WORNUM IN EXCELSIS

In celebrating the RIBA’s 175th birthday we’ve looked at architecture old and new, near and far, cutting edge and traditional. But there’s one splendid structure that reached 75 itself this year, and it unites the critics in its own way

Photographs Dennis Gilbert

If home is where the heart is, there are a lot of architects who call this building home. Call it what you like – the RIBA, Portland Place, No 66. Architect Grey Wornum’s 1929 competition winning proposal, selected from 3,600 entries to celebrate the RIBA’s 100th anniversary, remains close to the heart of most architects, and for good reason – embodying as it does the basic architectural precepts of commodity, firmness and delight. Wornum was apparently inspired by Asplund’s Stockholm public library, but it also echoed the British inter-war proto-modernism of Charles Holden and pre-empted the classical rationalism of McMorran and Whitby (see review, p24).
In its white Portland stone, it expressed its nature as an institute with restrained grace and elegance – and completed in 1934, it was very much a building of its time. Wornum went on to lay out Parliament Square in 1952, the year he received the Royal Gold Medal, and designed a lamp post for Westminster Council that is still in use today. He even put his mind to the first class interiors of RMS Queen Elizabeth – a skill hinted at in the enamelled interiors of the RIBA Library. His low point was probably designing the street decorations for Edward VIII’s coronation. Needless to say, the King’s abdication after deciding to marry Wallis Simpson meant they stayed in the box. Wornum fell for an American himself, marrying artist and designer Miriam Alice Gerstle in 1923 – a love that took him across the Atlantic to live. Wornum died in 1957 in New York, aged 69. But 66 Portland Place remains his most famous work, and one that continues to resonate with those that use it. Over the next few pages,­­ six Portland Place punters talk about the aspects of the building which, for them, make Wornum’s work endure. CK

Alain de Botton
Author
given how divided British society remains about modern architecture, how inclined it is to dismiss the whole philosophy of modernism and to equate beauty solely with the pre-Edwardian age, it seems appropriate that the architects’ headquarters of is a building
that offers a persuasive and exemplary reconciliation between the polarities of architectural opinion. The building seems able to please both modernists and traditionalists. It has a sufficiently stripped-down aesthetic to satisfy the modern purists, the facade is strikingly blank for large patches, offering only course upon course of Portland stone without windows or mouldings.
And yet in its moments of detailing and in its proportions, it signals a clear awareness of the past. The grand classical entrance knows all the lessons of Garnier and the Beaux-Arts. There is a luxury to the material – the brass, bronze and marble would have pleased the grandest Georgians. It seems intent to last a long time, sympathetically correcting architects’ own fears about their professional survival. Like all good homes for professions, it conveys a confidence that its practitioners may not feel day to day. And 75 years after its construction, it has never seemed more of a building for a time than now. It’s the sort of building that one can imagine Prince Charles, David Chipperfield, Caruso St John and Tony Fretton all appreciating. It’s polite, determined, reserved – an ideal in stone of the British architect.

Robert Adam
Director, Robert Adam Architects
grey wornum’s building is one of my favourites. It belongs to that great period when modernity, invention and classicism were happy bedfellows. It’s strongly influenced by Swedish inter-war classicism, then known as ‘Swedish Grace’, that became enormously influential in Europe after the 1923 Gothenburg Exhibition, and when Sweden walked away with the prizes at the 1925 Paris Exhibition. It’s thoroughly classical but was produced at a time when all architects were classically literate.
Of course, the main facade has traditional rustication, a cornice and architraves on the openings, none entirely conventional. Inside, the entrance hall has stripped down fluted Doric pilasters and a recessed Greek Key cornice which repeatedly pops up in different configurations, from the engraving on the glass balustrades to the Florence Hall ceiling. Rising through the entrance to the second floor are huge black marble columns – without capitals or bases, they have exaggerated Ionic fluting. I particularly like the use of rustication in the Jarvis Hall and Council Chamber, a weighty stone detail but done in wood. This symbolic inversion is most fun on the second floor doors. This is just a taster. I wish modernity, invention and classicism could get together again.

Deborah Saunt
Founding director, DSDHA
i decided to become an architect at the age of 10, and saw the RIBA as the front door of British Architecture.
Entering its hallowed halls as a teenager, though, I felt impressed but utterly unwelcome. Then, the entrance was controlled by a uniformed porter from behind a high-screened desk. The hall had the air of a mausoleum, all stone and coldness. Beyond the names of Gold Medallists carved into the walls, information was non-existent and the place had the whiff of a gentleman’s club – right down to the smell of boiled cabbage that permeated the utilitarian 6th floor cafeteria. It was a distinctly pre-war experience, with youth and femininity absent.
Today, the entrance has been reinvigorated beyond recognition. The spirit of Wornum’s original intent is at last visible and well-lit – craft and design come to the fore. Information is available, two staff welcome and guide visitors, the place is full of architects and the lay public. All the elements are now well-designed – the great book shop, chic café and, at last, a proper reception that is both functional and speaks of the future. As one involved in its commissioning, I’m justifiably proud of the British made, hand-crafted entrance desk created specially for the RIBA by furniture designer BarberOsgerby. Made from polished stainless steel and hand-stitched leather, it both inspires and echoes the past. Above all it shows the potential of the whole building to be a place where the innovative architecture and design are celebrated and accessible to a diverse audience.

Cornelia Parker
Artist
it’s a beautiful building – a rather large, hidden gem. My favourite thing is the atmosphere – there’s a sense of tranquillity in a bustling city. It’s very rare in London to have a place that you know won’t be swarming with people.
It has a great feeling of height when you go up the stairs into the café or the balcony – and a calm ambience. There’s not much generosity of space in new buildings these days – but here even the toilets are spacious.
There are so many fantastic architectural details but it’s hard to isolate just one. The building’s appeal is almost the opposite of detail – it’s in the volume of the space that is available for losing yourself in.

Sarah Gaventa
Director of Cabe Space
i miss the ladies powder room with its lounge chairs and sofa, but what I particularly love about 66 Portland Place are the quality details that you would never see in buildings today. The inlaid lino in the cloakroom area, terrazzo floors (with inlaid brass borders) and curved terrazzo walls of the toilets – everything you touched was designed specifically for that building with care and attention.
And it’s all lasted very well, testament to quality investment and craft – as explicitly referenced in the reliefs of Florence Hall, for example. The professional skills it takes to make a great building are all used there. It’s certainly no design and build, or example of value engineering. 66 Portland Place is timeless yet out of date – from a time that valued architects and architecture more highly.

Charles Holland
Director, FAT
they say you can judge a lot about someone’s character from the state of their shoes. The same might be said of buildings and their loos.
I’ve always been very impressed by the RIBA’s toilets. They have a grandeur, opulence and generosity rare in the public loo. Ok, so they aren’t strictly public, but they’re not entirely private either. They are also enormous and clad in materials as expensive as anywhere in the building. I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I spend a lot of time in them; on the other hand no-one else seems to use them.
The RIBA recently held a competition to redesign the public toilet so it’s obviously a subject dear to its heart. FAT’s entry proposed a giant classical head, a deliberately over-inflated gesture towards the civic role of the public toilet. This is a subject that tends to arouse passionate views. There is something innately noble about a decent public loo. Victorian public toilets tended towards extraordinary opulence with elaborately decorative cisterns and ornamental tiling. They make a mockery of the temporary plastic urinals that appear in the West End on Friday nights now.
The RIBA toilets also have an unusual feature. They are located in the basement, which extends beyond the external face of the building to allow light in. They are thus, theoretically, accessible from the street. Perhaps the RIBA should install a staircase so they can become a genuinely public convenience. It might come in handy on the way home on a Friday evening.