LEADER: 175 AND COUNTING

AROUND THE TIME of the RIBA’s centenary in 1934, some interesting if not exactly epochal buildings were being completed. Consider the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford upon Avon; the Hoover factory in West London; the monumental ventilation shafts for the Mersey Tunnel; the headquarters of the BBC on Portland Place; and, a couple of years after that, the HQ of the RIBA itself, just up the street.

Moderne was quite the thing, in its Odeon-cinema way. All those buildings have it, from discreet touches at the BBC and RIBA to the exuberance of the Hoover factory.  Fashion seems inescapable. Yet these projects ignored the real architectural revolution taking place. In London’s Highgate, Berthold Lubetkin and Ove Arup were inventing a new way of building to do justice to a new kind of architecture: Highpoint was being not so much built as vertically extruded.

Now, 75 years on from the near-contemporary building of Grey Wornum’s RIBA and Lubetkin’s High Point, I wonder if, once again, we are sidestepping the real issues. Are we again distracted by fashion and politics when we should be looking for other ways forward? This is no time to give up on progress.

Congratulations Toshie
As you will read inside, the final judging of our ‘Stirling of Stirlings’ – the best building of the past 175 years – has taken place. From a shortlist provided by a public and professional vote, our judges had seven buildings to choose from. That was eventually reduced to just two: Crystal Palace and the Glasgow School of Art.

The two buildings represent the extremes of architecture. On the one hand the high-tech prefabricated object-building, a virtuoso enclosure of space where context takes second place. On the other, Mackintosh’s School of Art in Glasgow is rooted in its urban context and topography, and is a total work of art, from concept to fine detail.

How modern or traditional Mackintosh was is a grand irrelevance here. The building is superb, has stood the test of time magnificently, and is the deserved winner of our Stirling of Stirlings. 

HUGH PEARMAN | EDITOR