ARTS
Architecture
The other Robert Adam
Gavin Stamp
Classical Design in the Late 20th Century: The Recent Work of Robert Adam (RIBA Heinz Gallery, till 20 December)
0 ne of the most instructive exhibits in last year's Inigo Jones exhibition at the Royal Academy was not in the catalogue. It was Jones's copy of Vitruvius open at a page on which England's first Classical architect had written in the margin (as Gordon Higgott kindly deciphered for me): . . . me thinkes that vittruvious boldly varied from ye ancient greeks leaving out ye cornish and frees . . . he professeth to varry as hermogenes did in ye Temple psudodipteros & so it bee donn with reson, and proportion it is to bee commended.
In other words, Jones was willing to break the rules.
This is not an academic point but one which has an important bearing on the current Classical Revival. For the essential problem today is whether simply to follow the rules, to copy columns and pediments Robert Adam portrays himself (far left) among other present and past architects in his drawing of a 'Tower of the Orders'
from Palladio, Alberti or whoever, or to adapt the Classical language to meet mod- ern conditions, as Jones did to a limited degree, or as Soane or Lutyens did much more boldly. The former course is that so far adopted by Britain's best-known and most successful modern Classicist, Quinlan Terry. Although, I am reliably informed, Mr Terry no longer believes that the Classical Orders were given by God to Moses and subsequently refined in Solo- mon's Temple and are so immutable, he still seems to maintain that architecture stopped in about 1750 and his own designs consist of details culled from various Re- naissance sources.
It has long seemed to me that the pedantry and gaucheness of Quinlan Ter- ry's architecture has been the principal obstacle to a modern Classical architecture being taken seriously, despite its evident success at a popular and commercial level; invention, adaptation, abstraction and mannerism — which all keep the art of architecture alive — are absent from his work. However, a younger generation of architects committed to Classicism has now emerged which seems to recognise that a serious challenge is involved in applying Classical principles today. For while the Palladian formulas may be suitable for country houses — the building type that kept the Classical torch burning in the lean, modernist post-war decades — the language must develop to be appropriate in modern commercial buildings.
Of this younger generation who are now building (I therefore exclude the admirable Leon Krier), by far the most articulate and intelligent is Robert Adam. Mr Adam, like his eponymous Georgian non-relation, is a Scot but he practises in Winchester. Now aged 42, he first emerged with the design of a new wing to Dogmersfield Park in Hampshire for a computer firm in which high technology and plate glass were happily combined with an inventive brick Classicism. In his essay on 'Tin Gods: Technology and Contemporary Archi- tecture' he has argued powerfully against the idea that architecture must be mecha- nistic and machine-worshipping. This year he has published Classical Architecture: a Complete Handbook (Penguin, £30) to help architectural students design, say, a Classical supermarket and he now shows off his own work with an exhibition at the Heinz Gallery (21 Portman Square, W1).
This must be the most handsome — and discordant — display ever placed inside Alan Irvine's smoothly reticent interior, for Doric columns now appear to support the dark bongo-wood ceiling to make a central shrine or temple in which are placed examples of Robert Adam's own furniture — notably two enchantingly whimsical clocks. Mr Adam has, re- freshingly, a thoroughly Arts and Crafts view of Classicism, for he works with the potter David Birch to produce ceramic capitals and other architectural details as well as with furniture-makers. All these handsome, well-made objects, together with Adam's own clever and accomplished perspective drawings, make for a diverse and stimulating display.
The doubts, unfortunately, come with the actual architecture. On a small scale, it is convincing. There are many designs for houses, both built and unbuilt, which are appropriate and witty. But Mr Adam has grander ambitions. His scheme for three huge Classical towers at Spaghetti Junction — in response to a competition by the BBC's Late Show — is amusing as well as perverse, but his design for the 24-storey 'Apollo Tower' which he has chosen to put on the poster is frankly terrible. This preposterous wedding cake, which surely would have seemed excessive even to Stalin, has none of the 'reason and propor- tion' which the early skyscraper builders brought to the problem of stretching the Classical language upwards.
I fear Robert Adam, like so many of our New Classicists, does not know when to leave things out. Houses, golf clubs, com- puter offices, are all larded regardless with the whole panoply of columns and pedi- ments. The result can be truly vulgar in that it offends the sense of propriety that seemed so important to the Georgians, who believed that only great monuments and civic buildings deserved full temple porticoes. Our modern Classicists seem to suffer from advanced stylomania — every- where the orders are fully expressed — and have yet to adapt the language as the civilised Georgians did to make a universal sensible architecture that is ordinary, understated and even necessarily banal.
But Robert Adam is no Georgian, if at times he is excessively Neo-Georgian. Rather, as David Watkin argues in one of the essays in the excellent and handsome catalogue (£8.50), he is more an Edwar- dian. Like much architecture of the turn of the century, his work has an inventive exuberance that verges on the vulgar but which can have point and purpose. For, it was the Edwardians who rose to the challenge of making town halls, office buildings and power stations look grand and Classical. The very pleasure of Edwar- dian Baroque is its unaffected and often ungrammatical pomposity — achieved in colourful and solid materials. If modern Classical architects are to achieve anything worthwhile, it is perhaps to the early 20th century they should look for inspiration rather than to the 18th century.
We cannot hope for a new Lutyens as the sophistication, knowledge and refine- ment which existed earlier this century has been dissipated and undermined by the advent of the Modern Movement. Never- theless, although the new Robert Adam is an Aston Webb, or an Arnold Mitchell, rather than a Lutyens or even an Albert Richardson, his work is much more in- teresting than that of the modern architect who merely mixes up bits of William Chambers with plates from Palladio.
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