Cigar in hand, wearing a pair of collapsible half-moons, James Stirling is finishing off some correspondence in the airy piano nobile studio which he shares with his partner of eighteen years, Michael Wilford. There is a striking Churchillian resemblance, appropriately for a man who has just reached the End of the Beginning. No Whitehall bunker this, though: the walls of the Fitzroy Square office are adorned with framed drawings in delicate coloured crayon, and canonic photographs of the Stuttgart Neue Staatsgalerie by their court photographer, Richard Bryant.
This interview has been prompted by the Environment Secretary’s recent pronouncement on the No 1 Poultry development, which allows Peter Palumbo to demolish eight listed buildings at the epicentre of the Square Mile, and to build Stirling Wilford and Associates’ commercial triangle in their stead. Caught in the apex between Poultry and Queen Victoria Street, opposite the Mansion House, this small patch of land has become the focus of the battle between Conservation and Modernism.
The architects are cautiously jubilant at the decision. “Delighted,” says Jim Stirling. “What more can one say?”
Quite a lot, one imagines.
“If you sense a certain reticence,” says Michael Wilford, “it’s because the battle may not be over. The conservationists are taking advice as to whether they have legal grounds to appeal. It could take until Christmas to resolve.” He admits to some chagrin at the likely loss of the listed buildings. “I think it’s wrong to relish in sweeping them away, but we’re not doing it with alacrity. As I understand it, the purpose of listing is not necessarily to preserve buildings for posterity. It’s a recognition of relative value, according to their grading, and ensures that adequate consideration is given to their merits, before they are demolished.”
Stirling is more adamant. “I regard them as second-rate Victorian buildings, and I truly believe they are not worth preserving. I think it’s more appropriate to have a big set-piece building which is of its time and complementary with the monumental buildings in that context.” He rejects the conservationists’ argument that the listed buildings form a valuable group. “They’re not a coherent ensemble. They’re more like a row of dusty old bookends.”
Throughout the conversation, Stirling and Wilford finish each others’ sentences, like a double act. If Stirling is much the better-known partner, he claims this is just “because I’ve been around longer. I’m older. Antique.” He refuses to enlarge on their precise division of labour. “If you look round this room, you see Michael works over there and I work here, and we both meet at this table.”
“We bounce ideas off each other,” says Wilford, “whether it’s about a design, a new project, or a building in construction. We do have disagreements, but most of the time we reach a rapid consensus. The radio’s on all day.”
“Third Programme,” says Stirling.
“Preferably opera,” says Wilford.
“Verdi,” says Stirling.
“Mozart,” says Wilford.
It’s a typical exchange. Wilford frequently deflects his partner’s Daddy Bear gruffness, a tendency to be brusque born of a suspicion of journalists and their customary short-term view. “Journalists usually manage to get in before they’re finished, and write critical articles. Then the building opens, the public loves it, and after about six months the journalists write rather more enthusiastic articles.”
The Stuttgart Neue Staatsgalerie is a prime example: copies of the more vituperative German critiques are said to be lodged, along with one of Stirling’s famous outsize blue shirts, in the time capsule buried beneath the museum. The Stuttgart Museum is now tied first with the Cologne Museum as the most popular in Germany, having risen from fifty-sixth position to the top in two years after the opening of Stirling’s addition. The Clore Gallery has also substantially increased the Tate Gallery’s attendance.
This brings us to the question of the famous “Stirling backside”—the ruthlessly utilitarian treatment of rear elevations.
“We were trying to make a distinction between public facades and service facades. There’s nothing new about that, it’s quite traditional in the history of architecture. If you look at Palladio’s villas, their front sides are elaborate and grand, and the back sides are sometimes like broken-down farmhouses. That’s the way they were designed. It’s only a recent assumption that buildings should be pavilions, in the round, with similar front and back. In fact, the modern movement went even further, saying that the inside should be similar to the outside, which I don’t believe. That’s one of the more simplistic notions of twentieth-century architecture. We like to stress certain parts of our buildings, usually the entrances.”
Stirling rejects another modern movement precept: that an architect should stick consistently to a single style throughout his career. “It’s very strange the way architects are expected to go on repeating themselves. There is no set iconography in our buildings. Each is a particular design for a set of circumstances, though recently we have shown a preference for stone.”
The change in material vocabulary parallels the practice’s major career shift since Stuttgart, leaving behind Stirling’s controversial ventures into public housing and university facilities such as the notorious Southgate Estate at Runcorn and the Cambridge History Faculty. Large public buildings now dominate the portfolio, most of them, significantly, abroad. Germany and the United States have proved most welcoming: the Wissenschaftszentrum (Science Centre) was recently completed in Berlin, where Stirling and Wilford maintain a twenty-person branch office; Cornell University’s performing arts centre, in Ithaca, New York, opened late last year. Current projects include a vast science library for the University of California at Irvine, a corporate campus for the B. Braun medical and pharmaceutical products company near Kassel in West Germany, and the Music and Theatre Academies at Stuttgart. Many of their projects were won in limited competitions, and a notable proportion have involved extension to or modification of existing buildings, such as the London and Liverpool Tate galleries, or the Brera Museum in Milan, where they are converting the eighteenth-century Palazzo Citterio. “We’re actually very much preservationist. In fact, I think it’s more the norm that we’re involved with existing buildings than greenfield sites,” says Stirling.
Nevertheless, he doesn’t subscribe to the “bygone-ism” which he discerns in Britain. “One does feel that this country is obsessed with nostalgia.” Both partners note that architects are held in higher esteem in Germany, where the construction industry is more sophisticated, and the quality of workmanship is much higher. Stirling points admiringly to the way the Staatsgalerie drum is made of stone blocks hewn on a curve. No 1 Poultry or not, he will go down in history here as the Britischer Architekt, the unseen hero of the Rover 800 car commercial, which makes an ironic nod toward his exported eminence. Even this accolade doesn’t satisfy him.
“They never asked us. They didn’t even bother to go to the building and photograph it. The car is driving up to some other building, not the Staatsgalerie. The one image you see of the building is a postcard they sell at the museum.”
Whereas one would expect Stirling to enjoy this indication that his work has passed into popular mythology, he seems obsessed with the visual subterfuge, returning repeatedly to the “el cheapo” studio production technique.
“I think it’s bloody great,” says Michael Wilford. “It’s just a pity they didn’t put our name at the end.”