Art s
Calm and control
Alastair Best
'3.sic new universities — with the somewhat nvid exception of Sussex — are more beton utui than red brick. This is particularly true s',,f the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Strung out along a south-facing slope, the serrated rows of Sir Denys Lasdun's residential blocks for students are an elegant eXercise in the art of prefabricated concrete construction. The imagery is nautical: a concrete flotilla, forever anchored in green Parkland, seems to be glaring malevolently 1,4t, some enemy lurking among the trees. 'de tension between the two — the harsh geometry of the man-made university and lite undulating natural landscape (made more natural with man's assistance) — is one Of the most arresting images in post-war Q.citish architecture. But it is not what the visitor immediately sees. The visitor, on arrival, finds his way onto altelevated pedestrian deck, which forms a forth between the teaching blocks to the 'idrth and the residential pyramids to the
From here, the view is a good deal
exhilarating. We are in Malcolm Brad countr3 (the author of The History American an is attached to UEA's department of in Studies). A wasteland of parked e,acs, hard surfaces, and overflowing lit'clibins stretches out below, a reminder that '11Yof Sir Denys Lasdun's buildings have eir 'clean' as well as their 'dirty' sides: as .;!, Christ's, Cambridge, as at the National i;oeatre, the UEA campus seems to have cell designed to be enjoyed from one side (Iill.IY• It would be difficult to imagine anytng thore completely removed from the ot )(bridge world of bicycles and billowing twils. Perhaps the skateboard (look what "as done to the South Bank) would be the , alost appropriate form of conveyance here. dThee, rounding a corner, the deck sud0:41IY stops. The heavy concrete balustrades °„,i,_ve, Way to a skinny steel and glass bridge, what slices high up into the side wall of w" Catat looks like an immense, silvery hangar. sdun's nautical imagery has been replaced by something distinctly aeronaut}cal. And, as if to underline the contrast, a it`Wo-tone green helicopter suddenly swings n,esoss the trees and hovers overhead. Norir;an Foster, architect of UEA's latest buildmg, the Sainsbury Centre for the Arts, is Preparing to touch down. to It's not normal in these depressed times ace architects descending from on high 0"S ,then Foster is not a normal architect. , iier members of his embattled profession :n tve retreated to the fringes of building: e' jaching, writing, consultancy work of varo s kinds, rehabilitation. Post modernism h In the air (very much, in the air — no-one as been able to define it yet) and the new models are Lutyens and Parker and Unwin. Yet Foster carries on designing and building what in many ways seem to be rather oldfashioned Modern enclosures: the kind of slick, pre-fabricated, lightweight stuff which appears to owe a bit to Miss van der Rohe, a bit of Charles Eames a bit of Buckminster Fuller (with whom Foster has leaned over a drawing board on occasion), but which also seems to be bang in line with the great Brunel-Paxton tradition of Victorian structural engineering.
Many of Foster's clients, indeed, tend to be commercial or industrial: firms like IBM, Fred Olsen or SAPA (the Swedish based manufacturers of aluminium extrusions) who were looking for something a cut above the off-the-peg package deal shack which disfigures so many of our industrial estates, but who were also quite hard pressed for time and money. As a result, Foster has built up an international reputation as a designer of sophisticated sheds.
Most of these buildings are tucked away on remote and unprepossessing sites. You have to comb Swindon's huge — and hugely depressing — industrial estate in order to see the exquisite little Reliance Controls factory, now flying under different colours and much hacked about by subsequent tenants; or pick your way through deserted dockland to find the Fred Olsen Centre, reflecting cranes and ships in its glittering mirror-glass facade; or make a special pilgrimage out to Thamesmead East industrial estate to catch a glimpse of the Modern Art Glass warehouse, a bright blue aluminium clad shed which the planners unsuccessfully campaigned to turn into a drab grey shed to conform with their own, defiantly dull image of 'building for industry.'
The new building which houses Sir Robert Sainsbury's remarkable collection of primitive and twentieth-century art also provides a new home for UEA's School of Fine Arts, a senior common room, a restaurant and huge volumes of storage space. The hangar is a multi-purpose building — and, as far as Foster is concerned, all the better for being so. About half the area is devoted to works of art (Pre-Columbian
to Bacon, and not much in between), with the permanent collection separated by glass screens and pot plants from a space devoted to changing displays. Beyond the collection lies an enclosed study area where individual
pieces may be taken out of the reserve col lection and studied at leisure, and beyond that the Fine Arts faculty, with glass
fronted tutorial pens glaring at one another across a sunken slide library. Finally there is a restaurant, overlooked by a mezzanine senior common room. It is easy to see who
has come off worst. The art historians are reported to be unhappy with their glassfronted booths and disturbed at the prospect of teaching in a building which seems to be wholly unsuited to showing slides and delivering lectures. These, and other shortcomings, may be overcome. But first impressions, as with any Foster building, are distinctly favourable. The interior of the hangar exudes calm, control and spatial generosity. There are no intrusive columns. A 33m clear span is carried by a mighty prismatic steel structure, hidden from view (except at the glazed ends, where it is magnificently revealed) by an inner skin of metallic louvres. Light trickles and glances through two layers of ceiling grilles, one upper layer being electronically controlled. Foster has side-stepped the cliché of colour-coded services by putting the services out of sight. The interior, in fact, has been drained of colour. The carpet, furniture and fixtures and fittings are carefully composed on chrome, black leather, grey wool, metallic silver and white paint. The works of art, some of them only an inch high, sit in exquisite, but unassertive little acrylic cases. Larger pieces and all paintings and drawings are suspended on an arrangement of low screens. It is casual, reticent, yet beneath the reticence a fierce control. Moving around the building one experiences that very rare thrill of seeing a piece of architecture detailed down to the last joint and gasket, and impeccably put together. The effect is shattering.
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