Radical Style and the Cult: A Critique on Reyner Banham
Ramon Hernandez
Feb 25, 2015
Today many architectural master pieces are often recognized for their excellence in sustainability and design, but rarely under conditions of mechanical failures. However, such was the case of James Stirling’s 1968 History Faculty Building in Cambridge, England. Many mainstream critics of the late 1960’s rejected the Library in Cambridge for its internal malfunctions while a few applauded the building for its bold decision to counter neo-classical examples of architecture. One of the few architectural historians and British critics who accepted the building was Reyner Banham who believed it deserved a meaningful place in the discipline’s spotlight. His critique of the History Faculty building was published in the London Architectural Review of November 1968. Despite its mechanical failures and uncomfortable interior conditions soon after its completion in the summer of 1968, Reyner Banham defends James Sterling’s History Faculty building as a radical and critical piece of architecture. Thus, it is important to identify the terms through which Banham perceives and rationalizes the building. Such terms include the notion of radical, critical, context, and style. Through these conditions Banham establishes the building’s international fame in spite of its alleged conditions.
Fig. 1. History Faculty Building at Cambridge University
The History Faculty building is a library designed by James Stirling for the University of Cambridge in 1968 (Fig.1). This was a pivotal moment in James Stirling’s architectural career just shortly after his completion of the Leicester Engineering building which foreshadowed many of the issues to come with the new History Faculty building. Upon his visit, Banham recognized that the History Faculty Building had many long-term mechanical issues. Banham observed that detail modifications would have to be made in some of the rooms because of localized patches of glare or shadow. In addition, some of the smaller rooms on the west face of the building and in corridor spaces on the top floor needed remedial alterations to cope with thermal problems such as extra ventilation, venetian blinds, etc.[1] On a separate occasion Alan Berman recalls the building leaked, was draughty and noisy, cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Initial problems took years to resolve, and there were disputes about liability.[2] Such liabilities were never fully discussed in Reyner Banham’s critique; nonetheless, Banham states, that even in terms of physical comfort the matter is a good deal more subtle, and extends well beyond what mechanical services can provide.[3] By “matter” Banham recognized that there was something special, something radical in James Sterling’s work that captured both the University’s and his own imagination. The appointed Cambridge University committee was more than confident in its decision to appoint James Sterling as the Architect for the commission. The University realized as well that there were risks attached to Stirling’s appointment and recalled that everyone was fully aware of the fact that the Leicester building, at the time nearing completion, had encountered many problems. To Reyner Banham, this was a radical decision on both the client and architect to align on a vision and on an architecture that so boldly differed, yet subtly removed itself, from its neo-classical precedents.
Radical alone would not be enough to justify an international level of attention. Banham believed that the History Faculty Building was critical in its existence and disparities. Banham states, “It is difficult not to feel that in matters like this Stirling is proceeding on sound human instincts that undermine the functionalist rationalizations he likes to produce as post facto justifications of his designs.”[4]Two keywords stand out from this quote; “matters” as mentioned earlier is that which constitutes the project as radical from all other approaches and “justifications” which are the critical conditions that legitimize that which is radical. Reflecting upon Stirling’s History Faculty building, British critic Rowan Moore describes the critical condition today by acknowledging that architects are now subjected to the most elaborate forms of control and project management, squeezing out invention in the interests of reducing risk, it is in order to avoid mishaps much like the Cambridge History Faculty.[5] Reyner Banham appreciated the mishaps as critical aspects that identify the radical inventions and risks as a protest against mainstream architectural attitude. Nonetheless to this day there has been a back lash towards Banham’s critique. Rowan Moore would argue that Reyner Banham and any other Stirling defender always agreed that Stirling’s projects were victims of poor construction, cost-cutting and clumsy clients.[6] Nigel Whiteley would go as far as to claim that Banham is not uncritical about the functional problems but too forgiving – and, in terms of his wider theories and criticism, inconsistently forgiving- because of his personal response to the building, and the architect, was so favorable.[7] Although it may seem that Banham was in terms contradicting himself or too favorable to his friend James Stirling, Banham would have disputed that anybody who wished to maintain that the History Faculty building is the wrong kind of building for Cambridge must face the fact that this is the kind of building the History Faculty wanted badly enough to defend it in the Senate, and that they clearly were not in the market for either a pseudo-jewel-casket like the Beinecke Library at Yale, nor a joke fortification like the new library at Trinity College, Dublin.[8] Although many options were readily available to the University, an important question one may ask is what were the appointed University Committee members, Banham, and other likely supporters of Stirling so committed to building? And what were they defending the building from? To answer this question an understanding on the surrounding context is necessary.
In his critique Reyner Banham attests that the misalignments of the History Faculty Builidng were intentions of James Stirling to diverge from the typical modern architecture of Cambridge. Through this attitude, Stirling implies a self confidence that Cambridge is a University, rather than the shrine of a “cult” and all other Modern architecture buildings were pre-occupied with trying to prove themselves to the cult. By proceeding as if the cult did not exist, and therefore not having to prove anything about it, the History Faculty building leaves itself with no problems of accent or manner. Style and detailing derive intrinsically from the building itself, not extrinsically from some more or less accurate apprehension of contingent cultural forces.[9] Similarly, Architectural critic Kenneth Frampton believes that civilization, the cult, has been primarily concerned with instrumental reason, while culture has addressed itself to the specifics of expression, to the realization of the being and the evolution of its collective phsyco-social reality.[10] Thus, Frampton would agree that critical regionalism is the force of which the History Faculty building resists the branding of the mainstream Modern Architectural styles of the time, but in addition revokes the neo-classical, the standard, and the cult models of architecture that pertained so strongly to England in its attempt to connect to University campus and England at an abstract level.
Lastly through its resistance, Banham understood that the History Faculty building represented a style of the opposition, one of which several anti-mainstream architects and groups of England, such as Archigram, were developing in their technological Brutalist aspirations, an emergence through topological formlessness, and organic expressionism[11]. In his survey of the Brutalist style, Frampton explains for all that programmatic demands have been met, Stirling’s significance to date has lain in the compelling quality of his style; in the brilliant architectonic’s of his form rather than in the consistent refinement of those ‘place’ attributes which do of necessary determine the quality of life.[12]The expressionist elements of the Brutalist style resounded with Banhams interest in technological movement. In short, Nigel Whiteley best summarizes that the History Faculty building is not a key building in history of Architecture, but one in the history of architecture attitudes.[13]
Reyner Banham catapulted and enflamed the imaginations of architecture students in England and architectural associations in Europe through his critique of Brutalist manifestations. Despite the critiques against Banham, the continuing relevance of the History Faculty remains relatively as important as it did in the 1960’s because it captured a historic design transition. Reyner Banham defended James Sterling’s History Faculty building as a radical and critical technological instrument against the so-called cult. Through this brilliant protest Banham was able to render the interior malfunctions indiscernible and the History Faculty as a technological imagination. Like all new technology, the History Faculty represented a metaphorical phase of testing and experimentation; this was the risk that Stirling so boldly accepted and as a result, innovative in its design, Stirling’s work remained a foundational shift of an emergent style.
Bibliography
Banham, Reyner. “History Faculty, Cambridge.” Architectural Review (November 1968): pg. 329.
Berman, Alan. Jim Stirling And the Red Trilogy: Three Radical Buildings. 1st Frances Lincoln ed. London:
Frances Lincoln, 2010
Frampton, Kenneth. Modern architecture: A Critical History. New York: Thames and Hudson.
1992.
Frampton, Kenneth. "Towards a Critical Regionalism; Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance."
1982.
Moore, Rowan. “James Stirling: visionary architect, and a very naughty boy” The Observer.
2011.
Sadler, Simon. Archigram: Architecture Without Architecture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005.
Whiteley, Nigel. Reyner Banham: historian of the immediate future. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
2002.
Figures
Fig. 1. Banham, Reyner. 1968. “History Faculty, Cambridge.” Architectural Review. pg. 333
[1] Reyner Banham. “History Faculty, Cambridge.”(1968) pg. 331
[2] Alan Berman. Jim Stirling And the Red Trilogy: Three Radical Buildings. (2010) pg. 7
[3] Reyner Banham. “History Faculty, Cambridge.”(1968) pg. 331
[4] Reyne Banham. “History Faculty, Cambridge.”(1968) pg. 332
[5] Rowan Moore, “James Stirling: visionary architect, and a very naughty boy.”(2011)
[6] Ibid
[7] Nigel Whiteley. Reyner Banham: historian of the immediate future. (2002) pg. 256
[8] Reyne Banham. “History Faculty, Cambridge.”(1968) pg. 332
[9] Ibid pg 332.
[10] Kenneth Frampton. Towards a Critical Regionalism; Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.” (1982) pg. 17
[11] Sadler, Simon. Archigram: Architecture Without Architecture.(2005) pg. 27
[12] Kenneth Frampton. Modern Architecture: A Critical History.(1992) pg. 268.
[13] Nigel Whiteley. Reyner Banham: historian of the immediate future.(2002) pg. 258
