As large and lusty as life
Gavin Stamp
BIG JIM: THE LIFE AND WORKS OF JAMES STIRLING by Mark Girouard Chatto, .f.30, pp. 400 It is a curious thing that, however many knighthoods, peerages, royal gold medals or other gongs are thrust upon them, famous modern architects remain deeply insecure and acutely sensitive to the slight- est whiff of criticism. Even the late Sir James Stirling, for all his apparent self- confidence and bigness, evidently longed to be loved.
On one occasion [records Mark Girouard] Alan Powers, a most amiable and inoffensive architectural writer and historian, was star- tled when Jim came up to him at a party and said that he was going to punch him in the face. It turned out that he thought Powers was Gavin Stamp, who had been a baiter of Jim since History Faculty days. Jim and Stamp in fact never met.
Oh dear: Alan assures me that this incident never occurred, but it is certainly true that I wrote articles critical of Stirling's architecture, that he threatened to punch me in the face, and that we never (alas) met. Early on I concluded that it was a mistake to know architects, be subject to their charms and so be constrained in telling the truth about their creations. But Girouard did know Stirling, and well. The only hiatus in their relationship came when the writer and historian, properly and honourably, felt unable to support the demolition of eight listed Victorian build- ings to enable Lord Palumbo to realise the Stirling Wilford design for No. 1 Poultry in the City of London and Big Jim immedi- ately dropped his old friend and admirer. Clearly this disturbed the author and, since the architect's untimely death in 1992, he has assuaged his guilt by writing this biog- raphy.
This is no hagiography but a remarkable and — given that most of the characters in it are still alive — a bravely sensational book, in which almost as much space is given to the architect's emotional relation- ships as to his designs. Most knighted architects would seem to lead exemplary, dull lives. Not so Big Jim, whose sex life in those pre-Viagra days must give hope and inspiration to the fat, greedy, smelly and bibulous middle-aged everywhere. And not only sex: it is good to have recorded inci- dents in the architect's life which have been the stuff of rumour for years, like the occa- sion at a drunken party in the smart apart- ment at New Haven created by the American architect Paul Rudolph when Stirling deliberately urinated against the outside of a glass wall in full view of all the guests. Only Brendan Gill's Many Masks about Frank Lloyd Wright (another archi- tect who lied about his age) provides as much fun in architectural biography.
As might be expected from the author of Life in the English Country House, Girouard has written a work of social as much as architectural history. He is particularly good on the London scene of the 1950s, or, rather, on that esoteric London of ambi- tious self-promoting young architects com- mitted to the Modern Movement and associated with the Independent Group. If you want to know what Alison Smithson wore at particular parties, this is the place to look; Girouard quotes Evelyn Hogge on how Alison wore
a sort of pyjama-top thing, with a big collar, and Jim took one look at her, walked up, unrolled the collar, and tied it with a knot on top of her head, which didn't go down at all well ...
The evening ended with the future archi- tect of the Economist building throwing a glass of red wine at the future architect of the Olivetti headquarters.
Almost despite myself, I found Girouard's Big Jim increasingly sympathet- ic. Within that burly, blue-shirted, arrogant exterior, there was evidently a strange, sen- sitive soul. When rather slimmer, Stirling had served in a parachute regiment in the Normandy invasion had been badly wound- ed, and his experience of killing had left him with a horror of war. He would seldom talk about these events, but it seems he was involved in the airborne cap- ture of the bridge across the Orne before the D-Day landings. Oddly, Girouard makes comparatively little of this, but if he is correct, Stirling took part in one of the most crucial and heroic episodes of the war: the capture and holding of Pegasus Bridge in the hours before D-Day.
But we are interested in James Stirling because of his buildings, and Girouard is particularly good on explaining his archi- tecture — its sources, its context, its gene- sis. He notes how in the 1950s Stirling was `concerned at the current split in contem- porary architecture between what he called academic "art" architecture, and techno- logical "non-art" architecture,' and how the architect wrote that 'the greatest architect of them all would be the one who could solve these two tendencies which are split- ting the modern movement'. And that is precisely what Stirling did in the extraordi- nary and revolutionary Leicester University Engineering building, that taut, dynamic composition of industrial glazing and red tiles. At the time, he was working with James Gown, and one merit of this book is that Girouard gives due credit to his erst- while partner, who has had every reason to feel aggrieved over the cult of Big Jim and his own comparative exclusion from mod- ern architectural history.
The Leicester building was brilliant but flawed; the next work in this pseudo-indus- trial style, the Cambridge History Faculty Library, was merely flawed. Girouard recognises that he has to deal with the functional failings of the buildings Stirling designed in the 1960s and how these were responsible for the drying up of commis- sions in Britain. He does this, but gives Stirling too much the benefit of the doubt. For instance, he exculpates the stupidity of the cascading glass roof to the History Library facing south by explaining that the building had to be swivelled through 90° because of problems with the site. This is true, but it is not true that the library quad- rant was moved from north-east to south- east. The text of the 'official' 1984 book on James Stirling: Buildings and Projects explains that the single-storey wing was moved from east to north, so the library must have originally faced south-west. In other words, the glazing was always going to catch the sun, and the conclusion I drew — and still draw — is that Big Jim simply couldn't care less; the image was the thing. Stirling's crucial partner, Michael Wilford, confirms in this book that he simply wasn't interested in detail, which is such an impor- tant part of successful architecture.
So was James Stirling a great architect? `Jim's status comes from his having designed some extraordinary and wonder- ful buildings,' concludes Girouard. 'I have always found them so, I find them so still, and I hope the biography has put across some of their quality to readers.' It does that, and though I cannot approve of Stir- ling's attitude to his clients and the users of his buildings, I recognise that he was the single most influential and innovative force in British architecture for three decades and that he was responsible for one great and powerful building (which works): the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart. In retrospect, I am sorry he did not get to do the National Gallery Extension in London. Someone who knew him well recently described him as a 'pig'. I suspect he was, but he would have been the best one to design a new Animal Farm.
Mark Girouard's account of the health and emotional problems of Big Jim's last years and of his death is moving, and I am sure he is right to claim that Stirling was `cut off when still at the height of his pow- ers'. I like the fact that there was no pseud- ery and no waffle about him, and that, unlike the other architectural poseurs who, these days, get peerages, he was interested in the perennial qualities of real architec- ture: mass, form, colour, space. He fully deserved this riveting and illuminating biography.
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