Up with the Normans
ARCHITECTURE DURHAM city is magnificent. The great curv- ing gouge of the Wear seems to have touched the imagination of every generation of builders. The Normans crowned the rock with their fort- ress cathedral after harrying the north with what Trevelyan calls 'a vengeance Turkish in its atrocity.' There followed generations of dicta- torial rule by Palatine Prince Bishops; but by the nineteenth century railways had replaced soldiers as the main instruments of national unity and George Stephenson rolled his London to Edin- burgh line across the flank of the town on a soar- ing stone viaduct. It makes one shudder a little to think what the 1960s might have contributed to this scene. Perhaps a new Freeman, Hardy, Willis or some concrete lamp posts? But no —the splendour of Durham has continued to bewitch, and in the last year another layer has been added to the pearl in the form of a footbridge designed by Ove Arup and a students' union by Dick Raines of Architects' Co-Partnership.
Ove Arup is a structural engineer who recently got the Royal Institute of British Architects' gold medal. He is the man who made the billows of Jorn Utzon's notorious Sydney Opera House stand up, and he is currently working on a deck for Piccadilly Circus that will lift people and Eros over the roar of traffic. He is generally beloved by British architects for being sympathetic to their follies and to the complex mixture of human and technical conditions they have to satisfy. And as Kingsgate bridge shows, Arup is himself a de- signer whose ability extends far beyond a facility for making other men's buildings stay up.
When the University commissioned him to join its old neighbourhood around the cathedral with a new one across the Wear, it believed that the available money would only pay for two tiresome flights of steps down almost to water level and a low bridge between them. Arup has built a slender footway that soars high above the river and balances on two sets of delicate struts canted out like those of an umbrella. The scale of the bridge echoes the bigness of the gorge and there are no unnecessary steps to climb. Grace and function are joined in holy matrimony.
The construction of the footbridge was another lour de force. It was built in halves running parallel to the banks of the river and then swung into place. Solid balustrades provide security for people crossing and a pair of bold bronze buckles in a narrow joint at the centre is the only reminder of this feat of swinging ingenuity.
At one end of the bridge rears the east front of the Cathedral, at the other Dunelrn House, the new students' union, cascades down the chasm. As with the footbridge so with the union, scale is superbly handled. On its street side the building fits comfortably among the three-storey buildings of New Elvet. Facing the river the stepped-back façade of a seven-storey building echoes the height and rake of the gorge. There is also a visual bond between bridge and building because they are both built of concrete as smooth as pale grey flannel. In an age of 'external quality' formica and enamelled steel in pastel-shades, not to mention a thousand other materials, with all the disharmony that their different patterns and tints engender, it is enjoyable to see colour acting as a binder. Disappointingly Architects' Co-Partnership have not observed their own lesson, for they are doing a second building farther down the river in brick.
Inside the union a series of staircases plungedown the building in the manner of one of those much- photographed stepped streets of Montmartre. At the bottom is a boathouse, at the top a book- shop, there are terraces to talk on and gaze at the bridge from and there is a cafeteria that has the sense of occasion of a guildhall, thanks to the useful idea of tucking the stainless steel clutter of the servery behind a row of ceiling-high con- crete banister rails.
Concrete is everywhere inside and out. Ash- trays, airducts, gargoyles, benches and telephone booths are all made of it and are integral parts of this walk-in sculpture. Such idiosyncrasy would be irritating but for the simplicity of most of the trimmings warm red tiles on the floor and plain plywood furniture. Doors too have been reduced to the minimum and are without linings or archi- traves. They are planes of glass or wood filling holes without hinges or other visible supports. They run from floor to ceiling and are pivoted between them. This is logical in view of the con- crete structure—just as the conventional wooden door frame is logical in brick-and-plaster con- struction. It is the functional tradition in build- ing; it is Mies van der Rohe's 'less is more.' And like the rest of the union and the bridge it is just right for Durham.
TERENCE BENDIXSON
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