Hasta La Ideas

News: the rising cost of property in city centres is causing the “biggest crisis” facing architects and urbanists, according to critic Joseph Rykwert, the recipient of this year’s RIBA Royal Gold Medal (+ interview).

Speaking to Dezeen the day before being awarded British architecture’s most prestigious award, the 87 year-old spoke with concern that the increasing cost of city centre property would make the diversity that makes cities thrive impossible.

“What’s happening is that – this is common knowledge – the price of property in city centres is making it impossible, particularly in the big cities, for any kind of social mix to take place. It’s castrating the whole notion of city life,” he said.

Rykwert is known for his large body of work on cities including his seminal 1963 book The Idea of a Town, which his RIBA Gold Medal citation called “the pivotal text on understanding why and how cities were and can be formed”. His other books include The Necessity of Artifice and The Seduction of Place.

Though the life of cities were one of his early topics, the rise of cities with over 20 million occupants holds little excitement for Rykwert. “They are not very happy places are they? Extremes of inequality are underlined in the way those kind of cities are built and extremes of inequality always tend to show up in political movements.”

The other major challenge facing architecture is climatic, said Rykwert. “We have an energy crisis and … if we go on building large, glass-faced, air-conditioned buildings we will exacerbate the situation. And this is what’s we are doing”.

Rykwert said architects can – and should – try to make modest improvements wherever they can, and understand the impact they can have. “It’s very important that architects understand their own power and that what they do is something which is of enormous impact to society. Not that I believe that architecture influences social behaviour directly, but it certainly does so indirectly.”

The critic believes that contemporary architects need to take a more intelligent engagement with the past. “At the moment architects tend to ignore the past. Yet the past is all we know. We don’t know the future. The way in which the past and the present mesh is something I find a bit lacking in current architecture discourse,” he said.

Rykwert was born in Poland in 1926 and moved to London in 1939. He is Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania and has taught at the University of Cambridge, Princeton, the Cooper Union, New York, Harvard Graduate School of Design and the University of Sydney.

The RIBA Royal Gold Medal is the institution’s highest honour, given to a person or group in recognition of a lifetime’s work and for significant influence “either directly or indirectly on the advancement of architecture.” The Queen personally approves each recipient, and recent winners have included architects David Chipperfield, Herman Hertzberger and Peter Zumthor.

Other architectural writers and critics who have won the medal include Nikolaus Pevsner and Colin Rowe.

Announcing the award last September, RIBA described Rykwert as “a world-leading authority on the history of art and architecture” whose “groundbreaking ideas and work have had a major impact on the thinking of architects and designers since the 1960s and continue to do so to this day”.

Here’s a full transcript of the interview:

James Pallister: Congratulations on being awarded the Royal Gold Medal.

Joseph Rykwert: It wasn’t wholly expected I must say!

James Pallister: I suppose you wouldn’t expect to get a gong from the profession you criticise?

Joseph Rykwert: Exactly. Though I’m not an adversarial critic.

James Pallister: What’s missing from architectural discourse today?

Joseph Rykwert: Well a sense of power. Architects don’t have a sense – perhaps power is the wrong word – they don’t always have the sense of the authority they should have.

I think it’s very important that architects understand their own power as it were and that they understand what they do is actually something which is of enormous impact to society. Not that I believe that architecture influences social behavior directly, but it certainly does so indirectly.

James Pallister: For you, as a critic and a historian, is it important to engage the public in the architectural debate or is it ok to solely engage the architectural profession in debate?

Joseph Rykwert: Well the trouble is that very few people outside those who have actually been trained professionally have much of an understanding of architecture. One of the essential skills in judging a building before it is built is the ability to read plans. I really am sometimes quite horrified at how few people can read plans.

James Pallister: Do you think critics are still relevant today, given the power of the internet, and the globalization of architectural media?

Joseph Rykwert: Come on! We are all critics. We are all critics all the time. That’s what criticism is about. The Greeks used the word to signify winnowing. You have a winnow net, you throw things up and the wheat comes down and the chaff flies away. And that’s what you hope to do when you are a critic: separate the grain from the chaff.

James Pallister: Was there any particular artist or architect who made a big impact upon you in your early career?

Joseph Rykwert: Well the dominant architect of my time was Le Corbusier. No doubt. He was obviously the greatest architect of his generation. He was also the most insistent publicist – some people would say self-publicist. You could look at his buildings, and you could read his writings. This is not true of Walter Groupius or of Alvar Aalto, certainly not true of Mies van Der Rohe. Mies was very laconic, as I’m sure you know. Not only laconic but also gnomic.

James Pallister: How hopeful are you for the future of architecture?

Joseph Rykwert: Well as always we are at a critical moment. Architecture is permanently in crisis. The crisis now is as much financial as technical. What’s happening is that – this is common knowledge – the price of property in city centres is making it impossible, particularly in the big cities, for any kind of social mix to take place. It’s, as it were, castrating the whole notion of city life. And I have no idea what will happen as a result, but something must. I probably won’t see the consequences but it’s something, which is bound to have a long-term effect.

James Pallister: Is that the biggest issue facing architecture?

Joseph Rykwert: Well it’s certainly the biggest issue facing urban planning.

James Pallister: You’ve seen the rise and fall of idealistic modernism and the emergence of sustainability as an interest of many: what’s your definition of a sustainable city?

Joseph Rykwert: I think it’s a word that’s up for grabs, isn’t it.

The fact is that we have an energy crisis. In this country we don’t need to underline it, we’ve just had the floods, which may be or may not be a seasonal phenomenon independent of global warming but certainly the extreme weather phenomena all over he world, including heat waves in Australia and south-east Asia, are almost certainly related to it.

If that makes parts of Equatorial Africa and Equatorial America uninhabitable it will mean the population will shift, either north or south – probably more north than south. This will create a population crisis. It’s already, in a minor way, in place in the northern shores of the Mediterranean. They can’t cope with the influx of refugees. I’ve no idea what will happen as a result of that and I don’t wish to prophesy because it’s a risky business. But it is a permanent crisis, which doesn’t seem to be going away.

James Pallister: What is architecture’s role in this?

Joseph Rykwert: Well if we go on building large, glass-faced, air-conditioned buildings we will exacerbate the situation. And this is what’s we are doing, so it’s anyone’s guess what will happen.

James Pallister: Do architects have an ethical duty here?

Joseph Rykwert: I would have thought they did. I’m certainly in no position to dictate it. But as a critic you are bound to note that sort of thing.

James Pallister: In general do you think that architects should make the world a better place?

Joseph Rykwert: That’s what it’s about! If it’s not about that it’s not about anything.

James Pallister: Some people say that bad things happen when architects think they can change the world…

Joseph Rykwert: I didn’t say change the world. I said make it a better place. The world is changing anyway without architects. Maybe it could do with a bit of help every now and again.

James Pallister: Is there anything missing from architectural discourse today?

Joseph Rykwert: What I do miss is a sense or consciousness of the past. Past achievement is not something that should weigh heavily on architects but something that should be part of –as it were – the fertilising ground on which they grow.

Architects tend to at the moment ignore the past. Yet the past is all we know. We don’t know the future. I’m not a great believer in reaching out beyond what you can learn both from the past and the present. The way in which the past and the present mesh is something I find a bit lacking in current architecture discourse. Which is why historicism is really a danger. There are people who see the past as a kind of quarry (which is sterile, of course) instead of thinking it as the kind of ground and manure and fertilising background…

James Pallister: Who are the most interesting architects working today?

Joseph Rykwert: Well the architect I’ve worked most closely with is David Chipperfield. There are older figures. Richard Meier in America has also done some wonderful buidlginds. Frank Gehry is another one who has done interesting and fascinating work.

James Pallister: Does the growth of cities with over 20miliion inhabitants in places like China excite you, as a writer on the life of cities?

Joseph Rykwert: They are not very happy places though are they? Extremes of inequality are underlined in the way those kind of cities are built and extremes of inequality always tend to show up in political movements. However that will work out I’ve no idea.

James Pallister: Why do you think architectural theory matters?

Joseph Rykwert: Well at the moment there’s much too much of it! It only really matters if it effects practice. As an independent discipline, I think it’s really rather boring.

James Pallister: What do you mean there’s much too much of it?

Joseph Rykwert: Well the amount of interminable books published on architectural theory! I don’t have to list them. Just go down to the RIBA Boookshop and look at the shelves. Theoreticians who don’t look at real buildings are of no interest to me.

James Pallister: How do you think that critics can make architecture relevant to the public today?

Joseph Rykwert: Well only if the public reads them. So they have to reach out to the public. They have to be accessible. They have to write as if they weren’t some sort of superior being, but as if they were like everyone else.

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News: British architects Theis and Khan have been selected to design the new headquarters for the Royal Institute of British Architects at 76 Portland Place in London.

Located a couple of doors down from the RIBA‘s existing base at 66 Portland Place, the current Institute of Physics building will be completely renovated to create enough office space to bring all the architecture institute’s London staff under one roof.

Construction is scheduled to begin in March 2014 and expected to complete by the end of the year, freeing up space in the existing premises for new exhibition and events spaces that will include a gallery of architecture designed by London studio Carmody Groarke.

Patrick Theis and Soraya Khan saw off competition from five other shortlisted firms to win the project.

“We look forward to delivering a high quality sustainable design that both meets the RIBA’s aspirations for its new building and reflects the integrity of 66 Portland Place,” they said. “We were intrigued by the potential synergies between the two buildings and look forward to developing these further with the RIBA.”

The architects were selected following a panel interview with a group of RIBA members and will deliver the project alongside engineers Max Fordham and Price & Myers.

“The selection panel was greatly impressed by all the shortlisted teams’ initial thoughts, approach to the project and their experience and ability to deliver within a constrained timeframe,” said RIBA president Stephen Hodder.

“Theis and Khan gave an exceptionally considered approach and clearly demonstrated how they aim to meet our aspirations. We were particularly inspired by the team’s consideration of the relationship between our new premises and our main RIBA headquarters building, and how they had successfully delivered projects with such synergies in the past,” he added.

The RIBA has taken a 43-year lease on 76 Portland Place.

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News: Stirling Prize judge Tom Dyckhoff has spoken of being “punched in the gut” by the house-inside-a-castle that clinched the award last night, although its architects missed out on the usual £20,000 cash bounty, as organisers RIBA failed to find a sponsor.

“It ticked all the criteria of the Stirling Prize, which is a list as long as your arm,” Dyckhoff told Dezeen. “But it also punched you in the gut in a way that is really hard to explain.”

The renovation of Astley Castle in Warwickshire by Witherford Watson Mann is the first individual house and the first restoration project to win the award, which goes to the building deemed the greatest contribution to British architecture in the last year.

“It’s really easy to be romantic about ruins,” added Dyckhoff, journalist and co-presenter of BBC’s The Culture Show. “You know everyone loves a ruin and its history, particularly in this country. But the building was utterly magical. It was intellectual, it was clever, it was incredibly pragmatic, it was affordable, it was clever right the way down to the smallest detail. It had a great concept and it had the great details, and that is a really winning combination and it was magical and romantic.”

However the winning architects missed out on the £20,000 cheque, which has been handed to every Stirling Prize-winner since the award’s inception in 1996.

“We thought we would find a sponsor but we didn’t,” said RIBA Head of Awards Tony Chapman. “It’s sad”. Chapman said he personally called all the shortlisted architects to explain that there would be no cash prize this year.

Architect William Mann nonetheless described the win as “fantastic” and said he believed this year’s shortlist represents a “return to the values” of architecture. “[The project] has been an opportunity to communicate the values that we’re interested in,” he said.

Stephen Witherford added: “I believe very strongly that old and new buildings work together. Sometimes we try to separate them, but there’s a happy coming together here.”

The project was initiated by architectural charity The Landmark Trust, who launched a design competition for a holiday house that could be created within the decaying twelfth-century structure.

“It was really exciting for us to take the ruins of a historic building and to do something completely new in it,” said Landmark Trust director Anna Keay. “Normally we follow a relatively straightforward approach with preservation jobs, but to have resolved upon something more adventurous and to find Witherford Watson Mann to realise an adventurous approach to historic building was to us, as the clients and The Landmark Trust, incredibly exciting and I hope this has given inspiration to others.”

The 2013 RIBA Stirling Prize was awarded last night in a ceremony at the Central Saint Martins campus in London. Read more about the project in our earlier story.

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News: architectural historian Joseph Rykwert has been named as the recipient of this year’s Royal Gold Medal for architecture.

Architects David Chipperfield, Frank Gehry and Renzo Piano supported the nomination for Rykwert, who has taught at many architecture schools around the world from Princeton and Harvard to Institut d’Urbanisme in Paris and the University of Sydney. His books include the seminal The Idea of a Town, published in 1963, as well as The Necessity of Artifice and The Seduction of Place.

The Royal Gold Medal is awarded annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) to an architect or individual who has made a significant contribution to the profession. Other theoreticians to receive the accolade include Nikolaus Pevsner and Colin Rowe.

Commenting on his selection, Rykwert said: “If we all had our desserts’, the poet asked, ‘who would scape a whipping?’ Certainly not I. So I can’t think of a Gold Medal as my dessert. It is a wonderful gift which my colleagues have made me and adds weight and authority to my words to which they could never otherwise pretend.”

He added: “What makes the gift doubly precious is that it does not come from my fellow-scriveners, but from architects and builders – and suggests that what I have written has engaged their attention and been of use, even though I have never sought to be impartial but have taken sides, sometimes combatively.”

Rykwert will receive the award in a ceremony at the RIBA headquarters in London on 25 February 2014.

Last year the prize went to Peter Zumthor, who rejected architecture as form-making in his Royal Gold Medal lecture, while other recent winners include Herman Hertzberger, David Chipperfield and I. M. Pei.

Here’s the announcement from the RIBA:

Joseph Rykwert to receive the 2014 Royal Gold Medal for architecture

The celebrated architectural critic, historian and writer Joseph Rykwert has been named today (Wednesday 18 September) as the recipient of the 2014 RIBA Royal Gold Medal, one of the world’s most prestigious architecture awards.

Given in recognition of a lifetime’s work, the Royal Gold Medal is approved personally by Her Majesty the Queen and is given to a person or group of people who have had a significant influence “either directly or indirectly on the advancement of architecture”.

Joseph Rykwert is a world-leading authority on the history of art and architecture; his groundbreaking ideas and work have had a major impact on the thinking of architects and designers since the 1960s and continue to do so to this day.

His seminal book The Idea of a Town (1963) remains the pivotal text on understanding why and how cities were and can be formed. He has written numerous influential works of architectural criticism and history, published over a sixty-year period and translated into several languages. The most significant of these are On Adam’s House in Paradise (1972), The First Moderns (1980), The Necessity of Artifice (1982), The Dancing Column: On Order in Architecture (1996), and The Seduction of Place (2002); all have changed the way modern architects and planners think about cities and buildings, and how historians view the architectural roots of the modern era.

Rykwert’s works have influenced generations of architects with many either having been taught by him directly or taught in a school where his influence has had a profound effect on a department’s teaching. Distinguished architects David Chipperfield, Frank Gehry and Renzo Piano are amongst the previous Royal Gold Medallists who have personally supported Joseph’s nomination.

Joseph Rykwert said about his selection for the Royal Gold Medal:

“If we all had our desserts’, the poet asked, ‘who would scape a whipping?’ Certainly not I. So I can’t think of a Gold Medal as my dessert. It is a wonderful gift which my colleagues have made me and adds weight and authority to my words to which they could never otherwise pretend.

“What makes the gift doubly precious is that it does not come from my fellow-scriveners, but from architects and builders – and suggests that what I have written has engaged their attention and been of use, even though I have never sought to be impartial but have taken sides, sometimes combatively. So I feel both elated and enormously grateful.”

RIBA President Stephen Hodder said today,

“The recognition of Joseph with this prestigious award is long overdue; that it has gone to a man whose writings have provided inspiration to so many who practice in the heart of our cities, gives me particular personal pleasure. Joseph’s writing and teaching are rare in that he can deliver the most profound thinking on architecture in an accessible way. All our lives are the richer for it.”

Born in Warsaw in 1926, Joseph Rykwert is a naturalized British citizen. He has held a number of university teaching posts in Britain and the United States. He is currently Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture Emeritus and was Professor of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Joseph Rykwert has lectured or taught at most of the world’s major schools of architecture and has held visiting appointments at Princeton, the Cooper Union, New York, Harvard Graduate School of Design, the University of Sydney, Louvain, the Institut d’Urbanisme, Paris, the Central European University and others. He has held fellowships at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, Washington and the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities.

In 1984, he was appointed Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He holds honorary degrees from the University of Edinburgh, the University of Cordoba, Argentina, the University of Bath, Toronto and Trieste and Rome, and is a member of the Italian Accademia di San Luca and the Polish Academy. In 2000, he was awarded the Bruno Zevi prize in architectural history by the Biennale of Venice and in 2009 the Gold Medal Bellas Artes, Madrid. He has been president of the international council of architectural critics (CICA) since 1996.

He joins previous theorists and largely non-practitioners to have been honoured with the Royal Gold Medal including Colin Rowe (1995), Sir John Summerson (1976) and Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1967).

Joseph Rykwert will be presented with the 2014 Royal Gold Medal at a special event at the RIBA at 66 Portland Place, London W1 on the 25 February 2014.

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News: six buildings have been shortlisted for this year’s Stirling Prize, including the overhaul of Sheffield’s notorious Park Hill housing estate (above), an elliptical chapel and a museum that mimics volcanic formations.

The RIBA Stirling Prize is awarded annually in recognition of the building that has made the greatest contribution to British architecture in the past year.

Other projects on this year’s list include a house in the ruins of a twelfth century castle, a suburban neighbourhood reinterpreting the rural architecture of Essex, and a medical school and bus shelter in Ireland.

Here’s the full shortlist:

» Giant’s Causeway Visitor Centre by Heneghan Peng
» Park Hill, Sheffield by Hawkins/Brown and Studio Egret West
» Newhall Be, Harlow, Essex by Alison Brooks Architects
» Astley Castle, Nuneaton, Warwickshire by Witherford Watson Mann
» Bishop Edward King Chapel at Cuddesdon by Niall Maclaughlin
» University of Limerick Medical School and Pergola Bus Shelter, Ireland by Grafton Architects

“The RIBA Stirling Prize is awarded to the building that has made the biggest contribution to the evolution of architecture, and nowhere is the need for fresh-thinking needed more than in housing,” commented RIBA President Angela Brady. “The UK is blighted with unimaginative, poor quality houses that people don’t want to live in but have little other choice, so I am delighted to see two amazing and highly original housing projects on this year’s shortlist.”

She added: “All six shortlisted projects are ground-breaking in their own way – buildings that deliver more than could ever have been expected. Some of them, such as Park Hill and the Giant’s Causeway Visitor Centre, are genuinely courageous in laying out a new visionary approach. This RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist is sending out the clear message that creative vision improves our lives.”

The shortlist was selected from 52 RIBA Award-winners, which were revealed last month. The winner will be announced at a ceremony in London on 13 October.

Last year’s winner was the Sainsbury Laboratory by Stanton Williams, while past recipients include Zaha Hadid and David Chipperfield. See more Stirling Prize winners »

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