James Stirling

For more information on Sir James Frazer Stirling, visit Britannica.com.

(b Glasgow, 22 April 1926; d London, 25 June 1992). Scottish architect. The son of a ship's engineer and a schoolteacher, he spent his childhood in Liverpool and, after service in World War II, graduated in architecture from the University of Liverpool (1950). During the next six years he worked in London, mainly with the firm of Lyons, Israel and Ellis, and in 1956 he started his own practice in partnership with James Gowan, then a colleague in the same office. With their first major commission, a group of flats (1957) at Ham Common, London, Stirling and Gowan established a reputation for forthright design. At a time when Modernism in England was centred around the International Style and Le Corbusier's rationalist, white-walled work of the 1930s, the flats at Ham reflected something of Le Corbusier's current work, the Maisons Jaoul (1951-5), Paris, in their use of brick walls and concrete floors exposed at their edges. This use of brickwork with rough-finish concrete was particularly appropriate in a damp climate, unkind to white walls, and it combined the English domestic brick tradition with an uncompromising modernist functionalism. Further examples of this approach, which became widely accepted for public housing projects, are seen in their low-rise housing at Preston (1957), the dining hall (1958) at Brunswick Park Primary School, Camberwell, and an old people's home (1960) at Greenwich, the latter two both in London.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

James Stirling (1926-1992) was a frequently honored British architect and city planner, whose work influenced architecture in Britain and Western Europe (particularly Germany) beginning in the 1960s. Two good examples of his work may be found in the United States, although the bulk of his buildings are in England.

James Stirling (he never used his middle name or initial) was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on April 22, 1926. His father was a marine engineer. He was raised and educated in Liverpool - Quarry Bank High School, Liverpool School of Art, and the University of Liverpool School of Architecture - finishing at the School of Town Planning and Regional Research, London (1950-1952). He served as a lieutenant in the paratroops, 1942-1945, and participated in the D-Day landing in France with the 6th Airborne Division.

After three years as an assistant with the firm of Lyons, Israel and Ellis (1953-1956), Stirling entered private practice with James Gowan as a partner (1956-1963) and then with Michael Wilford as a partner beginning in 1971.

Although the curriculum where Stirling trained as an architect was based on the classicism of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Stirling's early work, beginning with his thesis project in 1950 (a community center and town center plan for Newton Aycliffe), appeared to owe most to the then prevailing International Style as practiced by Le Corbusier. Much of the work Stirling did in this decade was small scale houses or housing complexes, nearly all to be built from the traditional red brick and designed with reference to the traditional English forms of warehouses, factories, barns, etc. The architecture was unquestionably modern: functional, austere (no surface ornament), and with volumes defined by clean lines and open spaces. What was markedly different about his work was its humanistic side: an unmistakable concern for communal vitality and integration in terms of space and circulation of people. Architecture was, as Stirling said, "not a question of style or appearance; it is how you organize spaces and movement for a place and activity."

In the 1960s Stirling exploded on the international art scene with two famous - and shocking - buildings: the Leicester University engineering building (1959) and the Cambridge University History Faculty Building (1964). These were both thoroughly modern constructivist designs that depended upon technical innovation, demonstrated the truth in the cliche that "form follows function," and exhibited no concessions to their surroundings. Both were built of brick and red tiles in the tradition of Victorian architecture, but with massive amounts of greenhouse glazing used on chamfered surfaces as a kind of glass skin. They were, in fact, proof that new methods and materials were a vital aspect of progressive architecture. Although the extrovert quality of these buildings was a surprise, they and their successors (which used precast concrete and even prefabricated plastic to demonstrate their self-reliance) helped change the course of British architecture from a flat blandness to one showing careful use of numerous materials within a rigorously functional design.

The Two United States Buildings

By the 1970s Stirling's work took another turn: his buildings began to show a greater interest in their context, in symmetry, and in historical allusion. The two examples of Stirling's completed commissions in America appeared during this period. The first, an extension of the School of Architecture at Rice University, was commissioned in 1979 and completed in 1981; the second, the Sackler Museum at Harvard University, was also commissioned in 1979 but was not completed until 1985. The Rice building, "a lesson in restraint," was the ultimate in contextual architecture. Both the materials and the design forms were the same as the original buildings, but Stirling used and interpreted them in witty and off-beat ways (for example, a two story arch on the main facade included a round window near the top set decidedly off-center) to give life and light to this addition.

The Sackler Museum, on the other hand, was a free standing building, located on a small lot across from the Fogg Museum, with which it was intended to be connected by an enclosed catwalk over an entrance that some said recalls the ancient Lion Gate at Mycenae and others insisted was Superman's Fortress of Solitude. The exterior of the building was striped orange and grey brick, and the interior continued this color pattern. The use of color was a characteristic of Stirling, who saw architecture as an expression of art, not merely of social planning and engineering. The Sackler Museum, called by one critic a "mixture of historical motifs with raw industrialism," was dominated by a monumental staircase that provided the necessary sense of seriousness for a museum while skillfully dividing the building into gallery space and office space. Another skillful touch by Stirling showed in the changing size of the exhibit rooms, which encouraged the public to move along through the exhibit areas. One eminent critic called the building "remarkable for the creative virtuosity with which its functions are accommodated…. It is knowledgeable, worldly, elitist and difficult…."

Commission for Science and Art

Notable among Stirling's later constructed buildings are the Wissenschaftszentrum (Science Museum) in Berlin and two additional structures: the Clore Gallery for the Turner bequest at the Tate Gallery in London and the Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart. The Clore Gallery, an L-shaped addition to a neoclassic structure, relied for effect on the familiar Stirling signature of mullioned glass, colored building materials (including green window frames, purple and turquoise moldings, and pink railings against yellow stucco and Portland stone), and simple geometric forms and apparently random fenestration punched and cut into the building. The exhibition areas for displaying the Turner paintings were cleverly designed to be awash with natural light. The Staatsgalerie, characterized by Paul Goldberger of the New York Times as "arguably the one building that sums up the current concerns of Western architecture better than any other built in this decade," contained all the Stirling signatures, plus a superb solution to two site problems: the need to serve as a connector between the old museum and a theater and the requirement to incorporate the legally mandated footpath through the building space.

Stirling received numerous awards and other expressions of public acclaim for his work. He was made an honorary member of the Akademie der Kunste in Berlin in 1969, an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1976, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1979. He received the Royal Institute of British Architects Gold Medal in 1980 and the Pritzker Prize (the "Nobel Prize" for architecture) in 1981. He died at the age of 66 in 1992.

Further Reading

The bibliography of articles and monographs about Stirling and his work is constantly growing. A great deal of this was published in specialized architectural magazines and journals - particularly British publications, but increasingly those in the United States, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe. Many of these, along with essays by American critics, have been reprinted in volumes about Stirling. The two best of these were James Stirling: Architecture Design Profile (1982) and James Stirling: Buildings and Projects, introduction by Colin Rowe, complied and edited by Peter Arnell and Ted Bickford (1984). The strength of these two publications was in their lists, descriptions, and photographs of plans from all of Stirling's important work. The second volume contained about 300 bibliographic citations to periodical literature dealing with specific Stirling buildings, as well as a list of 21 articles by Stirling, numerous general articles, and a list of the 16 major exhibitions of Stirling's work. Also see Michael Wilford and Thomas Muirhead, Purple Passages - James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates: Buildings and Projects, 1975-1992 (1994).

Scots architect. Educated at Liverpool, he was in partnership (1956–63) with James Gowan with whom he designed several influential buildings. Their flats at Ham Common (1955–8) featured exposed concrete beams with brick infill which were widely copied, though influenced by the work of Le Corbusier, and fell into the category of Brutalism (a label the firm detested). The Engineering Building, University of Leicester (1959–63—a collage of quotations influenced by Melnikov and Constructivism), with its angular chamfered forms and hard red brick contrasted with much glazing, attracted much attention. Thereafter Stirling, practising alone, designed the controversial History Faculty wing, University of Cambridge (1964–8), Student Residences, University of St Andrews (1964–8), the Florey Building, Queen's College, Oxford (1966–71), housing for Runcorn New Town (1967–76), and other projects.

In the 1970s he was joined in partnership in 1971 by Michael Wilford. The firm carried out work in Germany, including the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart (from 1977, opened 1984), which paraphrases elements from the work of Ehrensvärd, Ancient Egyptian architecture, the primitive, and Schinkel's Museum in Berlin, but in an apparently whimsical way, owing something, perhaps, to techniques of collage discussed by Colin Rowe and others. Later works include the Wissenschaftszentrum, Tiergarten, Berlin (1979–87), Sackler Gallery, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (1979–84), the Clore Gallery, Tate Gallery, London (1980–7), the Performing Arts Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (1983–8), the development at No. 1 Poultry, London (1985–97), and the Braun headquarters, Melsungen, Germany (1986–92). His later architecture became increasingly eclectic and expressive, containing allusions (some tongue-in-cheek) to historical themes.

Bibliography

• Ar&Bi (1984)
• British Council (1991)
• Kalman (1994)
• Girouard (1998)
• Jencks (1973a)
• Maxwell (1972, 1998)
• Maxwell (ed.) (1998)
• Maxwell et al. (1994)
• C. Naylor (ed.) (1991), 475
• Nurcombe (1985)
• Sudjic (1986)
• Wilford (1996)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

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Sir James Frazer Stirling
History Faculty Library, Cambridge, 1968
Personal information
Name	Sir James Frazer Stirling
Birth date	22 April 1926
Birth place	Glasgow
Date of death	25 June 1992
Place of death	London
Work
Significant buildings	Engineering Building, Leicester, 1963 History Faculty Library, Cambridge, UK, 1967 Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, 1983 Clore Gallery, London, 1987
Awards and prizes	Alvar Aalto Medal, 1977 RIBA Royal Gold Medal, 1980 Pritzker Prize, 1981

Sir James Frazer Stirling FRIBA (22 April 1926 in Glasgow – 25 June 1992 in London) was a British Architect considered to be among the most important and influential architects of the second half of the 20^th century. He is perhaps best known as one of a number of young architects who from the 1950s on questioned and subverted the compositional and theoretical precepts of the first Modern Movement. Stirling's development of an agitated, mannered reinterpretation of those precepts – much influenced by his friend and teacher, the important architectural theorist and urbanist Colin Rowe – introduced an eclectic spirit that allowed him to plunder the whole sweep of architectural history as a source of compositional inspiration, from ancient Rome and the Baroque, to the many manifestations of the modern period, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Alvar Aalto. His success lay in his ability to incorporate these encyclopedaic references subtly, within a strong and muscular, very decisive architecture of strong, confident gestures that aimed to remake urban form.

Contents 1 Life and work 2 Selected projects 3 Bibliography 4 References 5 External links

Life and work

Engineering building, University of Leicester (1959)

Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (1984)

Clore Gallery (1980-87), London

After wartime service, Stirling studied architecture from 1945 until 1950 at the University of Liverpool, where Colin Rowe was his teacher. 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. One of the best-known results of this collaboration are the Faculty 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 History Faculty Library at the University of Cambridge; and The Florey Building accommodation block for The Queen's College, Oxford.

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. He 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, as Stirling's 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 in Germany (for Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Stuttgart). These projects of the 1970s show him at the zenith of his mature style. Winning the design competition for the Stuttgart project – the Neue Staatsgalerie – he loaded its powerful basic concept with a large number of architectural amusements and decorative allusions, which led many to see it as an example of postmodernism – a label which then stuck, but which he himself rejected. In 1981, he was awarded the renowned Pritzker Prize^[1]. After the Staatsgalerie, 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), and No 1 Poultry in London (1986). This work revealed a particular interest in public space, and the meanings that façades and building masses can assume in a constrained urban context^[2].

The last building completed while Stirling was still alive was the bookshop in the gardens of the Venice Biennale (completed 1991). Designed with Thomas Muirhead, this building explored a sparer, more modernist approach. The Venice Bookshop and a number of other late projects were greeted by critics like Kenneth Frampton and others as the possible beginning of a new and potentially important departure in Stirling's work – had he not suddenly died, due to an unfortunate botched minor hospital operation. His sudden passing was considered a great tragedy for architecture; the Italian architect and critic Vittorio Gregotti wrote in "Casabella" magazine that "from now on, everything will be more difficult".

Just before his death he was given a knighthood (1992) which as a rebellious spirit, he only accepted with reluctance on the grounds that "it might be good for the office". In accordance with his wishes, his ashes are buried near to his memorial in the narthex at Christ Church Spitalfields

After the death of Stirling in 1992, Wilford took over and gradually wound the firm down whilst completing the work that remained in the pipeline and had been left by Stirling at various stages of development. Various buildings completed thereafter and often carelessly attributed to Stirling, such the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart, 1993–1994, or No 1 Poultry in London, were in fact completed and built by Wilford and his assistants. The practice no longer exists, and the complete office archive was sold to the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal. The Stirling Prize, a British annual prize for architecture since 1996, was named after him.

The cultural depth and richness of Stirling's work attracted the attention of all the major world critics and theoreticians, from Peter Eisenman to Charles Jencks, and the literature examining his architecture is vast. For those seriously interested, the best starting point for further study is the two published books of his complete works, which he oversaw himself, aided by trusted friends and collaborators. These two books chronologically cover every project and emphasise the visual, with thousands of very carefully reproduced photographs, drawings, and models.

Selected projects

Main article: List of projects by James Stirling

• 1988 London: Canary Wharf residential development
• 1989 Paris: Bibliothèque de France
• 1991 Kyoto Centre, Japan

Bibliography

• James Stirling: Buildings and Projects 1950–1974 (1975) Verlag Gerd Hatje (edited and designed by Léon Krier)
• Big Jim – The Life and Work of James Stirling Mark Girouard, London,1998
• James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates: Buildings and Projects 1975–1992 (1994) Verlag Gerd Hatje, Stuttgart/Thames and Hudson, London (edited and designed by Thomas Muirhead)

References

1. ^ Pritzker Prize announcemet April 15, 1981, retrieved 24-10-2009
2. ^ James Stirling archive at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, retrieved 2009-10-24

External links

• James Stirling on the Pritzker Prize website
• James Stirling archive at the Canadian Centre for Architecture

v • d • e Pritzker Prize laureates Philip Johnson (1979) · Luis Barragán (1980) · James Stirling (1981) · Kevin Roche (1982) · I. M. Pei (1983) · Richard Meier (1984) · Hans Hollein (1985) · Gottfried Böhm (1986) · Kenzo Tange (1987) · Gordon Bunshaft / Oscar Niemeyer (1988) · Frank Gehry (1989) · Aldo Rossi (1990) · Robert Venturi (1991) · Álvaro Siza Vieira (1992) · Fumihiko Maki (1993) · Christian de Portzamparc (1994) · Tadao Ando (1995) · Rafael Moneo (1996) · Sverre Fehn (1997) · Renzo Piano (1998) · Norman Foster (1999) · Rem Koolhaas (2000) · Herzog & de Meuron (2001) · Glenn Murcutt (2002) · Jørn Utzon (2003) · Zaha Hadid (2004) · Thom Mayne (2005) · Paulo Mendes da Rocha (2006) · Richard Rogers (2007) · Jean Nouvel (2008) · Peter Zumthor (2009)

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