervi and Niemeyer. "No other architect in Australia has created such a body of high quality work of comparable integrity, spanning over four decades from 1949, which illustrates the ideas of Modern architecture as a unique synthesis of technology, society and the visual imagery of this century." (Philip Drew: "Harry Seidler", Thames & Hudson, 1992). The works illustrated are in Sydney, Canberra and Hong Kong.

76 images   Ref WRL                       £95/$145/€115

SYDNEY & CANBERRA

 Sydney Opera House, by Jörn Utzon. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon 

Buildings etc. by JØRN UTZON, PHILIP COX, JOHN ANDREWS, LAWRENCE NIELD, CONYBEARE MORRISON & PARTNERS, GLEN MURCUTT, ANCHOR, MORTLOCK & WOOLLEY, LEIGH PRENTISS, GRAHAM JAHN, MITCHELL GIURGOLA & THORP, and EDWARDS MADIGAN TORZILLO & BRIGGS. SYDNEY: "Sydney is an isolated urban entity. Behind it, beyond the coastal mountain range, stretches the country's vast empty interior; before it is the ocean which separates it from the rest of the world"... "The Opera House and the Harbour Bridge are juxtaposed dramatically in the foreground and the city centre rises dramatically behind." (Francesca Morrison, Urban Design Quarterly, July 1991).
CANBERRA: The plan and form of Australia's Federal Capital originated in Walter Burley Griffen's winning design in the international competition in 1912. In 1957 the National Capital Development Commission was set up to direct planning. The city is virtually a vast garden containing buildings as individual objects and a man-made lake, the focal zone being the Parliamentary Triangle, crowned by the Parliament building. From here there are wide views down radial avenues.

103 images Ref WRN    £130/$200/€15

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FOUNTAINS: HISTORICAL and 20TH CENTURY   Ref WRN

 Jets and sprays Near Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin. Photo copyright Elizabeth Young

In this series of images all kinds of fountains from many countries are included. Basically there are those in which water is propelled upwards and outwards (jets and sprays), those which depend on gravity (cascades, waterfalls, water, curtains, trickling water, rills and channels), and combinations of both. All, whether large and complex or small and simple, display great imagination and ingenuity of design - even indoors.Part 1: HISTORICAL
EUROPE: Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, England. ASIA: India
Part 2: 20th CENTURY FOUNTAINS
EUROPE: England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Holland. AMERICA: USA. ASIA - Hong Kong, India, Australia .

 

186 images.    Ref WRN.                £210/$375/€245

TWENTIETH CENTURY HOUSES: Series 3: The 1950’s to the 1990’s  

  House near Hamburg, by Richard Neutra.  Photo copyright Alan Blanc

Twelve houses built in Britain between the 1950's and 1990's are included in this collection by architects such as Richard Rogers, John Miller, John Winter, Michael Hopkins and Tom Jestico; together with one little-known house in Germany by Richard Neutra. The images reflect a wide range of styles. Houses in Britain
Peter Aldington, Michael Hopkins, Tom Jestico, John Miller, Richard Rogers, Stout & Lichfield, Matthew Weinreb, David Wilde, John Winter.
House in Germany Richard Neutra

79 images Ref WRP                         £95/$155/€115

VICTOR HORTA (1861-1947) and his contemporaries  

 Hotel Solway 224, Ave Louise, Brussels Photo copyright Yolande Oostens-Wittamer

Victor Horta was more than just an exponent of the Art Nouveau style. His buildings exhibit highly original plans, many of which incorporate delightful light wells and internal winter gardens. In addition to the images shown of his buildings in Brussels details are included of the work in the same city of some of his contemporaries. Balat's Royal Glass Houses were one of the main influences on Horta.
His contemporaries featured in this image set are:
A. BALAT; JOSEPH HOFFMANN; P. SAINTENOY; GUSTAVE STRAUWEN; PAUL HANKAR; ARMAND VAN WAESBERGH; PAUL HAMESSE; ALBERT ROOSENBOOM; PAUL CAUCHIE

53 images    Ref WRQ                      £70/$105/€85                              

USA WEST COAST  

  Eric Owen Moss: Samitaur buildin; Culver City; Los Angeles. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon

The architects and buildings in this image set are: MARIO BOTTA: Museum of Modern Art. San Francisco; FRANK GEHRY: Chiat Day Offices. Venice, Los Angeles. RICHARD MEIER: The J. Paul Getty Center, Los Angeles; MITHUN PARTNERS: REI Sports Store, Mid-town Seattle; MORPHOSIS: Office for Qve Arup & Partners, Santa Monica, Los Angeles; ERIC OWEN MOSS: Samitaur building, Culver City, Los Angeles; ROTO ARCHITECTS: Carlsop-Reges Residence, Los Angeles; STANLEY SAITOWITZ: Own office, San Francisco.

94 images           Ref WRR                               £125/$195/€145                           

OXFORD UNIVERSITY  

 Leslie Martin & Colin St John Wilson: Interior of Statistics Library. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon

Architects represented:
AHRENDS BURTON & KORALEK; ARCHITECTS CO-PARTNERSHIP; ARUP ASSOCIATES; STEPHEN HODDER; ARNE JACOBSEN; MAC CORMAC, JAMIESON, PRICHARD; GILLESPIE KIDD &. COIA; LESLIE MARTIN & COLIN ST JOHN WILSON; RICK MATHER; POWELL & MOYA; ALISON & PETER SMITHSON; JAMES STIRLING & PARTNERS. Both Oxford City and University have doubled in size since 1900 and new buildings have appeared to cope with this growth. Since about 1960 there has been a succession of buildings for the Colleges in the modern style which Oxford had hitherto been reluctant to accept. We show here a selection of the best in the University. Most date from the 70's, 80s and 90's, but a few earlier ones of particular interest have been included. St John's College, the wealthiest among the older colleges, set the scene with ABK's 'Beehives' building in 1958. Arne Jacobsen gained international admiration with the formal and complete St Catherine's College in 1964 (which has only recently been cleverly extended by Stephen Hodder) -- this in the same year as Leslie Martin's cubist Law Library. Four years later James Stirling shocked the world with his unsteady-looking Florey Building for Queen's. Innovation continued in the 70's with the Smithson's little Garden Building for St Hilda's and ABK's brilliant design for Keble with its snake-like glass 'corridor' and high glazed walls backed by a fortress-like brick enclosure. A more aggressive functionalism followed with the repeated concrete structural bays of Powell & Moya and Arup Associates. But in the 80's MacCormac introduced a softer style more related to historic or vernacular precedents. Most recent of all is Rick Mather's building for Keble which attempts to fit in with the original exuberant decorative brickwork.

86 images Ref WRS                           £110/$170/€135          

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY AND CITY  

 Powell & Moya: Queens' College -- Cripps Court. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon

Architects represented:
ALLIES & MORRISON; ARUP ASSOCIATES; EDWARD CULLINAN & PARTNERS; JEREMY DIXON. ED JONES; RALPH ERSKINE; EVANS & SHALEV; GILLESPIE KIDD & COIA; MICHAEL HOPKINS; DENYS LASDUN; MAC CORMAC PRICHARD JAMIESON; LESLIE MARTIN; NORMAN FOSTER; JOHN OUTRAM; POWELL & MOYA; STIRLING & GOWAN; VAN HEYNINGEN & HAWARD.

 

In this series of images, faculty buildings for the university are distinguished from colleges. The buildings, selected in date from the late 60's, with Stirling and Gowan's famous History Faculty building and colleges by Arup Associates, Denys Lasdun and Powell and Moya, to present day including Foster's Law Faculty building and, recently, Evans and Shalev's library for Jesus College. A building by Michael Hopkins on the edge of the city, for neither 'town' nor 'gown', has also been included.

113 images         Ref WRT    £140/$215/€155                                                                     

ROTTERDAM  

 Wilhelminhof Courthouse complex. by Cees Dam, with R. Ugfroet/Kraaijvanger-Urbis. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon.

Architects represented:
BEN VAN BERKEL; PIET BLOM; MARCEL BREUER; BRINKMAN AND VAN DER VLUGT; C.J.M. WEEBER; VAN DEN BROEK & BAKEMA; CEPEZED; JO COENEN; CEES DAM; ERICK VAN EGERAAT; FOSTER & PARTNERS; ADRIAAN GEUZE/WEST 8; H.A.J. HENKET; MECANOO ARCHITECTS; OMA/REM KOOLHAAS; J.J.P. OUD; WIM QUIST; H.C.H. REIJNDERS; TUNS AND HORSTING.

After the bombing which the city was subjected to in 1940, a great deal of reconstruction took place. The core of the new centre was De Lijnbahn by van den Broek & Bakema. In this set of slides this is included along with the Van Nelle factory by Brinkman & Van der Vlugt and the Bijenkorf department store by Marcel Breuer because of their importance as examples of Modern architecture in Holland. A great inspirer of a new generation of designers in the 80's and 90's was Rem Koolhaas who set up his Office of Metropolitan Architects (OMA) in the city. His designs for the Museum Park and the Kunsthal (images 109-122), plus Jo Coenen's Netherlands Architecture Institute (images 31-52) and, more recently, Ben van Berkel's dynamic suspension bridge (images 1-8) over the River Maas, have all contributed to placing Rotterdam firmly on the world architectural map, and are included in the set of slides.

138 images         Ref WRU           £165/$265/€185                             

AMSTERDAM  

 New Metropolis: Science and Technology Centre. By RENZO PIANO. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon.

Architects represented:
BENTHEM & CROUWEL; VAN BERKEL & BOS; H.P. BERLAGE; JO COENEN; BRUCE ALBERT; J. DUIKER; ALDO VAN EYCK; Michel de KLERK; HANS KOLLHOFF; W KROMHOUT; J M VAN DER MEY; RENZO PIANO; GERRIT RIETVELD; R.J.L.M. RUDSSENARS & C. SPANIER.

 The Amsterdam School for which Holland was famous in the first half of the 20th century was a term used to describe a group of young architects who sought freedom and self expression from the ideas from their guru Berlage, the father of them all. They included de Klerk, Kramer and van der Mey among others, Examples of their work, and that of some of their colleagues, are included in this set of slides, followed by Duiker, van Eyck and Rietveld all of whose architecture is seminal. Coming to the present day and recent buildings, we show Renzo Piano's dramatic Science and Technology Centre which towers colourfully over the harbour and provides a wonderful new public open space on the roof with views all over the city; Beothem and Crouwel's Schiphol air terminal; van Berkel & Bos' commercial and residential development in the centre of the city; and some interesting housing on the hitherto unoccupied KSNM Island by Kollhoff, Albert and Coenen.

105 images         Ref WRV             £125/$205/€140                          

BILBAO, SPAIN: GEHRY, FOSTER & CALATRAVA  

 The Guggenheim Museum, by Frank Gehry. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon.

With a population of barely a million and a past as a great centre of shipping, the Basque city of Bilbao is the least glamorous of Spanish regional capitals. Its heavy industry was left behind in the 80's by the emergence of the 'tiger economies' of the East. So a 1.5 billion dollar comprehensive development was launched. The public and private sectors of the region planned major projects to transform the city and make it a centre of the service industry and a centre for "European trade, tourism and culture”. These included a new airport terminal, a new subway system, a transport interchange, expansion of the port; and a number of 'grand projects' replacing the docks around the derelict river - a museum of art, a leisure and commercial area, and a congress/concert hall on the south side and a new pedestrian bridge to reach the north bank. Santiago Calatrava is doing the airport terminal at Sandika and he has already completed the footbridge over the river. Norman Foster has designed the metro system. A transport interchange by Stirling/Wilford will replace the existing Abando railway station in the centre of town. There is no sign of life as yet of the commercial/leisure area which Cesar Pelli is designing. The congress/concert hall beyond, designed by Federico Soriano and Dolores Palacios, is under early construction. The 'pearl in the crown' and the main attraction which has set Bilbao on the international cultural map, is the new Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry. Bilbao is surrounded by hills. The River Nervion, which eventually reaches the port on the Bay of Biscay, flows through the city in a northerly curve, separating the "new" part from the old city, the Casco Viejo. Whereas the new part has wide streets planned on a grid, with plazas and fountains, big hotels and smart shops, the old part is hilly, has narrow streets lined with 5-storey buildings. Here too are the historic monuments of the city - the cathedral, the Arriaga Theatre, museums, library, and the largest market building in Europe. A riverside park and promenade lining the full length of the north bank from the market to the Deusto University (opposite the Museum) completes the picture of this city which is gearing itself to attract new business and tourism and become a European capital.

83 images         Ref WRW                                £105/$165/€130                          

MUSEUMS Series 4: UK, SWITZERLAND & GERMANY  

 Vitra ex-fire-station, by Zaha Hadid. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon.

The museums in this image set are:
NORMAN FOSTER & PARTNERS: American Air Museum, Duxford, England, 1997.
RENZO PIANO: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland, 1997.
MARIO BOTTA: Museum Jean Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland 1995.
FRANK GEHRY: Vitra Center, Birsfelden/Basel, Switzerland 1994; Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany, 1989.
ZAHA HADID: Vitra ex-fire-station, Weil am Rhein, Germany.

Three sets of images on Museums have previously been published (WPG, WRD and WRH - see above). But other important museums have also been included in recent mixed sets. These are: Bilbao (Ref WRW): The Guggenheim Museum by Frank Gehry. Amsterdam (Ref WRV): The New Metropolis, Science and Technical Centre by Renzo Piano. Rotterdam (Ref WRU): The Art Gallery by Rem Koolhaas OMA; the Natural History Museum by Erick von Egerat; the Netherland National Institute of Architecture by Joe Coenen; and the Boyman Museum extension by H.A.J. Henket.

66 images   Ref WRX                       £80/$130/€100                            

MIES VAN DER ROHE (1886-1969)

 860 and 880 Lake Shore Drive apartments, Chicago. Photo copyright John Winter.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is recognised as one of the four founding masters of twentieth century architecture - the other three being Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto (See image sets WPA, WQG and WPR respectively). Mies’ great contribution to architecture was celebrated in 1999 by exhibitions at the Vitra Museum in Weil-am-Rhein, Germany and at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow; and in 2000, at both the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Canadian Institute of Architecture in Montreal.

85 images     Ref WRY                    £110/$170/€135                          

MUSEUMS Series 5: NEW MUSEUMS IN EDINBURGH  

 William Younger Centre by Michael Hopkins & Partners. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon. 

1999 is the year that Scotland was granted her own Parliament. It was also the year that a unique new museum to chronicle Scottish history was opened in Edinburgh. Won in competition it was designed by the architects Benson and Forsyth (see P9213 on www.pidgeondigital.com.). Its role is to augment Scotland’s self-knowledge and emergent sense of national identify. The architects have taken the facts of the collection of exhibits and dramatised their presentation, at the same time linking the whole into Edinburgh’s incomparable background. Down near Holyrood Palace, opposite the new Parliament building site, another exhibition centre has opened, the William Younger Centre, designed by Michael Hopkins & Partners. Startlingly beautiful in its setting against Salisbury Crags, it gained instant acclaim with its first show "Our Dynamic Earth", by which name the centre is currently known in the city. MUSEUM OF SCOTLAND. Architects: Benson & Forsyth
The Museum stands at the corner of George IV Bridge and Chambers St in Edinburgh’s Old Town and forms an extension to the 19th century Royal Scottish Museum. Its cylindrical tower on the corner, forms a landmark at the street’s junction. Its stone walls are penetrated by slots and openings that frame dramatic views over the city. The main entrance is at the base of the tower, though the building can also be extended from the Royal Scottish Museum at various levels. The Museum is designed to tell the story of Scotland from earliest times. It is divided by interrelated levels, starting with the basement 8000 BC to AD 1100 - and rising through the centuries to the present day at level 6. A roof terrace on level 7 captures view in all directions over the city. Ground floor (level 1) entrances to the building lead into the main east-west, "orientation" atrium, Hawthornden Court. South of this atrium lies the complex of galleries, large or small according to need, criss-crossed by walkways, and with views up, down and across. WILLIAM YOUNGER CENTRE. Architects: Michael Hopkins & Partners The Centre lies close to Holyrood Palace and opposite the site of the future Scottish Parliament building, with Salisbury Crags and Arthur’s Seat as a background. The Centre sits on land which used to contain a brewery, whose old wall and turret have been incorporated into the rear of the new building. The roof of the Centre is of Teflon PTF fabric, cables and masts and glass, and it covers the spacious reception area, available for many uses in the future. A wide terrace surrounds this level. During 1999 the Centre hosted a geology exhibition called Our Dynamic Earth. Depicting the evolution of the planet, it was contained in a labyrinth of ‘black box’ rooms and mini cinemas in the lower part of the building.

93 images.      Ref WRZ.    £120/$185/€140                       

TWENTIETH CENTURY HOUSES: Series 4  

  Torilla, Hatfield. 1935, by F.R.S. Yorke. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon. 

Architects represented:
Elspeth Beard; Richard Burton (ABK); Cullum & Nightingale; Kevin Dash; Alison & Peter Smithson; F.R.S. Yorke. The only thing that these houses have in common is that they are all in England and, despite their widely varying vintage, they have been photographed in the last few years. The earliest one, recently restored, dates from before World War II. The architects designed four of the others for themselves, one being a conversion.

88 images     Ref WSA                     £115/$175/€140                          

BERLIN IN TRANSITION 1945-2000  

 The Reichstag, by Foster and Partners. Photo copyright Elizabeth Young

In Berlin since World War Two there have been several periods of interesting architectural development; for example the Siemenstadt housing in Charlottenburg up to 1952; the Hansaviertel housing in Tiergarten, 1957-1961; the Cultural Forum, 1946-1985; the IBA (International Building Exhibition) 1984-1987. Since then the steady rebuilding of the city still continues, including the Potsdamerplatz and the Reichstag.

120 images Ref WSB       £145/$230/€165                                          

LONDON: ARCHITECTURE INTO THE 21ST CENTURY  

 The London Eye, by David Marks and Julia Barfield. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon.

The work of twelve architects in the late 90’s is represented here, divided into the categories Civic, Education, Leisure, Sport, Transport, Bridges. Architects represented:
Allies & Morrison; Will Alsop; Brian Avery; Edward Cullinan; Norman Foster; Future Systems; Herzog & De Meuron; Michael Hopkins; John Lacey; Lifschutz Davidson; Marks Barfield; David Morley. Projects covered: Civic, Education, Leisure, Sports,  Transport, and Pedestrian Bridges projects. See also, on the website PIDGEON DIGITAL at http://www.pidgeondigital.com: The British Library: Colin St John Wilson, P8215. The London Eye: Julia Barfield and Jane Wernick, P0102 and P0103. Lords Cricket Ground: David Morley, P9714.

92 images.      Ref WSC.    £120/$170/€140                       

REM KOOLHAAS (OMA): HOUSE NEAR BORDEAUX, FRANCE  

  Steel-clad drum enclosing the stairs to children’s rooms.Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon.

The house sits on a hill overlooking the city of Bordeaux. Completed in 1998, it was designed for a couple whose husband was confined to a wheelchair after a severe car accident. The house is on 3 levels, each linked by a 3 x 3m hydraulic mobile platform which can lock into or between each level, thus placing mobility for the client at the heart of the scheme. The lowest level, containing entrance, family room, kitchen and other everyday facilities, backs south into the hillside and opens north off a walled entrance courtyard with guest quarters and caretaker’s room opposite. On the middle level is the glass-enclosed living area. This opens south onto a covered terrace and extends east into a covered terrace, in the middle of which is a circular steel-clad drum containing the stair to the children’s quarters. In contrast, the top floor is enclosed in a mass concrete box, 25 x 11m, punctured by porthole windows. Here are the bedrooms and washrooms. The parents’ and children’s zones are separated by a central void.

28 images.      Ref WSD    £45/$70/€55                

PAVILIONS ON THE SERPENTINE 2001-2003. By Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito and Oscar Niemeyer

 Oscar Niemeyer (1907- ), 2003. The pavilion of the then 95-year-old Brazilian Niemeyer. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon.

Since the year 2000 the Serpentine Gallery in London’s Hyde Park has commissioned internationally famous architects to design a series of temporary pavilions. These were installed for three summer months on the lawn fronting the Gallery and housed a café and a series of debates on urban design. At the close of the season the structures were sold off. The first pavilion was by Zaha Hadid (not featured here), followed by DANIEL LIBESKIND, 2001: ‘Eighteen Turns’ pavilion; TOYO ITO, 2002 and OSCAR NIEMEYER, 2003.

35 images.      Ref WSE.    £55/$85/€65                

HERZOG & DE MEURON: The Laban Dance Centre, London, 2003

  Reception area: entrance gate. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon.

Deptford in S.E. London is a run-down area of wharves, scrap yards, odds and ends of post-industrial industry, council houses, railway lines and bleak roads, and plenty of cheap redundant land. It is here that the Laban Dance Centre has moved from nearby New Cross. It is now the largest contemporary dance centre in the world, designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron and winner of the 2003 Stirling Prize. The west-facing main façade curves gently, focusing on the distant 18th century St. Paul’s church by Thomas Archer. It is fronted by landscaped mounds that act as outdoor rehearsal and performance areas. At the rear the building is protected by Deptford Creek. The exterior façades consist of coloured transparent polycarbonate panels backed by transparent and translucent glass panels. This skin reflects the surroundings by day, but by night the building becomes transparent and glows with colour. Because of the importance played by colour in determining rhythm and orientation inside and out, the architects collaborated with the artist Michael Craig-Martin who proposed a palette of magenta, lime and turquoise. The activities of the Centre are distributed on two main levels. On the lower -- which is split in two -- the 300-seat theatre is located in the centre. It is surrounded by the café and therapy area (below the library), dance studios, offices, etc. The upper level houses most of the 13 studios, accessed from three wedge-shaped corridors. The artist determined the colours to be used. The levels are connected by two spiral stairways, one at each end of the building.

23 images.      Ref WSF         £40/$60/€50                           

NORMAN FOSTER, 2008: Images of recent work  

 Swiss Re Office Tower (The Gherkin). Photo copyright: Luke Palmer

CITY HALL, LONDON; FOSTER OFFICES, LONDON; NATIONAL BOTANICAL GARDENS OF WALES, NEAR SWANSEA; TIBIDABO TV TOWER, BARCELONA; and the SWISS RE OFFICE TOWER (nicknamed THE GHERKIN), LONDON
Other work by Norman Foster is to be found in the following image sets:
DUXFORD AMERICAN AIR MUSEUM--WPX; SECKLER GALLERY, RA, LONDON--WRD; STOCKLEY PARK OFFICES--WRE; ITV STUDIO LONDON--WRF; LE CARRÉE D'ART, NÎMES--WRG; REICHSTAG, BERLIN--WSB; BILBAO METRO--WRW; CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LAW FACULTY--WRT; MILLENNIUM BRIDGE, LONDON, BRITISH MUSEUM GREAT COURT, LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS and CANARY WHARF UNDERGROUND STATION—all in WSC.

38 images.      Ref WSG             £60/$90/€70                      

ENGLISH & JAPANESE GARDENS  

 Hestercombe, Somerset. By Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll. Photo copyright Richard Weston.

In England: The Gardens at Stourhead, Stowe, Rousham, Castle Howard, Hestercombe, Hidcote Manor, Sissinghurst and Great Dixter.

In Kyoto, Japan: The Gardens at the Katsura Imperial Villa, Daisen-in, Ryoan-ji, and the Kinkaju-ji Golden Pavilion.

96 images.      Ref PGA    £115/$170/€130                         

SOME MORE BRITISH GARDENS  

 Nikko bridge and Magnolia Soulangiana at Heale House, Salisbury. Photo copyright Elizabeth Young.

Among the 23 gardens included in this set are Penshurst Place, Castle Drogo, Blenheim Palace, Hever Castle, Sutton Place, and the Queen's Garden at Kew.

139 images    Ref PGB     £155/$260/€175                                          

CHINESE GARDENS  

 Boats at Hangzhou. Hsi Hu. West Lake. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon.

The essence of a Chinese garden is said to be "infinite riches in a small room". Harmony, proportion and variety. The following are characteristics: - Rocks, water, buildings, trees and vegetation in different combinations. - Glimpses through delicate lattice or file pattern openings or moon gates, or through gaps in rock or bamboo. - Reflections in water. - Perspectives suggesting whole landscape or borrowing outside features as part of the design. - Bridges which zig-zag to foil evil spirits. - Mystically arranged rockeries. - Small pavilions and terraces suggesting larger scale. - Undulating covered walkways. - Fish in ponds. - Marble fencing. Everything is designed to be viewed a little at a time, and not to look natural. Everything has symbolic significance.

Notes:
1.The spelling of the Chinese names of the places and gardens in this image set is debatable, as are their English equivalents, such is the problem of translating them from Chinese.
2.The dynasties referred to date as follows: Tang/T'ang 618-907. Song/Sung 960-1280.Yuan 1279-1368. Ming 1368-1644. Ching/Qing 1644-1911.

100 images     Ref PGC    £125/$200/€145                                                         

LANDSCAPE USA: MANHATTAN AND THE WEST COAST

 Los Angeles: Bunker’s Hill. By Lawrence Halprin. Photo copyright Monica Pidgeon.

This series of Landscape images from the USA covers New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. The projects shown are:
MANHATTAN, New York: Battery Park, Battery Park City Plaza, Bryant Park, Lincoln Center Broadway and Broadway, north of Columbus Circle.
THE WEST COAST -- LOS ANGELES -- DOWNTOWN: Pershing Square, Hope Park, Los Angeles Library and Bunkers Hill; MALIBU: The Getty Museum; SANTA MONICA.
THE WEST COAST -- SAN FRANCISCO: Justin Herman Plaza, Embarcadero, Levi Plaza, Yerbabuena Park, Blooming Square and Embarcadero pavement strip.
THE WEST COAST --SEATTLE: National Oceanographic Research Centre Parkland, Freeway Park, Gasworks Park, Lake Union and Waterway Fifteen.

153 images         Ref PGD           £185/$290/€220                              

Section 3. DVDs on architecture (some formerly videos from

the PIDGEON AUDIOVISUAL LIBRARY): 2011

DVDS on Architecture: 2011

New films, and films which were formerly videos from the PIDGEON AUDIOVISUAL LIBRARY. They are on individual DVDs and can be purchased

for £49.50/$85 each. They can be incorporated in a Library

system provided copyright is observed. They are also being incorporated in

the PIDGEON DIGITAL online subscription website at www.pidgeondigital.com.

Note that these DVDs on Architecture are available from PIDGEON DIGITAL in

the UK only on the PAL system* (For the NTSC system please

contact INSIGHT MEDIA, Inc. – see below for details).

‘Cook's Camden: London's Great Experiment in Urban Housing'. 

10 films, edited by Peter Murray, the Director of New London architecture, from a symposium held on October 30th 2010 

The housing projects built by Camden when Sydney Cook was borough architect (1965-73) constitute the last great output of social housing in the UK and also arguably the most substantial investigation into the architecture of urban housing undertaken in the past half-century. As such these projects continue to provide a benchmark for architects today. Speakers at the symposium presented a range of projects built in the borough at the time, and provided a contemporary view on their impact today.

10 films, edited by New London Architecture's Director, Peter Murray, from a symposium held on October 30th 2010 and organised by NLA , The Building Centre and the DOSSier (Discourses on Space and Society), research unit at the department of architecture, Oxford Brookes University. Symposium chaired by Mark Swenarton, Professor of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University, with an exhibition of photographs, original models and drawings on display at The Building Centre up to November 27^th 2010.

The 10 new films from this symposium now on the website are:

Peter Murray, Director of New London Architecture: Introduction to the Symposium

Peter Barber, architect of the Donnybrook housing scheme: Symposium talk No. 1

John Green, who worked with Cook at both Holborn and Camden: talk No. 2

Martin Morton, Camden councillor 1964-74 and housing  chair 1968-70: talk No. 3

 

Neave Brown, architect of Fleet Road and Alexandra Road schemes: talk No. 4

Max Fordham, environmental engineer for Alexandra Road: talk No. 5

 

Peter Tabori who worked on Highgate New Town and the Polygon: talk No. 6

 

John Miller who worked on the Caversham Road/Gaisford Street project: talk No. 7

 

Sam Webb, who worked at Camden 1967-71: talk No. 8

 

Peter Barber, architect of the Donnybrook housing scheme: concluding discussion

John Worthington (DEGW) & Frank Duffy: NLA Nights at Ergonom

This talk by the co-founders of the DEGW, the leading workplace consultancy, was given to members of the NLA in London on 26 May 2010 and looks at five decades of change in the working environment. Francis Duffy co-founded DEGW in 1973 to enable clients to make more efficient, more effective, and more expressive use of workspace. Frank believes in research in the context of practice. He was a Visiting Professor at MIT in the early 2000s. His book, Work and The City, was published in June 2008. John Worthington is a pioneer in methods of adapting urban and space planning techniques to meet the needs of the emerging knowledge economy. He is a visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield and Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg. 35 mins. 2010. Ref.  P1003

Michael Hopkins: the William Younger Centre in Edinburgh. Photo © Monica Pidgeon

RON HERRON: Imagination

Herron describes the new headquarters he has designed for Imagination, the company of which he was a director. He has created a truly magical place tenting over the space between two refurbished Edwardian buildings. 46 mins. 1990 Ref P9003

FUTURE SYSTEMS: Concern for tomorrow

Future Systems is the London-based practice of Jan Kaplicky and Amanda Levete. Their architecture is inspired by space spin-offs, aircraft design, high-tech industries, materials and methods of joining. The recording is of a recent conversation Jan and Amanda had with critic Martin Pawley and Arup engineer Andrew Sedgwick. 45 mins. 1991 Ref. P9108

The Media centre at Lord’s, London, by Future Systems. Photo © Monica Pidgeon

KEN YEANG: Bioclimatic Skyscrapers

Yeang describes the striking low-energy tall buildings which he and his partner R. Hamzah have built in Malaysia and other parts of Asia. 11 mins.1994. Ref P9403

RALPH ERSKINE: An egalitarian architecture

Erskine describes many housing schemes, the Vasa Bus Terminal/World Trade Centre in Stockholm, the Skanska HQ building in Gothenburg, and his latest office project in London, The Ark. 44 mins. 1990. Ref. P9001.

MICHAEL HOPKINS: Developing structures

The buildings which Hopkins uses to demonstrate the design continuity of his practice are mainly of steel frame construction and glass cladding with, sometimes, translucent fabric membrane roofs. 27 mins. 1989 Ref P8901.

Michael Hopkins’ own house and office, Hampstead, London 1976. Photo © Monica Pidgeon

PETER FOGGO: Broadgate

Foggo describes the genesis and realisation of the first 4 phases of the Broadgate complex in the City of London. 16 mins. 1989 Ref P8902.

PIERS GOUGH (CZWG): The built idea

Gough and his partners have provided London with some of its most witty architectural statements. 31 mins. 1990. Ref P9000.

DAN KILEY: Fountain Place, Dallas, Texas

Dan Kiley, one of America's leading landscape architects, is a Classicist in his use of regular geometry. Two constant themes in his urban gardens are water and light, and never more so than at Fountain Place which he describes in the video. Completed in 1985, its ingredients are 160 jet fountains, 263 bubble fountains, cascades and 440 cypress trees in granite planters. People appear to walk on water and trees to grow out of it. The sound of water pervades. 11 mins. 1995 Ref P9502

JOHN WORTHINGTON (DEGW): Place making, the added value to space planning

Worthington describes how a concern for understanding the changing patterns of work has influenced design decisions for the place of work. 46 mins. 1991 Ref P9106

Edward Cullinan talks to Victoria Perry: New Buildings in Old Settings

Using slides and an overhead projector on which he draws as he talks, Ted Cullinan describes how architecture has developed through the ages. And then he demonstrates how a new architecture can be used to respond to an existing situation. 51 mins. 1991 Ref P9107

Nick Grimshaw: Buildings as Living Organisms

Grimshaw demonstrates the design process in various of his completed buildings and his designs for the Channel Tunnel Terminus at Waterloo in London and for the British Pavilion for Expo 92 in Seville.  46 mins. 1990 Ref P9002

Santiago Calatrava

Calatrava is both an architect and an engineer. He has produced a remarkable volume of work. This videotape represents the exhibition of his work held at the RIBA in late 1992, and also records Calatrava in conversation with British architect Dennis Sharp. 20 mins. 1992 Ref BCA

Technology and the Victorian City

Dr Dennis Smith, chairman of the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Department describes how technology was used to tackle some of London's main social problems. These included providing clean drinking water and main drainage and new systems of transport. 30 mins. 1980 RefVHIO

Transport in Cities: From EcoPlan International

Brian Richards explores the methods being used in the 1990's to civilise cars in cities and to provide for better public transport. The material is based on his book of the same name.

56 mins. Ref ECO 1

British New Towns: An experiment in towns 

Official British Government film, from the Central Office of Information A remarkable experiment in town planning in Britain in the 50's. Fifteen completely self-sufficient and scientifically planned new towns were designed to help draw people and the industries in which they work from the great metropolitan centres. The new towns are seen in various stages of development.  22 mins. Ref BGO 1

The Gothic Cathedral: A landmark in engineering

Dr Dennis Smith states that "Gothic" is the pejorative term applied to that style of building which emerged in northern France in the 12th century. 22 mins. 1980 Ref VH12

Architectural Expressionism: A Re-evaluation

DVD recordings from a symposium held 1980 at the Architectural Association, London.

The symposium investigated the international aspects of Expressionist architecture as a historical phenomenon and in its present day interpretation. The programmes in this series are on 1-hour DVDs (except AE12 which is a 1/2-hour DVD).

Wolfgang Pehnt/lntroduction. Ref AE1

Andrew MacMillan/Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Ref AE2

George Collins/Antonio Gaudi and Expressionism. Ref AE3

Bruno Zevi/Space Time and Mendelsohn. Ref AE10

Dennis Sharp/Expressionism into The Future. Ref AE12

4. PIDGEON DIGITAL

online subscription website at www.pidgeondigital.com

For details see http://pidgeondigitalnewsrelease22.yolasite.com (you need to click on News Release 22 Pidgeon Digital.doc which appears in the middle).

            Norman Foster: Solar House, from his 2001 talk 'Exploring the City'. Photo © Norman Foster

MASTERS OF ARCHITECTURE

online subscription website at

www.mastersofarchitecture.com

For details see http://MastersofArchitectureNewsRelease5.yolasite.com (you need to click on News Release 5 Masters of Architecture.doc  which appears in the middle)

New York State Pavilion at World's Fair, New York, 1964. By Philip Johnson. Photo © Tadeusz Barucki

5. ARCHITECTURE – MICROFILMS

List of 16 microfilm collections; then scroll down to see the full descriptions

Contents Lists available free on request

1. BRITISH ARCHITECTURAL LIBRARY:  ROYAL INSTITUTE OF BRITISH ARCHITECTS. THE DRAWINGS COLLECTION List Price £39,000  

2. CATALOGUE OF THE DRAWINGS COLLECTION OF THE RIBA List Price £350  

3. ROYAL INSTITUTE OF BRITISH ARCHITECTURE: Kalendars (1886-1925) & Nomination Papers (1897-1925) List Price £3,400  

4. THE AUTHOR/TITLE & SUBJECT CATALOGUE OF BOOKS List Price £5,250   

5. THE GREY BOOKS INDEX: RIBA MEMBERS' WORK ILLUSTRATED IN ARCHITECTURAL PERIODICALS, 1900-74 List Price £2,000 

6. BRITISH ARCHITECTURAL LIBRARY: MICROFILMED COLLECTION OF RARE BOOKS  List Price £2,050  

7. BRITISH ARCHITECTURAL LIBRARY: UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS COLLECTION List Price £1,150   

8. ROYAL INSTITUTE OF BRITISH ARCHITECTS: TRANSACTIONS AND PROCEEDINGS 1835-93 List Price £1,450 

9. BRITISH ARCHITECTURAL LIBRARY: COMPREHENSIVE INDEX TO ARCHITECTURAL PERIODICALS List Price £1,150     

10. GIMSON AND BARNSLEY. DESIGNS AND DRAWINGS IN CHELTENHAM ART GALLERY AND MUSEUMS List Price £400    CD-ROM  PRICE £225  

11. THE EDWARD BARNSLEY DRAWINGS COLLECTION: Furniture and Interior design List Price £570

12. THE SKETCHBOOKS OF ALFRED WATERHOUSE 1853-99 List Price £320   

13. LAMBETH PALACE LIBRARY. THE "QUEEN ANNE CHURCHES" PAPERS List Price £1,200  

14. THE CALIFORNIA ARCHITECT AND BUILDING NEWS 1879-99 List Price £400

15. WHO’S WHO IN ARCHITECTURE: 1914, 1923, 1926 List Price £80  

16. ROYAL INSTITUTE OF CHARTERED SURVEYORS: Abstracts and Reviews (1965-1999); Weekly Briefings (1968-1999) List Price £950   

BRITISH ARCHITECTURAL LIBRARY
ROYAL INSTITUTE OF BRITISH ARCHITECTS. THE DRAWINGS COLLECTION

This microfilm collection from World Microfilms provide a major resource for architectural libraries throughout the world. The Drawings Collection from the RIBA (mostly on colour microfilm) is of particular importance and is an essential tool for serious students of the history of architecture. 
The microfilms have been prepared in conjunction with the RIBA and follow the already published Catalogues. In order to facilitate study of the Drawings, the films are supplied with the following information on each frame: Name of Architect, Square Bracket No. (a direct reference to the published Catalogue), Drawing No. (indicating position in the original Collection) and Scale (showing reduction ratio for that image). Each colour microfilm has a gray scale and colour control chart with each image. 

FULL DETAILS AT END OF THIS SECTION. 
Currently available: 
PHASES A-V (144 colour microfilm reels and 73 reels of black & white microfilm. Total 217 reels). All on 35mm positive roll microfilm With printed guide Ref RIA 
LIST PRICE £39,000


 

CATALOGUE OF THE DRAWINGS COLLECTION OF THE RIBA
4 reels of 35mm positive roll microfilm      Ref. RCD      LIST PRICE £350


 

ROYAL INSTITUTE OF BRITISH ARCHITECTURE: Kalendars (1886-1925) & Nomination Papers (1897-1925)
The RIBA Kalendars provide a unique reference tool for Institute policies and activities. They have been produced annually since 1886 and contain information on the RIBA’s history and constitution, Council, boards and committees, medals and prizes, education, examinations, and architectural practice issues.

They also form the index for the Nomination papers of the RIBA members, one of the most important biographical sources on British architects. The Nomination Papers consist of the nomination, declaration, proposals statement and candidate’s statement, usually including details of education and a list of works. 

 +Calendars, 1886-1925      +Associates, 1897-1925      +Fellows of the RIBA, 1900-1925      +Licentiates, 1910-1912 (Class then suspended until 1925) 

43 reels of 35mm positive roll microfilm (with detailed 25-page guide) Ref. RNP LIST PRICE £3,400

******************************************************************************************* 

NOMINATION PAPERS 1834-1900 
Microfiche:      LIST PRICE £599 


 

THE AUTHOR/TITLE & SUBJECT CATALOGUE OF BOOKS
The catalogue is filmed in two parts. 

Part One: Author/Title Catalogue arranged alphabetically. 

Part Two: Subject Catalogues: A. Alphabetical subject index to classified catalogues. B. Classified subjects catalogue to 1955. C. Classified subjects catalogue 1956- 83. D. Classified subjects catalogue to 1983 (Class 91: Topography). E. Classified subjects catalogue to 1983 (Class 92: Biography)
Microfiche: 1,132 fiche Ref. RCC With printed guide
LIST PRICE £5,250


 

THE GREY BOOKS INDEX: RIBA MEMBERS' WORK ILLUSTRATED IN ARCHITECTURAL PERIODICALS, 1900-74
This specialised periodicals index is a valuable reference source for students of 20th century architecture, giving detailed access to every aspect of this subject. 
Part A: Index to Members' Work in Periodicals 1900-19 
Part B: Index to Members' Work in Periodicals 1920-74
Microfiche 269 fiches with printed guide Ref GBI 
LIST PRICE £2,000

BRITISH ARCHITECTURAL LIBRARY: MICROFILMED COLLECTION OF RARE BOOKS
35 reels of 35mm positive roll microfilm With printed guide Ref RBC 
LIST PRICE £2,050


 

BRITISH ARCHITECTURAL LIBRARY: UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS COLLECTION 
16 reels of 35mm positive roll microfilm With printed guide Ref UPM. 
LIST PRICE £1,150


 

ROYAL INSTITUTE OF BRITISH ARCHITECTS: TRANSACTIONS AND PROCEEDINGS 1835-93
20 reels of 35mm positive roll microfilm Ref RTR 
LIST PRICE £1,450


 

BRITISH ARCHITECTURAL LIBRARY: COMPREHENSIVE INDEX TO ARCHITECTURAL PERIODICALS
21 reels of 35mm positive roll microfilm With printed guide Ref RND
LIST PRICE £1,150


 

GIMSON AND BARNSLEY. DESIGNS AND DRAWINGS IN CHELTENHAM ART GALLERY AND MUSEUMS 
4 reels of 35mm positive roll microfilm (inc. 1 of colour) With printed guide 
Ref GBR LIST PRICE £400 ALSO AVAILABLE AS A CD-ROM PRICE £225.00


 

THE EDWARD BARNSLEY DRAWINGS COLLECTION
Furniture and Interior design 
7 reels of 35mm positive roll microfilm With printed guide Ref EBT
LIST PRICE £570

THE SKETCHBOOKS OF ALFRED WATERHOUSE 1853-99
This microfilm, containing all the extant sketchbooks of Alfred Waterhouse, covers the whole of his career from his training in the office of Richard Lane in Manchester to the last years of his life. His sketches are a record of all building styles based on his travels across Europe, particularly in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland and the Benelux States. His skilled draughtsmanship records whole buildings, towers, roofs, staircases, spaces within buildings, doors and windows, with many fine decorative and constructional details.
3 reels of 35mm positive roll microfilm With printed guide Ref WAS 
LIST PRICE £320


 

LAMBETH PALACE LIBRARY. THE "QUEEN ANNE CHURCHES" PAPERS
Papers of the Commission for building fifty new churches in 
London and Westminster 1711-1759
14 reels of 35mm positive roll microfilm With printed guide Ref QAC 
LIST PRICE £1,200


 

THE CALIFORNIA ARCHITECT AND BUILDING NEWS 1879-99
This microfilm is compiled from holdings at the ROYAL INSTITUTE OF BRITISH ARCHITECTS.
5 reels of 35mm positive roll microfilm Ref CBN
LIST PRICE £400


 

ROYAL INSTITUTE OF CHARTERED SURVEYORS
Abstracts and Reviews (1965-1999); Weekly Briefings (1968-1999).
14 reels of 35mm positive roll microfilm Ref RCI
LIST PRICE £950

BRITISH ARCHITECTURAL LIBRARY
ROYAL INSTITUTE OF BRITISH ARCHITECTS. THE 
DRAWINGS COLLECTION

Part 1
SPECIALIST CATALOGUES
Complete Collection
Phases A-D, L 

Microfilm: 97 reels (24 of colour)
with printed guides. £9,500

Individual Phases:

A. Colen Campbell, Jacques
Gentilhâtre, Inigo Jones and John
Webb, Alfred Stevens, Antonio
Visentini, C F A Voysey.

* 14 reels (5 of colour) with printed
guide. Ref. RIA. £1,770
--------------------------------------

B. The Pugin Family, the Wyatt
Family and J B Papworth.

* 16 reels (2 of colour) with printed
guide. Ref. RIB. £1,750
---------------------------------------

C. The Drawings of Sir Edwin
Lutyens and the Scott Family
Drawings.
* 50 reels with printed guide. Ref.
RIC. £3,450

(Available separately:
Lutyens Drawings--12 reels. £1,180
Scott Drawings--38 reels. £3,490)

---------------------------------------
D. The Palladio Drawings, The Adam
Drawings and the Smythson
Collection.

* 4 reels (colour) with illustrated
printed guide. Ref. RID. £650
---------------------------------------

L. The Charles Holden Collection.
* 13 reels (colour) with printed
guide. Ref. RIL. £1,890

================================================================
Part 2
GENERAL CATALOGUES
Phases E-K, M-V

Individual Phases
E. 1590-1780 A-Z complete.
* 12 reels (colour) with printed
guide. Ref. RIE. £1,770
----------------

F. 1780-1840 A-D.
* 21 reels (colour) with printed
guide. Ref. RIF. £2,750
----------------

G. 1780-1840 D-P.
* l1 reels (colour) with printed
guide. Ref. RIG. £1,570
----------------

H. 1780-1840 R-Z.
* 6 reels (colour) with printed 
guide. Ref. RIH. £860
-----------------

I. 1840-1914 A-B.
* 5 reels (colour) with printed 
guide. Ref. RII. £740
-----------------

J. 1840-1914 Bentley - Burges.
* 13 reels (colour) with printed
guide. Ref. RIJ. £1,770
------------------

K. 1840-1914 B-F .
* 14 reels (colour) with printed
guide. Ref. RIK. £2,280
-------------------

M. 1840-l914 O-L.
* 21 reels (colour) with printed
guide. Ref. RIM. £3,130
-------------------

N. 1840-1914 L-M.
* 12 reels (colour) with printed
guide. Ref. RIN. £2,370
-------------------

O. 1840-1914 M-R.
* 6 reels (colour) with printed 
guide. Ref. RIO. £970
------------------- 

P. 1840-1914 P-S
* 11 reels (colour) with printed
guide. Ref. RIP £1,770
--------------------

Q. 1840-1914 Salvin-Simpson
Salvin, Anthony (1799-1881)
Sedding, Edwin Harold (c.1855-1921)
Seddon, John Pollard (1827-1906)
Sharpe, Edmund (1809-77)
Shaw, Richard Norman 1831-1912)
Simpson, William (1823-99)
*8 reels 35mm colour microfilm, with
printed guide. Ref. RIQ. £1,420
-----------------------

R. 1840-1914 S-W.
Sidney Smirke Snr.(1799-1877)
Richard Phene Spiers (1837-1916)
Charles Sydney Spooner (1862-1938)
George Edmund Street (l8224-81)
Edward John Tarver (1841-91)
Samuel Sanders Teulon (1812-73)
John Thomas (l813-62)
Lewis Vuilliamy (1791-1871)
Sir Aston Webb (1849-1930)
Philip Speakman Webb (1831-1915)
15 reels 35mm colour microfilm.
Ref. RIR. £2,480
------------------------

S. 1840-1914 W-Y
William Westmacott (1808-1873)
James Mitchell Whitelaw (1886-1913)
George Whitewick (1802-1872)
Charles Canning Winmill (1865-1945)
John Drayton Wyatt (1820-1891)
William Young (1843-1900)
7 Reels 35mm colour microfilm
Ref. RIS. £1,270

------------------------------

T. 1840-1914:
Supplement -Drawings not available 
at time of original filming.
Charles Aidridge & Charles Ernest 
Deacon (1876-91)Anthony R Barker (1909-1914)
James Kellaway Colling (1816-1905)
Thomas Fulljames (1810-1874)
Settimio Giamietri (1842-post 1915)
Arthur Beresford Pite (1861-1934)
4 reels 35mm colour microfilm 
Ref. RIT Price £740

U. 1914-1940
Allen-Bilson
Henry Lenox Anderson (1911-1949)
William Henry Ansell (1872-1959)
Peter George Beresford (1928- )
John Bilson (1856-1943)
8 reels 35mm colour microfilm
Ref. RIU Price £1,350

V. 1914-1940
Bilson-Eden
John Bilson (1856-1943)
William H Blacking (1889-1958)
Sir Reginald Blomfield (1856-1943)
Henry Cart De Lafontaine (1884-1963)
Ethel Mary Charles (1871-1962)
Serge Chermayeff (1900-1998)
William H Cowlishaw (1869-1957)
John H Currey (1859-1941)
19 reels 35mm colour microfilm
Ref RIV Price £3,200

=============================================================== 

THE DRAWINGS COLLECTION AT THE R.I.B.A. HEINZ GALLERY PHASE V. Microfilms from the General Catalogues (1914-1940): BILSON – EDEN

The Drawings Collection at the RIBA dates from the foundation of the Institute in 1834. It is essentially national in character, representing the full range of British architectural draughtsmanship and reflecting the best work of all periods, including the present. Although the collection consists largely of English drawings from the late Gothic period onwards, it also contains an impressive number of drawings from abroad. Full detailed contents lists of this Phase and Phases A-U (previously published) are available free on request.
Architects featured in this phase include: 

BILSON, John (1856-1943)                                          CHARLES, Ethel Mary (1871-1962)
BLACKING, William H (1889-1958)                              CHERMAYEFF, Serge (1900-1998)
BLOMFIELD, Sir Reginald (1856-1943)                         COWLISHAW, William H (1869-1957)
CART DE LAFONTAINE, Henry (1884-1963)                 CURREY, John H (1859-1941)

Also included in this Phase is one reel of drawings from the period 1840-1914, which was not available at the time that section was filmed. It contains work of Arthur Beresford PITE (1861-1934) and George WALTON (1867-1933).

Ref: RIV      19 reels 35mm colour microfilm £3,200

6. ORDER FORM

All prices plus VAT (where applicable) and p & p.

*Re: DVDs from videos: For the NTSC system please contact INSIGHT MEDIA,Inc., 2162 Broadway, New York, NY 10024, USA. (212) 721-6316 Tel, (917) 441-3194 Fax, Juan@insight-media.com

2. Tape-slide talks by eminent Architects (mostly now on PIDGEON DIGITAL)

NICHOLAS GRIMSHAW
Industrial Architecture PAV 796
Grimshaw confines himself to the industrial side of the work he did with his one-time partner Terry Farrell, concentrating on flexibility and adaptability of the buildings,the way they satisfy the users, and the technology devised to suit the jobs.

CEDRIC PRICE
Technology is the answer, but what was the question? PAV 798
The title of Price's talk is typical of him, a man constantly searching, questioning, rethinking. He has been called 'the most cerebral of British architects'.

PHILIP DOWSON
A Question of Scale PAV 7910
Philip Dowson is a founder partner of Arup Associates. In this talk he expounds the approach to architecture that is common to all his work.

MOSHE SAFDIE
Safdie in Jerusalem PAV 797
Moshe Safdie discusses his architectural development and describes various designs he did for Jerusalem.

PETER BLUNDELL-JONES
Hans Scharoun PAV 7912
Peter Blundell-Jones, architect and teacher, provides a further exposition of his critical monograph on Germany's great expressionist architect.

DEREK WALKER
New directions PAV 805
As a sequel to his Milton Keynes talk, Walker ponders new directions which architecture and planning could take.

JOHN DONAT
Architecture through the lens PAV 806
John Donat, who trained as an architect but has preferred to photograph buildings, lets us into some of the secrets of his success.

CESAR PELLI
Skin and bones PAV 807
Cesar Pelli specialises in 'thin skin' buildings, an architecture of enclosure rather than of weight.

JOSEPH RYKWERT
The orders ot architecture PAV/8202
Professor Joseph Rykwert, architect- trained author and teacher, discusses how the Orders of Architecture came into being.

EDUARDO PAOLOZZI
Working with architects PAV 8203
The Scottish-born artist, Eduardo Paolozzi, Tape slide has worked with architects off and on since 1950, making murals, wall panels of fibreglass, tapestry or mosaic, sculptures and reliefs in metal or stone; even working at a very large scale.

KENNETH FRAMPTON
The Isms of architecture PAV 8205
Ken Frampton categorises architecture of the early 80's under five isms - productivism, rationalism, structuralism, populism, and regionalism.

LAWRENCE HALPRIN
The ecology of form PAV 8206
Lawrence Halprin is profoundly influenced by the process by which natural environments arise. He explains how he translates this into everyday life, not by copying nature's shapes and materials, but by producing abstractions of the processes.

ADOLFO NATALINI
Time and memory PAV 8214
Architect Adolfo Natalini, founder member in 1966 of the Italian group Superstudio, when designing individual buildings, gives them personality by the use of metaphor and allegory
.
PAOLO PORTOGHESI
The marriage of past and present PAV 8305
The Italian Professor Paolo Portoghesi looks for ways in his architecture to express memory of the past, and to preserve the identity of a city.

JOHN JOHANSEN
Ad hoc architecture PAV 8306
For John Johansen architecture is a service art, with buildings as settings for Man's daily rituals. He designs building- frameworks and hangs rooms etc. onto them in an ad hoc way, geared to change.

RICHARD ENGLAND
The spirit of place PAV 8313
England shows how he has developed an architecture focused on the particular qualities of his native Malta, an architecture of evolution and continuity.

ANDREW MacMILLAN AND ISI METZSTEIN
Charles Rennie Mackintosh
In 2 parts: PAV 8315-8316
MacMillan and Metzstein use Mackintosh's most famous building. Glasgow School of Art, as a vehicle to study CRM's architectural inventions. £90

TOM BEEBY
Scales of imagery PAV 8404
Tom Beeby maintains that architects must learn to use available materials and techniques in a more evocative way than heretofore. He spells out scales of interpretation he has dealt with regarding images in the work of his Chicago practice Hammond Babka Beeby.

MYRON GOLDSMITH
The visual solution PAV 8406
Chicago architect Myron Goldsmith, one-time partner in Skidmore Owings Merrill, learned from Mies and Nervi that structure is the basis of architecture. But his goal has always been to solve the enuineerina Droblems in a visual way.

EDWARD LARRABEE BARNES
Community, context and scale PAV 8407
The New York architect E.L. Barnes learned from an early visit to Persia and Greece about the importance of human scale and the continuity in time and context.

RICHARD MEIER
Interplay of space and place PAV 8506
RM's concern for the nature of space whose definition is related to place, situation and history, lies at the root of his ideas about the making of any work of architecture.

JAMES WINES & ALISON SKY
Apocalypse and Utopia PAV 8511
James Wines and Alison Sky are partners in SITE, an inter-disciplinary design organisation for exploring new ideas for the visual environment. The information they start with is recycled through an art-making process, letting it be invaded by ideas which totally change the context of the building.

MICHAEL SCOTT
Your mother Eire is always young PAV 8600
The late, much loved Dubliner Michael Scott, reminisces about his architectural life before and after World War II, his acting and involvement with the theatre, and his patronage of Irish arts.

HANS HOLLEIN
Ritual and transformation PAV 8604
The Austrian Professor Hans Hollein, architect and artist and a winner of the Pritzker prize, explains how he sees architecture as ritual and how he uses transformation, whether of scale, materials or function, as a basic design tool.

JOHN OUTRAM
The idea of the column PAV 8605
John Outram, perhaps the most original architect working in Britain today, describes the very personal architectural language which he has devised, his designs encompassing myth and reality, classicism and modernity.

ANTHONY HUNT
Refining the structure PAV 8612
Engineer Anthony Hunt, a disciple of Wachsmann, Eames and Samuely, and much influenced by high-performance yacht designers, has worked with Foster and Rogers and other technologically- minded architects. He aims to use minimum structure in an elegant and clear way. He has recently joined his practice with that of the architects YRM.

DAVID ROCK
Making things happen PAV 8615
David Rock is someone who has never been stumped for ideas on how to work as an architect in times of severe economic recession, finding in the process that this required new forms and patterns of economic activity, of professional service and of professional codes.

EVA JIRICNA
Form tollows function PAV 8616
The Czech-born architect Eva Jiricna, one of the most talented architects working in the UK today, is best known for a series of beautiful shops, restaurants and flats which she has completed in London and elsewhere.

TED HAPPOLD
The nature of engineering PAV 8701
Engineering in nature PAV 8702
Engineer Ted Happold (Professor at Bath University and founder partner, of Buro Happold) collaborated with Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano on the Centre Pompidou, and he has always worked with Frei Otto on the design of tented structures and long- span structures. He says structural engineering is concerned with learning from nature about the forces of action, about ecology and about the characteristics of materials.

CRAIG HODGETTS
Space activated by technology PAV 8707
The career of Craig Hodgetts combines early technological training with a fertile imagination in a mixed output of architectural work at any scale.

RIFAT CHADIRJI
An internationalised tradition in architecture PAV 8800
All of the Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji's built work is in the Middle East and dates from the 60's and 70's. He discusses how he strove to internationalise the local traditional ways of building.

WALTER BOR
In step with planning in China PAV 8804
Walter Bor, eminent planner and member of the British firm Llewelyn Davies Weeks Bor, was consulted by the Chinese on the plan of the city of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong. He describes the process.

JULIUS POSENER
The dynamic of Erich Mendelsohn PAV 8805
Professor Posener, author, teacher and critic, worked in Mendelsohn's studio and knew him well. It is the last phase of Mendelsohn's work in Germany that interests him most, when Mendelsohn, realising that he did not have the technical ability to carry out his remarkable sketches, turned to what was buildable. Kroll: housing, Marne-la-Vallee Happold: Munich aviary 'tent'. 

LESLIE MARTIN
A constructive point of view PAV 8810
The buildings of Sir Leslie Martin, Royal Gold Medallist and one-time Professor of Architecture at Cambridge, continue to demonstrate the best aspects of Modern thought. He bases his talk on three recent examples of his work.

JOHN THOMPSON
Working with the community PAV 9201
JT's firm, Hunt Thompson are well-know for the work they have done with the community, getting to know the people and their needs and working with them, learning to understand the complex relationship between the physical and the social environment.

COLIN STANSFIELD-SMITH
A caring tradition PAV 9210
Stansfield-Smith heads the Hampshire County Architect's Dept. A confirmed modernist, Stansfield-Smith says in his recorded talk that his architecture is about the caring tradition started by Alvar Aalto in Paimio.

BERNARD TSCHUMI 
Space, Event, Movement PAV9601
Bernard Tschumi is at the same time artist, architect, author, urbanist, researcher and teacher, based in New York where he carries out the dual rôle of practising architect and Dean at Columbia University. Son of a Swiss father and a French mother, he was educated in Zurich, and taught for many years at the AA, London. Deeply influenced by film makers he realised that architecture is also concerned with space and action. This led to many articles and his book 'The Manhattan Transcripts' whose ideas were later tested in his winning entry to the international competition for Parc de la Villette, Paris in 1982. In this talk, he describes this and two other prizewinning schemes: his design for Lausanne, consisting of four inhabited bridges that span the valley from top to bottom; the Groningen video gallery in Holland built entirely from glass.

MARK WHITBY
Transfer Of Technology PAV 9606 
Mark Whitby graduated in engineering in 1942 and, after working with Harris & Sutherland, Buro Happold and Tony Hunt, set up his own practice Whitby & Bird. He is one of the new breed of structural engineers who really understand the architect's approach, and he has worked with most of the major firms in Britain. He describes projects he has been involved in with them, as well as some which he and Bird have generated themselves.

MARK MACK 
Easy living PAV 9709
The Californian Austrian architect Mar Mack has been much influenced by Loos and Barragan and this shows in all the houses he has designed in USA and Japan. Colour plays a large part in his work.

GORDON BENSON (Benson Forsyth)
Genesis of a museum PAV 2002
To design a museum for Edinburgh which reflects the city’s geology, topography, history, development and characteristics, which has the genetic structure of the city of which it is a part, as well as the genes of what it is itself; to house the country’s historical collections of artefacts in such as way as to reflect their place of origin, period and category.
These were the problems that the architects posed themselves when doing their design for the Museum of Scotland competition which the subsequently won in 1996. The building was completed in 1999.

JULIA BARFIELD/DAVID MARKS and JANE WERNICK
THE LONDON EYE and beyond--2 packs PAV 0102-3 
David Marks and his wife/partner Julia Barfield dreamed up the idea of a Millennium Wheel on London’s South Bank, designed it and, by dint of sheer determination, saw it through to completion with the backing of British Airways. In GENESIS OF THE LONDON EYE AND BEYOND, Julia Barfield tells the enthralling story of its conception and growth, while Jane Wernick, in IN TUNE WITH ARCHITECTS, fills in the details of the structural development. Both speakers also tell of other work they have done before or since.

MASTERS OF ARCHITECTURE
Now available on website www.mastersofarchitecture.com
A digital online subscription website, similar to PIDGEON DIGITAL (see above), with the alternative of  a one-off sale on DVD's, is in preparation for the slide sets in the Masters of Architecture series, most of which are described below. We are still formulating our plans, but tentatively they are as follows:Price of an institutional site licence: We think it will be a 3-year licence; Year 1 about £500 and Years 2 & 3 about £400 each.
Price for one-off sale on DVD's: Probably about £3,500. 
The licence: Very similar to the one for Pidgeon Digital, but adapted for slides only.
The coverage: The complete Masters of Architecture series + some additional suitable slide sets. Probably about 6,000 images in all. Also it is intended that there will be regular additions of similar sets of digitised images which will be automatically added to the website without extra charge, or available for purchase as DVD's.

CURRENT LIST OF SLIDE SETS

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
Twenty-five buildings or groups of buildings representing Frank Lloyd Wright's work. The buildings covered include the early houses `Falling Water' and `Hollyhock'/Barnsdall, Unity Temple, Taliesien West, the Guggenheim, the Johnson Wax Building and the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo.

130 slides Ref WPA  £115

MUSEUMS 1: HOLLEIN, MEIER, STIRLING
Hans Hollein's State Museum' Monschengladbach, West Germany; Richard Meier's Arts and Crafts Museum, Frankfurt and his High Museum, Atlanta, USA; James Stirling's New State Gallery, Stuttgart.

72 slides Ref WPG £75

OTTO WAGNER
Wagner's major works in Vienna are included - his two villas, the Stadtbahn buildings, the Post Office savings bank, the Steinhof Church, the Linke apartment buildings, and the Kaiserbad Dam control buildings, one of the many installations on the Danube Canal for which he was responsible.

35 slides. Ref WPK. £35

TWENTIETH CENTURY HOUSES 1
Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoie and Villa La Roche Jeanneret; Pierre Chareau’s ‘Maison de Verre’, Paris; Alvar Aalto’s Villa Mairea in Finland; Carlo Scarpa’s Villa Ottolenghi in Italy; Miles van der Rohe’s Tugendhat House in Czechoslovakia; and his Farnsworth House in Illinois, USA; Greene & Greene’s Gamble House; Charles Eames’ House and Studio and Richard Neutra’s Research House – the last three in California.143 slides Ref WPL £125
ALVAR AALTO
Most of Aalto's major buildings - 50 in all, mostly in Finland- including those at Jyvaskyla, Alajarvi, Seinajoki, Otaniemi, the famous Sanatorium at Paimio, the Pensions Building in Helsinki, the theatre and library at Rovaniemi, the Finlandia Hall in Helsinki, the Church of the Cross in Lahti, and Aalto's own house and studio in Helsinki.

185 slides Ref WPR £160

KARL FRIEDRICH SCHINKEL
In Berlin: The Altes Museum, the Theatre and the New Guard House; Glienecke Palace group, Humboldt House, St. Paul's Church, Peacock Island.
In Potsdam: Charlottenhof Palace, Garden House etc. at Sans Souci.

108 slides Ref WPS £95

ARNE JACOBSEN
Forty-four buildings or complexes - mainly in Denmark - including the Town Halls for Aarhus and R0dovre; Aalto's summer residence; the SAS Hotel; schools at Gentofte and at R0dovre; the National Bank of Denmark; Elsewhere St Catherine's College, Oxford; and a school in Hamburg.

96 slides Ref WPT £85

LOUIS KAHN
The Yale Art Gallery, the Salk Institute, California, the Kimbell Art Museum, Texas and the Bangladesh Capital complex in Dacca are all featured.

116 slides  Ref WPU  £105

MARIO BOTTA
Nine private houses are included along with a secondary school, the Bank of Gothard, the Ransila office building, a Capuchin library, a municipal gymnasium, an artisan centre - all in the Ticino, Switzerland.

109 slides. Ref WPV. £100

ARATA ISOZAKI In 2 parts:
Part 1: Work in Japan between 1964- 1979, buildings with which Isozaki became leader of Japan's avant- garde.

 72 slides. Ref WPW. £72 

Part 2: Work in Japan between 1980-1985.

90 slides. Ref WPX. £90 Parts 1 and 2 are available together for £140.ERIC GUNNAR ASPLUND

All Asplund's major works including the Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm (designed together with Sigurd Lewerentz), the Stockholm Public Library and the Gothenburg Law Courts.

115 slides. Ref WPY. £110

SIGURD LEWERENTZ
Included are the two cemetery chapels (at the Woodland in Stockholm and at Malmo) and two churches (St Mark's, Stockholm and St Peter's, Klippan), also the Villa Edstrand, and social security offices in Stockholm.

68 slides. Ref WPZ £65

ANTONI GAUDI I CORNET
Most of Gaudi's work is included, much of it in Barcelona (with photos by Carlos Flores). The Guell Palace, Pavilions, Chapel and Park; the Casas Vicens, Calvet, Battio, Bellesguard, Mila; the Sagrada Familia Temple; the Teresian Convent; etc.

116 slides. Ref WQA. £110

RALPH ERSKINE In 2 parts.
Part 1: Work mostly in Sweden between 1941 and 1969.

79 slides. Ref WQB. £80 

Part 2: The Byker housing estate and the Stockholm Frescati University Union Building, Sports hall and Library, along with some more housing estates both in Sweden and England - all between 1969 and 1986.

81 slides. Ref WQC. £80 

Parts 1 and 2, 160 slides, are available together for £140.PHILIP JOHNSON
In 2 parts. 
Part 1(1942-1971) includes Johnson's buildings at New Canaan and the Kline Science Tower at Yale. 
Part 2 (1972-87) includes the AT&T Building, New York and the Crystal Cathedral in Los Angeles.

150 slides  Ref WQD,E  £135

EERO SAARINEN
Dulles Airport, Washington DC, the TWA Terminal at Kennedy Airport, MIT Chapel in Cambridge, the John Deere offices in Illinois, General Motors Technological Centre in Michigan and many other buildings.

93 slides. Ref WQF. £85

LE CORBUSIER
Part 1: Houses, apartments and hostels, including the Unité d’Habitation in Marseilles, the Maisons Jaoul in Paris, and houses in India.
Part 2: Ronchamp, La Tourette, Chandigarh and other buildings in Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Ahmedabad, Firminy, Zürich and Cambridge, Mass.

204 slides Ref WQG £185

LOS ANGELES
In 2 parts. 
Part 1: Residential. 
Part 2: Non-Residential. Features the work of Craig Eliwood, Frank Gehry, Arata Isozaki, Michael Graves, Philip Johnson, Cesar Pelli, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler, Eric Moss, John Lautner and others.

256 slides Ref WQL,P  £220

IEOH MING PEI
Includes housing, public and commercial buildings built between 1956-1970, and public and commercial buildings built between then and 1989.

110 slides  Ref WQT  £100

KENZO TANGE
Kenzo Tange's National Gymnasia for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics remain his best work and the peak of 20th century Japanese architecture. Since 1970 his work has been increasingly outside Japan. Included in the slides is his work up to 1981.

70 slides. Ref WQW. £65

JOSEPH MARIA OLBRICH
Olbrich's first and most famous building, the Secession Building in Vienna, was built in 1898. Ten years later he died at the age of 40, having completed a number of outstanding works in Darmstadt. All are included in the slides.

70 slides. Ref WQX. £65

FINLAND
Included is pre-1914 work by Eliel Saarinen, Lars Sonck and Erik Bryggman, but not that of Alvar Aalto who has already featured in the earlier set, WPR.

63 slides. Ref WQY. £60

HERMAN HERTZBERGER
The Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger builds formal frameworks for informal daily use. His work has nothing to do with fashion or style: it is about the reciprocity of human life and habitat, and is full of ideas and of commitment by the architect.

70 slides. Ref WQZ. £65

CARLO SCARPA: The Museo Castelvecchio
Though the Venetian architect started practising in 1927, it was not until the '50s, when he remodelled the Museo Castelvecchio in Verona, that his work began to be appreciated.

132 slides. Ref WRA. £130   

BALKRISHNA DOSHI
Doshi is a key person in the development of a modern Indian architecture that has its roots in tradition.

77 slides. Ref WRB. £70

CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH    
The effective years in Charles Rennie Mackintosh's practice were from 1897-1909 when he completed the library wing in the Glasgow School of Art, shown here.

124 slides. Ref WRC. £120     

MUSEUMS 2. BRITAIN: Including the Burrell Museum.
PAV's second collection of Museums includes extensions to the Royal Academy of Arts in London by Foster Associates, the Burrell Museum in Glasgow by Barry Gasson, the Tate Clore Gallery in Liverpool by Stirling Wilford Associates, the National Gallery Sainsbury Wing in London by Venturi Scott-Brown & Assoc.s and the Design Museum in London by Conran Roche.

77 slides Ref WRD £75

LONDON:
Part 1: Large business complexes
Three large complexes are featured: Broadgate in the City, Stockley Park, near Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf in Docklands. The architects whose work is included are: Arup Associates, Norman Foster Associates, Kohn Pederson Fox, Pei Cobb & Partners, Cesar Pelli & Associates, Ian Ritchie, SOM and Troughton McAslan.

86 slides  Ref WRE £85

LONDON:
Part 2: Commercial Buildings
Individual buildings are included by Arup Associates, Peter Foggo, John S Bonnington Partnership, Ralph Erskine, Terry Farrell & Co., Norman Foster Associates, Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners Ltd, RonHerron Associates, Michael Hopkins & Partners, Richard Rogers & Partners Ltd.

88 slides. Ref WRF. £85

NÎMES AND MONTPELIER
Both these southern cities in France owe their recent renaissance to the energy and ambition of their mayors. Major architects whose work is featured are: Bofill, Foster, Gregotti, Kurokawa, Nouvel, Starcke and Wilmotte.

 81 slides. Ref WRG. £80

MUSEUMS 3: NORTH AMERICA & EUROPE
Work by the following architects is included: Aalto, Aulenti, Avery, Behnisch, Bo & Wohlert, Breuer, Erickson, Evans & Shalev, Fehn, Martin, van der Rohe, Piano & Rogers, Quist, Rietveld, TAC, Ungers

176 slides  Ref WRH  £160

NORMAN FOSTER: Stanstead Airport and more
Stansted Airport, the Renault building, Cranfield Institute of Technology library and The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in HK, are among the works featured here by England's greatest architect today.

68 slides. Ref WRI. £65        

JEAN NOUVEL
All the work shown here is in France: the Arab Institute and the CLM/BBDO offices in Paris, the Opera House in Lyons and the Nemaussus housing in Nîmes.

45 slides. Ref WRJ. £45

PARIS
We show a sampling of the city's most interesting recent architecture including work by, among others, Adrien Fainsilber, Christian de Portzamparc, Richard Meier, Otto von Spreckleson, I.M. Pei, Chemetov/Huidobro, Oscar Niemeyer, Renzo Piano, Piano & Rogers, Harry Seidler, Kenzo Tange - but not Jean Nouvel who is separately published (see WRJ).

168 slides. Ref WRK. £180

HARRY SEIDLER
Of Seidler's beautifully constructed and detailed work we include three office towers and a penthouse in Sydney as well as his home in nearby Killara, and the one-time home for his mother; a monumental group of offices in Canberra and Hong Kong Club in Central Hong Kong, adjacent to the banks by Norman Foster and I.M. Pei.

75 slides. Ref WRL. £75

SYDNEY & CANBERRA
Unquestionably, the Sydney Opera House by Jörn Utzon is one of the recent wonders of the world, and it is shown here in considerable detail; also work by Philip Cox, John Andrews and Mitchell Giurgola Thorp (whose Parliament building dominates the Canberra skyline), and several other architects. Harry Seidler is not included here as he is separately published.

103 slides. Ref WRM. £100

FOUNTAINS

                                                                                   Ref WRN.

TWENTIETH CENTURY HOUSES: 2
Houses by Lutyens, Saarinen (Eero and Eliel), Connell Ward & Lucas, Fry, McGrath, Gwynne, Le Corbusier, Lutyens, Mendelsohn & Chermayeff, Rietveld and Taylor & Green.

129 slides. Ref WRO. £125

TWENTIETH CENTURY HOUSES: 3. 1950's to 1990's
Twelve houses built in Britain between the 1950's and 1990's are included in this collection by architects such as Richard Rogers, John Miller, John Winter, Michael Hopkins and Tom Jestico; together with one little-known house in Germany by Richard Neutra. The slides reflect a wide range of styles.

79 slides. Ref WRP. £80

VICTOR HORTA and his Contemporaries
Victor Horta (1861-1947) was more than just an exponent of the Art Nouveau style. His buildings exhibit highly original plans, many of which incorpOrate delightful light wells and internal winter gardens. In addition to the slides shown of his buildings in Brussels, details are included of the work in the same city of some of his contemporaries. Balat's Royal Glass Houses were one of the main influences on Horta.

53 slides Ref WRQ £50 

U.S.A. WEST COAST 
Architects in California and Washington, including Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, Eric Moss, Michael Rotondi (RoTo). 

94 Slides Ref.WRR £90

OXFORD UNIVERSITY 
A collection of the best buildings, mostly since the ‘70’s; architects include: ABK, ACP, Arup, Hodder, Jacobsen, Maccormac, Martin, Mather, Powell & Moya, A & P Smithson, and Stirling. 

85 Slides Ref.WRS £80

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY & CITY 
Faculty and college buildings, one or two earlier than the 90’s, include those by Allies & Morrison, Arup Associates, E. Cullinan, J. Dixon & E. Jones, R. Erskine, Evans & Shalev, D. Lasdun, MacCormac & Partners, L. Martin, J. Outram, Powell & Moya, Stirling & Gowan, V. Heyningen & Howard, and a building by M.Hopkins for neither “town” or “gown”. 

113 slides Ref WRT £110  

ROTTERDAM
Rem Koolhaas’ designs for the Museum Park and the Kunsthal, plus Jo Coenen’s Netherlands Architecture Institute, Ben van Berkel’s dynamic suspension bridge, and Adriaan Geuze’s Schouwbergplein have all contributed to placing Rotterdam firmly on the world’s architectural map. 

138 slides Ref WRU £135 

AMSTERDAM
Examples of work by architects of the Amsterdam school are included as well as Renzo Piano’s “New Metropolis; Science and Technology Center” that dominates the harbour, and the interesting housing development by Joe Coenen and Hans Kollhof on the new KNSM Island. 

79 slides Ref WRV £100

BILBAO 
The Basque City of Bilbao in Northern Spain is being transformed into a centre for European trade, tourism and culture. Already completed are the new metro system by Norman Foster, a bridge by Santiago Calatrava and the spectacular Guggenheim Museum by Frank Gehry.

83 slides Ref WRW £80

MUSEUMS No. 4: UK, Switzerland, Germany
Pidgeon Audio Visual’s fourth set of Museum slides includes Norman Foster’s American Air Museum at Duxford (UK), Renzo Piano’s Foundation Beyeler in Basel, Mario Botta’s Tinguely Museum also in Basel, and Fran Gehry’s Vitra Center in Basel and Vitra Design across the border in Weil-am-Rhein 

66 slides Ref WRX £65

LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) is recognised as one of the four founding masters of twentieth century architecture – the other four being Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto (See PAV WPA, WQH and WPR respectively).  Mies’ great contribution to architecture was celebrated in 1999 by exhibitions at the Vitra Museum in Weil-am-Rhein, Germany and at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow; and in 2000, at both the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Canadian Institute of Architecture in Montreal.  

85 slides Ref WRY £85

MUSEUMS 5: EDINBURGH
1999 is the year that Scotland was granted her own Parliament. It was also the year that a unique new museum to chronicle Scottish history was opened in Edinburgh. Won in competition it was designed by the architects Benson and Forsyth (see PAV 9213). Its role is to augment Scotland’s self-knowledge and emergent sense of national identify. The architects have taken the facts of the collection of exhibits and dramatised their presentation, at the same time linking the whole into Edinburgh’s incomparable background. Down near Holyrood Palace, opposite the new Parliament building site, another exhibition centre has opened, the William Younger Centre, designed by Michael Hopkins & Partners. Startlingly beautiful in its setting against Salisbury Crags, it gained instant acclaim with its first show "Our Dynamic Earth", by which name the centre is currently known in the city 

93 slides Ref WRZ £90

20TH CENTURY HOUSES: 4
Houses by Elspeth Beard, Richard Burton (ABK), Cullum & Nightingale, Kevin Dash, Alison & Peter Smithson, FRS Yorke
The only thing that these houses have in common is that they are all in England and, despite their widely varying vintage, they have been photographed in the last few years. The earliest one, recently restored, dates from before World War II. The architects designed four of the others for themselves, one being a conversion.

89 slides Ref WSA £85

BERLIN IN TRANSITION (1945-2000)
In Berlin since World War Two there have been several periods of interesting architectural development; for example the Siemenstadt housing in Charlottenburg up to 1952; the Hansaviertel housing in Tiergarten, 1957-1961; the Cultural Forum, 1946-1985; the IBA (International Building Exhibition) 1984-1987. And since then the steady rebuilding of the city which still continues.

121 slides Ref WSB £120

LONDON: ARCHITECTURE INTO THE 21ST CENTURY 
Architects represented: Allies & Morrison, Will Alsop, Brian Avery, Edward Cullinan, Norman Foster, Future Systems, Herzog & De Meuron, Michael Hopkins, John Lacey, Lifschutz Davidson, Marks Barfield and David Morley.
The work of these twelve architects in the late 90’s who are represented here is divided into the categories Civic, Education, Leisure, Sport, Transport, Bridges. 

93 slides Ref WSC £90

REM KOOLHAAS (OMA): HOUSE NEAR BORDEAUX, FRANCE 
The house sits on a hill overlooking the city of Bordeaux. Completed in 1998, it was designed for a couple whose husband was confined to a wheelchair after a severe car accident. 
The house is on 3 levels, each linked by a 3 x 3m hydraulic mobile platform which can lock into or between each level, thus placing mobility for the client at the heart of the scheme. 
The lowest level, containing entrance, family room, kitchen and other everyday facilities, backs south into the hillside and opens north off a walled entrance courtyard with guest quarters and caretaker’s room opposite. On the middle level is the glass-enclosed living area. This opens south onto a covered terrace and extends east into a covered terrace, in the middle of which is a circular steel-clad drum containing the stair to the children’s quarters. In contrast, the top floor is enclosed in a mass concrete box, 25 x 11m, punctured by porthole windows. Here are the bedrooms and washrooms. the parents’ and children’s zones are separated by a central void.

28 slides Ref WSD £35

PAVILIONS by Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito and Oscar Niemeyer
Since the year 2000 the Serpentine Gallery in London’s Hyde Park has commissioned internationally famous architects to design a series of temporary pavilions. These were installed for three summer months on the lawn fronting the Gallery and housed a café and a series of debates on urban design. At the close of the season the structures were sold off. The first pavilion was by Zaha Hadid (not featured here), followed by Daniel Libeskind in 2001, Toyo Ito in 2002, and Oscar Niemeyer in 2003.  

36 slides Ref WSE £45

HERZOG & DE MEURON: The Laban Dance Centre, London 
Deptford in S.E. London is a run-down area of wharves, scrap yards, odds and ends of post-industrial industry, council houses, railway lines and bleak roads, and plenty of cheap redundant land. It is here that the Laban Dance Centre has moved from nearby New Cross. It is now the largest contemporary dance centre in the world, designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron and now winner of the 2003 Stirling Prize. 
The west-facing main façade curves gently, focussing on the distant 18th century St. Paul’s church by Thomas Archer. It is fronted by landscaped mounds that act as outdoor rehearsal and performance areas. At the rear the building is protected by Deptford Creek.The exterior façades consist of coloured transparent polycarbonate panels backed by transparent and translucent glass panels. This skin reflects the surroundings by day, but by night the building becomes transparent and glows with colour. 
Because of the importance played by colour in determining rhythm and orientation inside and out, the architects collaborated with the artist Michael Craig-Martin who proposed a palette of magenta, lime and turquoise. The activities of the Centre are distributed on two main levels. On the lower --- which is split in two --- the 300-seat theatre is located in the centre. It is surrounded by café and therapy area (which the library is above), dance studios, offices, etc. The upper level houses most of the 13 studios, accessed from three wedge-shaped corridors. The artist determined the colours to be used. The levels are connected by two spiral stairways, one at each end of the building. 

23 slides WSF £30                     

LANDSCAPE U.S.A. – Photos from Manhattan, Los Angeles, San Francisco and SeattleFrom Manhattan: Battery Park City and Bryant Park. From Los Angeles: Pershing Sq. and Hope Park. From San Francisco: the Embarcadero and Levi Plazas and Yerbabuena. From Seattle: Freeway Park and a number of community arts projects by selected artists. (Hope Park, Embarcadero, Levi and Freeway are all by Lawrence Halprin).

153 slides Ref: PGD  £130

OTHER SLIDE SETS
 ENGLISH AND JAPANESE GARDENS
In England: Stourhead, Stowe, Rousham, Castle Howard, Hestercombe, Hidcote Manor, Sissinghurst and Great Dixter.In Kyoto: the Katsura Imperial Villa, Daisen-in, Ryoanji, and the Kinkaju-ji Golden Pavilion.Photographed by Richard Weston.

96 slides. Ref PGA. £90 --

SOME MORE BRITISH GARDENS
Among the 23 gardens included in this set are Penshurst Place, Castle Drogo, Blenheim Palace, Studley Royal, Chiswick House, Sezincote, Shrubland Park, Reninshaw and the Queen's Garden at Kew. Photographs by Elizabeth Young.

139 slides. Ref PGB. £135

CHINESE GARDENS
Ref PGC


ISLAMIC MONUMENTS OF IRAN
In Isfahan: the Mosques of Shah Abbas and his father-in-law, Hakim and Friday Mosques, two shrines, a'madrassah', minarets, Ali Qapu Pavilion and House of 40 columns. In Shiraz: Friday and Vaquil Mosques, a madrassah, Eram Gardens and the Shiraz Museum.

83 slides. Ref PRM. £80 --

ISLAMIC MONUMENTS OF NORTH INDIA
In or near Agra: Red Fort, Fatehpur Sikri, Itmad-ud-Daulah, Akbar's Mausoleum/Sikandra, and the Taj Mahal. In Delhi: the tombs of Ise Khan and Emperor Humayun, Red Fort and the Friday Mosque.

63 slides. Ref PNM. £60 -- 

THE GREAT ENGINEERS
An exhibition at the RCA in London.] The slides present a balanced view of the legacy of Freeman Fox, Brunel, Bazalgette and the Stephensons, etc.

160 slides. Ref ERD. £175 --

ROMAN ARCHITECTURE: AMPHITHEATRES IN EUROPE AND NORTH AFRICA
Amphitheatres are a building genre where the plan and form are the same, but where the size and materials and complexity vary wildly. Not only that, the sheer number of amphitheatres (there are over 300 of them) and their location throughout the Roman Empire are important facets of the topic.This new slide set includes representative slides from as many individual amphitheatres as possible, with a greater number from particularly important or interesting examples, such as Trier, EI Djem (Tunisia), Pozzuoli, Arles, Merida, Budapest and Rome. 
Slide set prepared by Professor Christopher Schabel, of the University of Cyprus.

116 slides Ref. SCH1 £115

PRE-COLUMBIAN MEXICO
Although the western hemisphere is routinely referred to as the “New World,” complex cultures developed there which were contemporary with classical and medieval Europe. Just south of the border from the United States of America lie the remains of the cities and monumental architecture of several ancient civilizations the architecture in the slides is from the Late Pre-classical period on. For the most part, there are photographs of three types of structures: pyramids, upon which stood temples; ball courts, on which was played a popular ball game; and “palaces”.Produced with an Introduction by Professor Chris Schabel, Dept of History, University of Cyprus.

100 slides  Ref SCH2 £95

MEDIEVAL CISTERCIAN MONASTERIES OUTSIDE FRANCE
This slide set puts emphasis on both the uniformity and the variety of Cistercian architecture. On the one hand, it is organized along the lines of a tour of a typical monastery, starting from the outside and then moving around the interior of the church and claustral buildings. On the other hand, in each section of this typical monastery, there are examples from abbeys in different countries outside France, the order’s heart, and different materials and local conditions did necessitate different architectural solutions. Produced with an Introduction by Professor Chris Schabel, Dept of History, University of Cyprus. 

100 slides  Ref SCH2 £95

TEN CALIFORNIAN ARCHITECTS 

124 slides. Ref: RYM. £115

SKY CITY: AMERICAN INDIAN BUILDINGS
30 slides. Ref: AMI. £30

COUNTRY HOUSES AND STATELY HOMES OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND
 R.I.B.A.HEINZ GALLERY EXHIBITIONS
 AN ARCHITECTURAL SCULPTOR: ARTHUR J J AYRES 1902-85

139 colour slides. Ref RXC. £95-- 

THE IRON REVOLUTION. ARCHITECTS, ENGINEERS AND STRUCTURAL INNOVATION. 1780- 1880
This exhibition examined the use of iron in architecture over a century.

71 slides. Ref RYA. £70 

YORKE ROSENBERG MARDALL
Portrait of a practice, including Gatwick Airport, Sainsbury Centre etc.

127 slides. Ref RYN. £115--NOW £57.50

ARCHITECTS' DESIGNS FOR SCULPTURE
Inigo Jones, Kent, Gibbs, C R C Cockerell, Pugin, G G Scott, Lutyens and Lubetkin are among those architects who have designed sculpture. The slides include the work of many of the greatest architects of alltime, together with some of the best- known buildings.

124 slides. Ref RYU. £110

CHRISTOPHER NICHOLSON 
Christopher Nicholson (1904-48) was a leading architect and designer of the early Modern Movement in Britain. His most famous works of the thirties were in sympathy with the advanced modern style of his brother Ben Nicholson. 

81 slides. Ref RZB £80

 THE ARCHITECT OF FLOORS: Modernism, art and Marion Dorn designs. 
Dorn’s career spans four decades (1923-1962). As a designer she typified the forces towards change in this century. Her works is to be found in hotels such as the Savoy and Claridges. 

38 slides. Ref RZC £40 

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CHURCH 
This exhibition examined the stylistic and liturgical development of church buildings in Britain since 1914. It is possible to see how architects moved from the highly ornate perpendicular style of the early part of this century to a more severe modern style in response to European influences. 

128 slides. Ref RZD £125 

CLOUGH WILLIAMS-ELLIS: Architect errant 
The career of Clough Williams-Ellis (1882-1978) spans a period of momentous change in the architectural history of Britain. His most famous creation was Portmeirion, the extraordinary holiday village built over fifty years on part of his ancestral estate in North Wales.

109 slides. Ref RZE £105 

DRAWING ON DIVERSITY: Women, Architecture and Practise
 Shows the work of British women architects, past and present. What “Drawing on Diversity” finds is that the woman architect is actually a multiple persona undertaking many activities. The slide set features many interesting examples: in a fiasco to equal the 19th Century Foreign Office debacle, Zaha Hadid’s designs for Cardiff Opera House were put through two competitions, winning both and then were not used. 

151 slides. Ref RZF £145

COLIN ST JOHN WILSON: A retrospective 
The contribution which architects have made to the design of commercial stands, propaganda shows, and exhibition pavilions is evident from their work on trade and commercial exhibitions, international exhibitions, empire exhibitions, wartime and propaganda exhibitions, architecture and design exhibitions. The slide covers the entire twentieth century, concentrating on the period from the 1930s to the 1960s, the heyday of British exhibition design. 

131 slides. Ref RZG £125

THOMAS ALLOM (1804-1872) 
During the 1830s Allom became known as a skilful perspectives, much employed by Charles Barry, architect of the new houses of Parliament and remodelling of Highclere Castle, Hampshire. His most lasting monument is the picturesque layout and architecture of the Ladbrokes Estate in West London, dating from the early 1850s.

71 slides. Ref RZI £65

THE ART NOUVEAU ARCHITECTURE OF RIGA 
The art nouveau architecture of Riga, capital of Latvia, is little known in Western Europe and is only now emerging from the long isolation of that country behind the Iron curtain. Influenced by developments in Austria and Germany at the end of the 19th century, “the lush organic forms of art nouveau were developed into a distinctive local style expressive of nascent Latvian nationalism as Riga rapidly expanded in the decade before the First World War. 

88 slides. Ref RZJ £90

4. VIDEOTAPES 

RALPH ERSKINE
An egalitarian architecture Erskine describes many housing schemes, the Vasa Bus Terminal/World Trade Centre in Stockholm, the Skanska HQ building in Gothenburg, and his latest office project in London, The Ark.

44 mins. Ref PAV 9001. £29.95 

PETER FOGGO
Broadgate
Foggo describes the genesis and realisation of the first 4 phases of the Broadgate complex in the City of London.

16 mins. Ref PAV 8902. £29.95 

FUTURE SYSTEMS
Concern for tomorrow, Future Systems is the London-based practice of Jan Kaplicky and Amanda Levete. Their architecture is inspired by space spin-offs, aircraft design, high-tech industries, materials and methods of joining. The recording is of a recent conversation Jan and Amanda had with critic Martin Pawley and Arup engineer Andrew Sedgwick.

45 mins. Ref PAV 9108. £29.95 

RON HERRON
Imagination
Herron describes the new headquarters he has designed for Imagination, the company of which he was a director. He has created a truly magical place by tenting over the space between two refurbished Edwardian buildings.

46 mins. Ref PAV 9003. £29.95 

PIERS GOUGH (CZWG)
The built idea Gough and his partners have provided London with some of its most witty architectural statements.

31 mins. ref PAV 9000. £29.95
See also slide set 'English Extremists' (RXT)

KEN YEANG
Bioclimatic Skyscrapers Yeang describes the striking low- energy tall buildings which he and his partner R. Hamzah have built in Malaysia and other parts of Asia.

11 mins. Ref PAV 9403V. £19.95

5.  Art -- Videos and Slide sets

VIDEOS

“MUSIC AND SOCIETY” – ASIAN INSIGHTS A Series of 30 minute videotapes from DEBEN BHATTACHARYA. PAL/ VHS, with descriptive booklets. 
NOW £19.95 each. Titles include

BC3V THE ISLE OF TEMPLES: BALI Filmed in Bali, the Hindu island, this illustrates the day-to-day life of the islanders, their folksongs and Gamelan orchestras.

BC4V THE LAND OF SMILES: THAILAND This film on Thai folk songs and dances leads up to the performance of the classical Ramekin dance-drama

BC5V SILK AND STRINGS: TAIWAN The film illustrates the Chinese silk-stringed zithers and folk-dances, leading up to the performance of a Peking Opera

HB1V RAGA The film illustrates how the complex Raga system is founded on the simple archaic types of folk song and on Hindu religious chants

HB2V KRISHNA IN SPRING A recording in image of the gloriously colorful and age-old Festival of Spring, which tells through music and dance, the story, part religious, part pagan of the Lord Krishna

HB3V PAINTED BALLAD OF INDIA In a village in Rajasthan, the art of painting the 8-metre horizontal cross is examined by this film. It then moves to West Bengal to a hamlet of painters and artisans

LB1V ECHOES FROM TIBET This video examines the life and culture of Tibetan and Ladakhi villagers. Set in the high snow ranges of the Western Himalayas, the film shows the social and religious customs – Buddhism and Tibetan script.

LB2V THE CHANTING LAMA This production captures the essence of the cultural life of Tibetan Buddhists through an examination of religious rites. Opening at the main temple of Daramsala, this video takes us through the rituals and music of the Tibetans of Northern India.

BI7V ECSTATIC CIRCLE The Dervishes in Turkey are seen against a background of Islamic folk art and culture.

BC1V BUDDHA AND THE RICE-PLANTERS This video portrays the character of the people of Sri-Lanka, their devotion to religion, tolerance and happiness. Sinhalese village life, folklore, religious rites, dance and art are all explored

BC2V JESUS AND THE FISHERMAN The Portuguese occupation of the Sri-Lanka coast in the 16th century, brought Catholicism to fishing villages

HB4V THE COSMIC DANCE OF SHIVA Shiva, the Hindu god of creation, is also the lord of the dancers. In this film, through Shiva’s dance, we see the timeless quality of Indian art.

HB5V WAVES OF JOY: ANANDALAHARI A Film on the religious Baul poets and singers of Bengal. Shot in the West Bengali village named Kenduli.

HB6V FACES OF THE FOREST: THE SANTALS OF WEST BENGAL A film about the aboriginal community of the Santals, its social habits, religious ceremonies and day-to-day life.

HB7V THE ADAPTABLE KINGDOM: MUSIC AND DANCE IN NEPAL A film on the Hindu kingdom in the Himalayas, where tribal animism, Buddhism and Hinduism live in harmony.

SLIDE SETS AT £35 PER SET

From China: 
COMMUNES AND COMMERCE IN CHINA -- 5 SETS
Ref. CWA
 
MUSIC AND DANCE OF CHILDREN -- 3 SETS
Ref. CWB
 
ASPECTS OF CHINESE ARTS AND ARCHITECTURE -- 5 SETS
Ref. CWE
 
From India: 
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OF INDIA -- 7 SETS
Ref. BHC
 
COSTUME AND JEWELLERY OF INDIA -- 8 SETS
Ref. BHG