‘Unlearning lessons’: Denys Lasdun in the 1950s, part 1

Abstract

‘It is always stimulating to talk to you about architecture, but I have noticed over the past two years that you tend to identify me entirely with Tecton. Bear in mind the following. I have now built with Lindsey [Drake] more buildings than [I built with] Tecton and that my philosophy on architecture is, I hope, on the side of life – that is to say, it is not static but changing. I rather hoped that when you saw the model of [the flats at] 26 St James's Place, you would have realised the extent to which my ideas are changing.’

‘A terrible battle with architecture’: Denys Lasdun in the 1950s, part 2

“…Other sources are assimilated in more minor roles. [2] in the Strand a curtain wall, which may have an element of Mies about it, appears in a treatment which also has echoes of Lasdun's favourite piece of Le Corbusier since student days -the Pavillon Suisse in Paris. Current developments in England made an impression too, with his entry for the 1959 Churchill College, Cambridge competition [14][15][16][17] showing the influence of Leslie Martin's university schemes of the 1950s.…”

“…301-310), in which the author examined the reasons why Lasdun wished to reinvent himself in the 1950s, and the manner in which he initiated the process of self-definition by establishing an opposed theoretical stance to that of his erstwhile mentor, Berthold Lubetkin. 2 The previous article ended by suggesting that despite this theoretical distancing, Lasdun's buildings of the earlier 1950s still looked in some respects like late products of Lubetkin and Tecton. This article examines the bumpy process by which Lasdun arrived at an architecture that looked like Lasdun.…”