Immaculate Misconception

Malling Abbey (see below for more photos)

Malling Abbey Church, Kent

Maguire & Murray (1962-6)

Maguire and Murrays’ powerful ensemble of buildings designed in the 1960’s for Malling Abbey includes a new church built from cheap concrete blocks and a cloister, all sensitively integrated into the significant Norman and medieval remains of the original foundation.  Although the church suffered major structural failure and alteration within a few years of completion, their work at the abbey is now Listed Grade 1 in recognition of its outstanding quality. 
 

In a career spanning 50 years, much of it working in partnership with designer Keith Murray (1929-2005), Robert Maguire (born 1931) designed some remarkable churches.  An ability to create transcendent space using common materials and a language of pitched roofs, often inspired by traditional forms, is characteristic of Maguire’s approach.  A communal focus to worship is typically provided by a lofty top-lit central volume set above a broad rectangular plan.  The churches reflect changing attitudes to liturgy and worship in the post-war period, also manifest in the work of Rudolph Schwarz and Dominikus Bohm in and around Cologne.  However Maguire’s construction and structure vary greatly, from the robust rational, almost industrial, language of St Paul’s at Bow Common (1955-60), through to the simplified assembly of walls and roof at St Bede’s in Basingstoke (2002-2007). 

Malling Abbey (1962-6), an early project, may be seen as a transitional stage of Maguire and Murrays’ architectural development.  Built on the site of Bishop Gundulph’s original church (1090) amidst the impressive Norman and medieval remains of the abbey, the diminutive church has a powerful presence. A deep perimeter wall of agricultural concrete block is capped with pre-cast concrete units, each including a small semi-circular window.  Above this sits a heavy concrete pitched roof structure supporting a large clerestory roof curved in plan at each end.  Pantiles are laid over the concrete, visually integrating the modern church with the re-built cloister.  Unlike Lethaby’s parish church at Brockhampton (1902), where thatch covers the simple concrete vaulted roof, lateral forces at Malling were unresolved and within a few years of completion cracks appeared.  Drastic remedial measures were required:  concrete columns were introduced into the previously clear span volume of the worship area to support the clerestory.  In the process, the under-floor heating system was lost, together with subtle stepped level changes, which had proved hazardous to elderly nuns attending office in the small hours of the night.  Unhappy about these alterations to their design, Maguire and Murray did not return to the abbey. 

Was the structural failure solely the consequence of an error in the structural calculations, or the symptom of a more profound misreading of architectural form by the architects?  Admittedly, the new columns are hardly a refinement of the space, but neither do they look completely out of place.  In the days before professional engineers, understanding of structural principles was through a process of trial and error that became enshrined in tradition.  As a result, surviving forms often demonstrate a clear correlation between form and structure.  Arguably at Malling, the architects used traditional forms, but did not follow their inherent structural logic.  Perhaps a clue to this misconception lies in the image of the new church juxtaposed with the Norman tower of the original (see photo above).  The new building seems to be at a half or third scale.  Built at a larger scale, it might have accommodated a central volume with a perimeter ambulatory like St Paul’s Bow.  In subsequent projects the architects used lightweight construction to create column-free space with a low perimeter ceiling and soaring top-lit central space.  A narrow slot of glazing separates the roof from the wall, allowing the dramatically modelled ceiling to float above the worship space and recalling Corbusier’s separation of roof and walls in his pilgrimage chapel at Ronchamp (1954).

Maguire and Murrays’ achievement at Malling was to give architectural expression to a new zeitgeist in the post-war church.  When, after an interval of 350 years, a small but determined band of nuns returned to the abbey, it was no longer a formidably wealthy and powerful institution.  Modesty rather than grandeur was called for, but also an expression of continuity with the earlier traditions of the site.  Although the structural logic may have been flawed, Maguire and Murray had a sure feel for scale and materials.  Construction is carefully broken into components of concrete block, pre-cast component and pantile.  Common concrete blocks with exposed aggregate relate surprisingly sympathetically to the ancient stonework of the abbey.  A dynamic interplay of curves and counter curves is established between the lantern, the drape-like curved junction between the lower pantile roof and the clerestory and the tiny semi-circular windows.  The evocation of monumentality in modestly scaled building is a theme also explored by Aldo Rossi in many of his projects, such as the school at Fagnano Olona (1972-6).  The suppression of traditional gutter details to achieve a minimalist eaves profile anticipates Rossi’s cemetery buildings at Modena (1971).  It gives the church a sense of otherness lacking in later projects with traditionally detailed gutters. An interest in the communicative power of re-imagined traditional form is a shared preoccupation.

Entry to the church is from opposite corners.  Members of the community enter through the original doorway from the cloister to the abbey church, into a space with a low concrete soffit, flanked by a cylindrical concrete font and top-lit repository for the reserved sacrament.  Lay visitors may enter directly from the abbey grounds, through a delicate timber pavilion with glazed perimeter screens and a slender layered horizontal roof.  The contrasting character of the two approaches reflects the status of those entering:  either as members of a closed community adhering to a strict discipline of contemplation, or as free agents, choosing to visit. Following the traditional arrangement, the lay chapel is a low space to one side of the sanctuary, from where the nuns’ office can be heard, but not properly seen.

Details are austere.  Fanlights to the semi-circular windows comprise a piece of glass supported on a central pivot and sealed with rubber gaskets, technology akin to a quarter-light on cars of the period.  This reductive approach is also similar to that adopted at Le Corbusier’s Dominican Priory at La Tourette (1956-60) and Lewerentz’s church at Klippan (1963).  The polished bronze ferrule of candle brackets set into the whitewashed block wall recalls the juxtaposition of the ordinary with touches of extravagance from the Arte Povera movement current in Italy at the time.  In a reminder that the project was a product of the 60’s, the Abbess recalls how the subtle re-alignment of the abbey paths was achieved by tracking the route of the architect’s Austin Mini across the lawn (see photos).

A good test of the enduring quality of a building is how well it has withstood unsympathetic changes.  By this measure, the church at Malling Abbey is a resounding success.  Although aspects of scale and structure may have been misconceived, Maguire and Murray put the heart back into an ancient complex of buildings, allowing the spiritual life of the Benedictine Community to be revived.  Their work resonates with vitality and sensitivity to the fabric and life of the abbey.  They are worthy successors to Bishop Gundulph.

The entrance for lay visitors

Concrete block & pre-cast unit construction

New columns and revised floor levels

View from the cloister

Fanlight window

Candle bracket set into whitewashed blockwork

Lantern above reserved sacrament

Aerial view

Cloister - the modern lean-to construction

Cloister glazing

Paths prior to re-alignmnent

Paths fluidly re-aligned along the track of the Mini

Corked

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2012, London

Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei

I visited this year’s Serpentine Gallery temporarypavilion in Kensington Gardens on a wet summer afternoon with high expectations.  Reviews had been glowing.  One critic wrote evocatively of descending into a space steeped in the Mediterranean aroma of the cork with which the installation is lined.  A beguiling photo was published showing the permanent gallery mirrored in an elliptical reflecting pool on the roof of the pavilion.  

It was inevitable that the reunion of heavyweight iconoclasts Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei, responsible for the ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, would have a provocative outcome.  Typically, at the Serpentine they turned convention on its head, wishing to ’...sidestep the unavoidable problem of creating another object...’  Instead of opting for yet another virtuoso permutation of the temporary art pavilion, their conceit was to ‘excavate’ traces of previous years’ structures, creating an open-sided shelter for visitors to the park and a place for discussion.  They claim that their dig extended down to the water table, where they created a ‘well’ to ‘...incorporate an otherwise invisible aspect of reality in the park – the water under the ground...’  The cork was selected for its ‘...great haptic and olfactory qualities...’

Witty and elegant though this approach is, the physical reality falls short both of their rhetoric and the hyperbole of the press.  When I visited, the rich smell of cork had dissipated, the ‘well’ was dry and the elegant approach view of the reflecting pool was found to have been taken from a ladder.  Needless to say, when the site was excavated, no physical remains of the previous pavilions were found.  However, too literal a response to the pavilion surely misses the point:  it is at its most potent as an idea, an abstraction, a place of the imagination.  The idealized representation of architecture is a recurring phenomenon, from Palladio's I Quattro Libri to clumsily doctored photos of early modern projects, and not necessarily a bad thing.  Most people can only form opinions based on these second-hand manifestations, having never experienced the sometimes messy reality of buildings.  The perfected image is the stuff on which reputations are built. 

Although well used by tourists sheltering from the weather with a cup of coffee, the interior of the pavilion has a gloomy, defensive, atmosphere, dug-in as if awaiting some unspecified threat to appear across the lawns.  But it also has something of the character of a children’s play den, a place of concealment from which to observe the world.  A security guard and large mobile cafe stand sentinel over this disconcerting project:  a sliver of flat water hovering above a dark undercroft, not quite architecture, not quite sculpture.  The value the Serpentine Pavilions lies precisely in the license that is given to experiment.

Reincarnation of the Butterfly

Kaywana Hall, Devon
Mervyn Seal 1962, rebuilt by Stan Bolt 2009

When the current owners bought this secluded 1960’s house they originally planned to repair it.  Later they decided to demolish and rebuild it, raising questions of authorship and highlighting how construction and patterns of domesticity have changed in half a century

Whilst on holiday in Devon this summer I stayed at Kaywana Hall, a house that Mervyn Seal built for himself and his family in 1962.  It is hidden in 6 acres of steeply sloped woodland at Kingswear, across the river from Dartmouth.  Over the years, as his family grew, Seal made alterations and added accommodation.  Around this time, during what must have been a golden period of his career, he designed a series of striking houses in Devon.  Typically they took the form of an elongated box with a ‘V’ profile roof expressed on the long elevation.  The floor stepped up from the ground in whole and half levels, lifting the house above the landscape and creating a dramatic interior space beneath the raking roof profile.  They were dubbed ‘butterfly houses’.  Seal cites the double-height living spaces of Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation as an inspiration.  The roof and end walls were extended beyond the plane of the long facades to create an ‘M’ shape providing some solar shading and investing the construction with an abstract character.  Kaywana Hall projected dramatically above the slope of the site.  A steep hair-pin drive led up through trees to arrive at a carport under the house, with views across a swimming pool to the woods beyond.  The living space was at first floor level with heavily glazed elevations looking back to the approach and over the pool.  Three bedrooms were located at upper ground level.  At the opposite end of the house the second floor master bedroom was cantilevered into the tree-tops.  It must have come as a bitter blow when circumstances obliged Seal and his family to leave the house in 1992.

About 8 years ago Tony Pithers and Gordon Craig fell in love with the house and bought it, with the intention of repairing it.  Following the advice of local architect Stan Bolt they decided to demolish the building and rebuild, broadly following the original design.  This might at first seem a strange approach, particularly from a conservation viewpoint, where original construction is highly valued, but it enabled the building envelope to meet current environmental standards.  The approach also allowed some unfortunate later additions, such as the infilling of the spectacular carport, to be stripped away.  At a late stage in the design process the client decided to detach the secondary bedrooms from the house, enabling their use as luxury bed and breakfast accommodation, with guests eating breakfast in the dining space of the main house.   

This new arrangement works well for the client and Bolt’s confident rebuild is arguably clearer conceptually than the original design.  The interior is certainly improved by a more open plan arrangement, something that would have been less practical in a house occupied by more people.  The use of materials and detailing is of a very high standard throughout.  Pre-patinated zinc is used to clad the roof and selected wall elements, while walls are in a white render.  Floors are finished in wide oak boards and the raking soffit of the house clad in a light stained softwood board.  The original chimney and cantilevered concrete platform of the master bedroom were retained, but the stone of the earlier construction has been suppressed in favour of white render.   Coloured glass panels and white framing to the glazing, which lent a painterly abstraction to the original surface of the facades, have been replaced with a  more neutral palette of dark timber and slim profile aluminium glazing, but the delightful open stair, with its fishbone steel structure, has been retained.  Each incarnation of this unusual and lovely butterfly is the product of a gifted architect, and the work of both deserves greater attention.