website

www.karthaus.co.uk

opinions are solely my own

Monday 28 October 2013

The Smithsons in Norfolk

A weekend spent in Norfolk is always a great way to unwind, but as usual there's always a busman's holiday element to any break, so we went slightly out of the way to visit Hunstanton school.  Designed by the Smithsons and completed in 1951 its a stunning building.  The photos don't really do it justice, but I'll show a couple anyway.








There is something pivotal about this building in the way it manages to carry the rigour and rationality of Modernism with the subtle scale and softening of the edges that was characteristic of the late '40s and early '50s.  Having seen photos before, I expected it to feel truly brutal and unforgiving, but the black glass surprisingly has the opposite effect; giving a lightness and playfulness to it, especially in the setting sun.  The grid is absolutely rigid and resolved, but within it, the different scale and function of spaces seem to hang perfectly (as far as I could see through the windows, anyway).  Of course I'm sure its problematic as a modern school, with all that single glazing, but for a building that is 65 years old, it feels remarkably fresh.  When set against some of the well-regarded Modernist schools one finds in London and elsewhere, it suggests that something was lost in what came after.  Our more recent crop of academies seem to have generally either been desperately shortchanged by the procurement process, or lack both the simplicity and the subtleties of this building.  

The Smithsons always had that playful subversive undertow to their work, but to see it applied so masterfully here, it even embarrasses their own later work, in my view.  


No comments:

Post a Comment