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Modernism: Home and Away This exhibition examines three very different ways in which the language of modernism has been extended to attain an enduring quality. In gallery 1, Julius Shulman - a series of seminal photographs capturing the spirit of modernism in post war California. In gallery 2, Peter Aldington - a collection of photographs, models and plans illustrating his development A Garden and Three Houses. And in gallery 3, David Chipperfield - works including two large-scale models demonstrating the volumetric, spatial and material concerns of two of his most ambitious projects to date - the Davenport Museum of Art, Iowa, USA and the new Law Courts for Salerno, Italy. |
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Peter AldingtonThis exhibition, designed by Richard Murphy and featuring the photographs of Richard Bryant, celebrates Peter Aldington's three village houses and a garden designed and built in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire, in the 1960s; winning a Royal Institute of British Architects award in the 1970s. Since then the scheme has become become internationally celebrated, even elevated to the status of listed buildings as an exceptional and influential example of modern architecture - compactness and privacy, variety and unity. The Richard Bryant photos in this exhibition, (helpfully annotated on a little plan, with only occasional text extras) describe the whole thing beautifully. The luscious, deep leafy foliage in the series of gardens, the constant series of intimate, unenclosed inside and outside spaces. It's clear from the start that this is a perfect fusion of modernist and indigenous traditional sensibilities: the framing and composition of mass and openings is intensely modernist; the materials and detailing both modern and traditional - the broad horizontal sweep of the pantiled roof; the roughcast white-painted render and durox concrete; the old walls taken into the new composition. The exhibition starts by taking the viewer through the garden, then (with help from the model) to the overall composition of spaces and views - particularly the highly achieved modernist continuity between inside and outside with folding glass doors, garden and living spaces taking each other in. Gradually, the photos move you inside and on to the details - glass set into brickwork, timber set in the gravel, pivoting door and slatted upper windows. Then the focus moves on to the way the spaces work: the lovely little kitchen bay that looks over living and garden spaces with light coming in sideways, the ladder to the galleried room which had served as office, daughter's bedroom and study: and the exquisite Wychert wall - a mud wall with holes made by wild bees - incorporated into the house. The historian and critic Dan Cruickshank visited Aldington's development in October 1996 for a "masterclass" article for the journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects: his verdict was that "these buildings remain an object lesson for all architects", and their combination of "the most modest of materials, picturesque traditions, the key tenets of modernism and a magic union of indoors and outdoors, made them extraordinary, precious and rare." As Richard Murphy puts it,"If only! If only home builders in this country had taken the time to look at what Peter Aldington achieved at Haddenham. Had they done that we might have been spared over the last thirty years the obscenity of ticky tacky boxy housing estates that corrupt every town and village the length of the country. The lessons are still waiting to be learnt." The book 'Garden and Three Houses', with words by Jane Brown and pictures by Richard Bryant, is available in the bookshop priced £19.95
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David Chipperfield Tradition coupled with invention forms the basis of David Chipperfield's design philosophy. The interplay of accepted and valued ideas combined with newly imagined thoughts invites an architecture that is conceptually clear and considered. Chipperfield seeks to reconnect us with the spaces and forms amid which we move, through an emphasis on their physicality, their dialogue with what surrounds them (whether in terms of the natural world or those of existing structures) and above all, their sensory potencies harnessed by their use of light and their emphasis on the intrinsic beauty and strength of materials. As he himself says, "We must take control of the physical dimension of our work; we must learn how to speculate, and control the matter of our consideration. We must encourage an architecture that does not look like built drawings. Material, volume and light must occupy the very centre of our craft." The two large-scale models at Cube are examples of how this design philosophy is translated into built form. They show not only the reality of the spaces being created but also the sculptural intent of the conceptual ideas. Chipperfield's work at Cube also incorporates a series of supporting conceptual and schematic models which explain a method of creative decision-making culminating in a detailed representation of a complex idea. The themes of tradition and invention are well understood within the context of this process.
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