The Architect's Intention: Interpreting Post-War Modernism through the Architect Interview
Glasgow School of Art
E-mail: r.proctor{at}gsa.ac.uk
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Abstract |
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This article applies recent work in the field of oral historiography to the architectural history of post-war modernism to show that the architect interview does not give a direct access to intention (the use to which it is most often put), but should be considered in light of its specific formal qualities. The uses and problems of the interview in establishing authorship within the inherently collaborative practice of architecture are explored, and the interview is seen as inherently privileging an artistic or authorial concept of the architect's role. The potential for an analysis of the interview as a textual form constructed around narrative conventions is shown through case-studies, to establish a mode of historical writing which takes narrative and its underlying functions of meaning as its subject matter. The nature of artistic intention in relation to interpretation is also examined, leading to a view of the architect interview as a text of reception, the ‘self-reception’ of the architect. In a final section, the dependence of memory on historical evidence provides another way in which the interview can be analysed as an architect's own history of the past. While the architect interview has previously been described as unreliable, this article shows that the forms of its unreliability are significant in themselves, and can lead to modes of interpretative history which are specific to oral forms of evidence.
Key Words: architecture • design intention • Great Britain • historiography • modernism • oral history
1 J. R. Gold, The Experience of Modernism: Modern Architects and the Future City, 1928–1953, Spon, London, 1997, p. xii.
2 A. Saint, The Image of the Architect, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1985, p. 163.
3 N. Warburton, Ernö Goldfinger: The Life of an Architect, Routledge, London, p. 4.
4 Throughout this article I have been indebted to the current standard British work on oral history, The Oral History Reader, R. Perks & A. Thomson (eds.), Routledge, London, 1998.
5 A. Pettersson, ‘Introduction: the multiplicity of interpretation and the present collection of essays’, in S. Carlshamre & A. Pettersson (eds.), Types of Interpretation in the Aesthetic Disciplines, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal, 2003, pp. 3–29 (especially p. 7 and 13).
6 N. Levine, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996, pp. xciii–xix.
7 The classic texts are W. K. Wimsatt & M. C. Beardsley, ‘The intentional fallacy’, reprinted in On Literary Intention, D. Newton-De Molina (ed.), Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1976, pp. 1–13; and R. Barthes, ‘The death of the author’, in S. Heath (ed.), Image-Music-Text, Fontana, London, 1977, pp. 142–8.
8 For a survey of the firm's work, see Mac Journal, no. 1, 1994, Special Issue; also D. M. Watters, Cardross Seminary: Gillespie, Kidd & Coia and the Architecture of Postwar Catholicism, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1997.
9 It is worth noting that the context of interviews is often very different and can determine their forms. The Architects’ Lives projects record several days’ worth of interviews to give a comprehensive story of a life, in which critical interpretation of architecture is often marginalized and stories are encouraged and left unchallenged. A short probing interview on a specific subject, on the other hand, will create a different text. This issue is beyond the scope of the article and needs considering in its own right.
10 A. MacMillan, interviewed by R. Proctor, Glasgow, 15 April 2004.
12 I. Metzstein, interviewed by G. Stamp, Glasgow, 24 July 2000, British Library Sound Archive (henceforward BLSA) F8457, side a.
13 J. Partridge, interviewed by J. Lever, Sevenoaks, 3 September 2002, BLSA F12318, side b.
14 P. Smithson, interviewed by L. Brodie, London, 4 September 1997 and 17 September 1997, BLSA F5951, side b, and F5952, side a, respectively.
16 P. Livingston, Art and Intention: A Philosophical Study, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2005, pp. 76–8.
17 Another, more self-conscious, case is given by Cedric Price, who described himself as ‘anti-architect’ of the Fun Palace project of 1965, in which he deliberately dispersed authorship of the building to a series of collaborators: Stanley Mathews, ‘Cedric Price as anti-architect: the Fun Palace and the death of the author’, paper delivered to the Society of Architectural Historians Annual Meeting, Vancouver 2005; on the consortium of local Authorities Special Programme (CLASP) as a collaborative venture, see especially A. Saint, Towards a Social Architecture: The Role of School Building in Post-War England, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1987.
18 That such labelling of the texts of oral history as ‘authored’ is a formal literary device with structural implications is shown by K. M. Dudley, ‘In the archive, in the field: what kind of document is an "Oral History"?’, in M. Chamberlain & P. Thompson (eds.), Narrative and Genre, Routledge, London, 1998, pp. 160–6 (p. 160).
19 For example, St Benedict's Church at Drumchapel, where most letters to contractors are sent from Metzstein: Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, Glasgow School of Art Archives (henceforward GKC) L6.B.02 and subsequent files (all catalogue numbers are provisional at date of publication).
20 An example of this is Miles Glendinning's revision of the history of the Royal Festival Hall through both oral and documentary history, to establish the complex and collaborative nature of the design process over the simplistic intentionalist claims of supporters of its oft-named architect, Leslie Martin: M. Glendinning, ‘Teamwork or masterwork? The design and reception of the Royal Festival Hall’, Architectural History, no. 46, 2003, pp. 277–319.
21 See E. Darling, ‘Elizabeth Denby or Maxwell Fry? A matter of attribution’, in B. Martin & P. Sparke (eds.), Women's Places: Architecture and Design, 1860–1960, Routledge, London, 2003, pp. 149–69; see also, P. Thompson, ‘The voice of the past’, in The Oral History Reader, pp. 21–8: the origin of the discipline of oral history was in the desire to record a kind of history that existing power structures exclude, in other words a quite different context to its current use in architectural history.
22 R. Proctor, ‘Churches for a changing liturgy: Gillespie, Kidd & Coia and the Second Vatican Council’, Architectural History, no. 48, 2005, pp. 291–322 (this article should not, however, be taken as a model example of the use of oral history in connection with intention); P. Hammond, Liturgy and Architecture, Barrie and Rockliff, London, 1960.
23 A. MacMillan, interviewed by R. Proctor.
24 I. Metzstein, interviewed by R. Proctor, Glasgow, 23 June 2003.
25 I. Metzstein, interviewed by G. Stamp, BLSA F8457, side b.
26 This is particularly true of the literate, historically aware subjects of architectural history: see T. Lummis, ‘Structure and validity in oral evidence’, in The Oral History Reader, pp. 273–83 (p. 276); see also, K. Borland, ‘ "That's Not What I Said": interpretive conflict in oral narrative research’, in The Oral History Reader, pp. 320–32 (e.g. p. 327).
27 I. Metzstein, interviewed by R. Proctor, 23 June 2003.
28 I. Metzstein, interviewed by G. Stamp, BLSA F8457, side a.
29 A. MacMillan, interviewed by R. Proctor.
30 Letter from Rev. Pierce Grace to J. A. Coia, 7 May 1956, GKC M5.B.01.
31 Letter from J. A. Coia to Rev. Pierce Grace, 10 May 1956, GKC M5.B.01.
32 See A. Portelli, ‘Oral history as genre’, in Narrative and Genre, pp. 23–45 (p. 24).
33 J. Peter, The Oral History of Modern Architecture: Interviews with the Greatest Architects of the Twentieth Century, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1994, pp. 12–21.
34 G. Stamp, ‘The myth of Gillespie Kidd & Coia’, Architectural Heritage, no. 11, 2000, pp. 68–79.
35 For example P. Nuttgens, ‘Scottish architecture today’, Architectural Design, January 1962, pp. 8–12.
36 Architects’ Journal, vol. 149, January–June 1969, p. 1733.
37 R. W. K. C. Rogerson, Jack Coia: His Life and Work, R. W. K. C. Rogerson, Glasgow, 1986.
38 See M. Foucault, ‘What is an author?’, in P. Rabinow (d.), The Foucault Reader, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1984, pp. 101–20.
39 K. Nugent, interviewed by J. Macaulay, Kirkwall, 27 July 2005 (I am grateful to both for permission to use the transcript).
40 I. Metzstein, interviewed by G. Stamp, BLSA F8547, side b.
42 Ibid.; this interpretation is also informed by S. Schrager, ‘What is social in oral history?’, International Journal of Oral History, vol. 4, 1983, pp. 76–98.
43 See, for example J. Peneff, ‘Myths in life stories’, in ed. R. Samuel & P. Thompson, The Myths We Live By, Routledge, London, 1990, pp. 36–48, and the introduction and other essays in the same book; also, R. J. Grele, ‘Movement without aim: methodological and theoretical problems in oral history’, in R. J. Grele (ed.), Envelopes of Sound: The Art of Oral History, 2nd edn., Praeger, New York, 1991, pp. 126–54 (135–42).
44 I. Metzstein, interviewed by G. Stamp, BLSA F8457, side b.
46 R. Erskine, interviewed by J. Lever, Drottningholm, 23 January 1997, BLSA F5338, side a.
49 L. Anderson, Autobiography, Routledge, London, 2001, pp. 18–33.
50 R. Erskine, op. cit., BLSA F5339, side a.
51 See N. King, ‘Autobiography as cultural memory: three case studies’, New Formations, no. 30, Winter 1996–1997, pp. 50–62.
52 R. Samuel & P. Thompson, ‘Introduction’ in The Myths We Live By, pp. 1–22 (p. 7); see also, J. Brockmeier, ‘Autobiographical time’, Narrative Inquiry, vol. 10, 2000, pp. 51–73.
53 I. Metzstein, interviewed by G. Stamp, BLSA F8459, side b.
54 Ibid., BLSA F8456A, side a.
56 R. Erskine, interviewed by I. Lever, BLSA F5338, side b.
57 P. Smithson, interviewed by L. Brodie, BLSA F5952, side a.
59 I. Metzstein, interviewed by R. Proctor, 3 November 2004.
60 M. Glendinning, R. MacInnes & A. MacKechnie, A History of Scottish Architecture from the Renaissance to the Present Day, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1996, pp. 485–7.
61 I. Metzstein, interviewed by R. Proctor, 3 November 2004.
62 P. Davey, ‘Robinson College, Cambridge’, The Architectural Review, vol. 170, no. 1014, August 1981, pp. 81–87.
63 I. Metzstein, interviewed by G. Stamp, BLSA F8461, side b.
64 D. O. Nathan, ‘Irony, metaphor, and the problem of intention’, in G. Iseminger (ed.), Intention and Interpretation, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1992, pp. 183–202 (p. 184).
65 R. Maxwell, ‘James Stirling and Robert Venturi: a comparison’, reprinted in R. Maxwell, Sweet Disorder and the Carefully Careless: Theory and Criticism in Architecture, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1993, pp. 228–35 (originally published in Casabella, December 1992).
66 D. O. Nathan, op. cit., p. 199; J. Levinson, ‘Intention and interpretation: a last look’, in Intention and Interpretation, pp. 221–56.
67 For details of the competition, see ‘Robinson College, Cambridge: the designs revealed’, Architects’ Journal, 20 November 1974, pp. 1195–7; the beginning of construction is dated from the archive, e.g. GKC F1.B.18.
68 C. Jencks, The Language of Post Modern Architecture, Academy Editions, London, 1977.
69 For example R. Maxwell, New British Architecture, Thames & Hudson, London, 1972, pp. 20–3; C. Jencks, ‘Adhocism on the South Bank’, in The Architectural Review, vol. 144, no. 857, July 1968, pp. 27–30.
70 P. Smithson, interviewed by L. Brodie, BLSA F5956, side a.
71 See G. Turnbull, ‘Boswell and the insistence of the letter’, in W. H. Epstein (ed.), Contesting the Subject: Essays in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of Biography and Biographical Criticism, Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Indiana, 1991, pp. 43–52 (pp. 43–45).
72 P. Smithson, interviewed by L. Brodie, BLSA F5951, side a.