Letters - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, June, 2001

Letters to the AR Editor can be sent by e-mail to peter.devey@ebc.emap.com or by fax to 44(0)20 7505 6701

ARCHITECTURAL IMPRINT?

SIR: It was commendable to devote an issue of a glossy magazine to doing less with more (AR March). Judging by your 'Comment', you must find publishing 'vulgar villas for millionaires' dull at times. I was impressed by the work of Sam Mockbee/Rural Studio, which addresses the plight of the poor in the Deep South of the US. These people, citizens of the richest and supposedly most liberal country in the world, people mostly but not all black, live in conditions disturbingly similar to many things which have happened (and happen) in my country.

I don't wish to denigrate the achievements and manifest decency of Mockbee. Yet I am disturbed by the 'architecturalness' of the work. There seems to be the insertion of wilful oddities, perhaps the most striking of which is the use of defunct vehicle licence plates as cladding (see picture 6, p56 Surely, it would have been cheaper to use some simple form of siding? There are a lot of similar moves in the rest of the work: unnecessary changes of material, windows at odd angles etc. All these moments seem to have been occasioned by a desire to show that architects have been at work, and do not necessarily add to the well-being of the users.

Perhaps architects can have a role in building for the poor, though not usually as much as they claim. Obviously Rural Studio is doing good. But would they have been published in an international magazine if they had not tried to imprint their work with clear signs to make it plainly Architecture? Do these moves make the work less replicable and so less valuable? Are there other architects round the world, who have made equally useful contributions but who would never get into your pages because they are not obviously Architectural?

Yours etc

JANET ANSTRUTHER

Johannesburg

IN THE NAME OF PROGRESS

SIR: I was intrigued and delighted with Jim Antoniou's clear and concise piece on the Forbidden City (AR April). It must remain the most important architectural experience of a strange, distant (physically and culturally) alternative civilization. Would that the Forum in Rome, Angkor Wat, Machu Pichu, etc were in such a good and complete condition.

After removing the dust from the Gobi Desert from under my contact lenses, I found the City baffling, I had so few pointers on how to navigate, interpret, 'read' such an environment, and Antoniou helped me to grasp more of it through his valuable interpretation.

However there is the huge problem of context. The Chinese in almost every other (Western) criterion seem totally lacking sense, sensibility or sensitivity. The gargantuan act of vandalism of destroying the tenth-century city wall, one of the wonders of the ancient world, to create a multi-track ringroad of quite staggering traffic engineers nihilism. How could they?

And I fear reports that the authorities have got their teeth into the fascinating and equally vibrant and important hutongs or mass walled courtyard houses/shacks/shanties/slums for the 'ordinary' Chinese, cheek by jowl to the great Palace, like mediaeval illustrations of the surroundings of our great Cathedrals.

Can anyone reassure me that this is not true? Jim Antoniou? Is there anything we can do if the reports are true? Or are they, too, destined to vanish, further isolating the Forbidden City from a fuller human urban context?

Yours etc

PETER CAREY Bath, England

ENERGY CRISIS

SIR: I do hope the section of the artists' Santa Monica studio (AR March) is incorrect: are the artists really going to have to swelter under a tin roof with no insulation in the Californian sun? I assume they will need air con which will certainly add to the current energy crisis.

Yours etc

ANNE DYE

London, England

STONE SILENCE

SIR: Let me answer the attack by James Broderick on your April Delight (May, p30). I was lucky enough to see the stone circle at Roche Court, and it lives up to what your critic wrote about it: it stands there, both powerful and intimate. Mute it may be, but still it speaks, not only through the excellently cut texts (the choice, but not execution of which is certainly open to question), but with its very presence, which focuses emotion in a way which the old circles of our ancestors were intended to do. Broderick suggests they did such things better than we can. It is futile to pursue such a line - circles of stones have had power in many civilizations and many ages - why should our generation not try to evoke the archetype? Richard Kindersley makes no attempt to pretend that his hard, thin, flat stones are intended to look ancient: they are of our time, and enable us to contemplate ourselves in the present and our relationship to history.

Yours etc

WILLIAM WISHART Dublin, Ireland

VENTURING BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES

SIR: I do share the view with M. Prataprao (AR April letters) that personal logic should not be used to defend bad design, but this need not be the basis for the dismissal of the importance of the architect's philosophy. In fact, I find it rather absurd to merit design solely by the six parameters as proposed and dismiss the philosophical stand of the architect. It is through the architect's philosophical ideal that all the elemental considerations (including the parameters proposed) are united into one coherent design. How can it be disregarded when the two are inextricably intertwined?