The Idea of the University and Its Concrete Form (original) (raw)

2013, Space and Place in Higher Education, ed. Paul Temple

An account of the philosophical and aesthetic choices behind the designs of three British university campuses of the early 1960s: Sussex, UEA and York, drawing on the archives of Denys Lasdun (UEA), published articles of Basil Spence (Sussex) and unstudied recordings of Sir Andrew Derbyshire (York). I trace these architects' design choices to a pedagogical idealism deriving ultimately from mediaeval theology via the mediation of Cardinal Newman and his readers in postwar Britain.

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An open plan: The development of the Griffith University Nathan campus plan, 1966-1973

2013

"The Nathan campus of Griffith University is well known in Australian architectural history for the architectural significance of its first buildings by prominent Queensland architects. In this paper, we focus on understanding the significance of the design of the campus plan at Nathan in relation to the proliferation of new universities internationally in the 1960s, and the emergence of an accompanying discourse on campus planning. The changes to the conception of the Nathan campus plan during its development between 1966 to 1973—from the original rambling picturesque master plan on the isolated bushland site by James Birrell, to the final plan by Roger Johnson characterised by urban-density and a linear spine—reflect an engagement with the key ideas of this international discourse. One of its most topical and disputed issues was the question of how to manage the unprecedented growth and on-going change expected in the university institution. In 1968 Joseph Rykwert suggested that the new university campuses were archetypal buildings of the age. In situating the Nathan campus design within an international context, this paper aims to reveal not only how ideas about planning from Britain, Europe and America came to have an influence in an Australian context, but also to reflect on Rykwert’s proposition and suggest that the 1960s university campuses materialised how the changed urban scale of the post-war period had become a self-conscious problem for architecture."

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Sadler, British Architecture in the Sixties.pdf

Art & The 60s, 2004

This survey of British architecture in the 1960s, written for the Tate Britain's 2004 exhibition "Art & the 60s: This Was Tomorrow," ranges from the architecture of the Welfare State to the architecture of property development, concluding with the architecture of activism. For some activists, the modernization of the British built environment had been too much, too fast; for others, it had been too timid. Yet both branches of activists were united in an antipathy to 1960s building, an antipathy that would grow until its reconsideration in the 1990s.

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The Modernist Moment at the University of Leeds, 1957-1977

Between 1957 and 1977 the University of Leeds engaged in a massive programme of rebuilding. Employing the architects Chamberlin, Powell, and Bon, Leeds transformed itself – becoming, in the words of one commentator, ‘Our first contemporary urban university’. Previously ignored by historians, this development in the history of the university illustrates a number of important themes. In the first place, it exemplifies the significance of architecture in defining higher education. Secondly – and more particularly – it shows how both academics and architects hoped to use Brutalist architecture to express the modernity of the University of Leeds. Thus the decision to employ avant-garde designers in the late 1950s and the resolution to dismiss them twenty years later both came from the same modernizing impulse. Thirdly, it shows how personal connection secured architectural patronage in this period. The Development Plan also highlights the way in which architects of the British modern movement used universities as laboratories in which to experiment with ideas about community and proper urban design. The modernist moment at Leeds, then, can be seen as representative of wider trends in British building, not least because it lasted for such a short period of time.

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The forces that shaped the Irish Regional Technical College buildings

Iterations

The paper charts the early development of environmental thinking in Architecture up to the radical paradigm shift of modernism and brutalism. The resulting emphasis on proportional grammar over the technical performance of the interior environment would be common threads in Educational architecture leading up to the design of the Regional Technical Colleges (RTCs) in 1967. Changes in technology, materials and skills shortages led to the development of post war steel frame Hertfordshire Schools which greatly influenced the future direction of Technological School and College design. Financial rationalisation saw a movement away from the steel frame CLASP models to concrete frame Intergrid systems, which would directly influence a key precedent of the RTC design, the M&M building at the University of Birmingham. The intelligence of the building design by ARUP would be compromised by the Modernist emphasis on plastic over glazed facades, which lacked shading suffered from great heat loss. The movement away from quality materiality and exposed grid structure, resulted in a loss of delight and a greater level of brutalism.

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F Zuddas - The Idea of the Università - AA Files 75.pdf

Aa Files, 2017

A reading of the search for a new idea of university through the analysis of projects by Italian architects in the early 1970s. The projects and the architects considered (Vittorio Gregotti, Giuseppe Samonà, Guido Canella) are discussed as responses to the wider international boom of new university construction in the 1960s, the post-1968 socio-political climate, and the postwar Italian architectural and urbanistic debate.

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Campus Confessions: Architecture and the Central Institute of Technology (2004)

2003

Campus Confessions asks how ideas about education meet theories of architectural practice in he establishment of the Central Institute of Technology on its Heretaunga (NZ) site. New ideas about technical training in New Zealand, a local engagement with the New Brutalism, and an architect known for his humour and irreverence all compound to form this interesting chapter in New Zealand's modern architectural history.

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