James Stirling (architect) - Career

Career

In 1956 he and James Gowan left their positions as assistants with the firm of Lyons, Israel, and Ellis to set up a practice as Stirling and Gowan. Their first built project - the 'Flats at Ham Common' (1955–58) - was regarded as a landmark in the development of 'brutalist' residential architecture, although this was a description both architects rejected. The best-known result of Stirling & Gowan's collaboration is the Department of Engineering at the University of Leicester (1959–63), noted for its technological and geometric character, marked by the use of three-dimensional drawings based on axonometric projection seen either from above (in a bird's eye view) or below (in a worm's eye view). The project brought Stirling to a global audience.

In 1963 Stirling and Gowan separated; Stirling then set up on his own, taking with him the office assistant Michael Wilford (who provided invaluable administrative help and later became a partner). From that point on the design task, which had previously been shared between Stirling and Gowan, remained very much under the control of Stirling, assisted by hand-picked helpers. Stirling oversaw two projects which confirmed his credentials as a leading British architect - the History Faculty Library at the University of Cambridge and the Florey Building accommodation block for The Queen's College, Oxford. He also completed a training centre for Olivetti in Haslemere, Surrey and housing for the University of St Andrews both of which made prominent use of re-fabricated elements, GRP for Olivetti and pre-cast concrete panels at St Andrews.

During the 1970s Stirling's architectural language began to change as the scale of his projects moved from small (and not very profitable) to very large. His architecture became more overtly neoclassical, though it remained deeply imbued with his powerful revised modernism. This produced a wave of dramatically spare, large-scale urban projects, most notably three important museum projects for Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Stuttgart in Germany. The projects of the 1970s show him at the zenith of his mature style. Winning the design competition for the Neue Staatsgalerie, in Stuttgart, he loaded its powerful basic concept with a large number of architectural amusements and decorative allusions. It came to be seen as an example of postmodernism, a label which stuck but which he himself rejected.

As part of the world-wide expansion of Stirling and Wilford's practice beginning in the 1970s, the firm completed four significant buildings in the U.S., all university structures that exhibit inventive responses to their existing campus settings: an addition for the Rice University School of Architecture in Houston, Texas; the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York; and the Biological Sciences Library at the University of California, Irvine. Among unrealized projects in the US are designs for Columbia University and a competition proposal for the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

In 1981, Stirling was awarded the Pritzker Prize. Stirling received a series of important commissions in England – the Clore Gallery for the Turner Collection at the Tate Britain, London (1980–87); the Tate Liverpool (1984, but since then heavily altered and no longer recognisable as a Stirling project), and No 1 Poultry in London (1986, but completed posthumously without his input and not therefore classifiable as a Stirling building). This work revealed a particular interest in public space, and the meanings that façades and building mass can assume in a constrained urban context.

The last buildings to be completed under Stirling's name were a series comprising the Braun Headquarters in Melsungen Germany, which was completed in 1992. The Braun complex was hailed by critics as the possible beginning of an important departure in Stirlings's work (cut short by his death). However it is questionable to what extent he designed the Braun complex himself and how much of a free hand he allowed his former employee, Walter Naegeli. Naegeli effectively developed and built the entire project from Berlin, with little or no input from London.

In June 1992, Stirling was given a knighthood which he accepted with reluctance, having never considered himself a member of the establishment. After consulting with Michael Wilford, he accepted the award on the grounds that it might help their practice.