November 2008

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Coventry Cathedral was surely the last modern building in Britain that people queued to see inside. I recall going there as a school-boy with my parents after it was consecrated in 1962 and standing in a long line that snaked between the walls of the old, blitzed cathedral next door. The popular appeal was, of course, partly polemical, for the new cathedral was a much publicised phoenix that had risen from the ruins of the city devastated by the Luftwaffe during World War ii. But there was also curiosity to see what a modern cathedral might be like, for this was the first truly public building belonging to the controversial ‘New Architecture’ completed since the Festival of Britain, in which one of the successes was the Sea and Ships Pavilion designed by the same architect: Sir Basil Spence (Fig. 1).

Even before his death in 1976, Spence had a some- what ambivalent reputation. Ambitious, energetic and immensely charming, he was also pompous and prickly. Big jobs seemed to fall effortlessly into his lap. But the reason why he was regarded with suspicion, and sniped at, by many in his own profession was that he was not seen as truly Modern with a capital ‘M’. In fact, he can almost be regarded as a pioneer Post-
Modernist. He seldom indulged in either the light, planar aesthetic of steel and glass, nor in the aggressive ungainliness of the New Brutalism. Coventry, his masterpiece, was often dismissed as a compromise: a modernist aesthetic applied to a traditional plan and conception, reliant on symbolism and works of art (Figs 2 and 3). But that was precisely its success and its strength. Spence produced a building that satisfied his clients, the Anglican clergy, and pleased and intrigued the public while being evidently Modern.

Critics tend to prefer architects who are principled innovators in the privileged and rarefied compound of the profession. But Spence, while convinced of the merit of his designs, knew that architecture is an impure business and that to get a building built requires compromise. Subtly attuned to popular taste, he was also interested in the colour and texture of masonry and in mass, in the sculptural power of built forms – something he may have learned from his brief time in the office of Edwin Lutyens working on New Delhi, as well as from the later work of Le Corbusier.

The centenary of Spence’s birth was celebrated with a large travelling exhibition – in Edinburgh (Spence was a Scot, although born in Bombay), London and Coventry – as well as with publications and conferences. Does he deserve all this fuss? Surely, yes. Not only was he responsible for several major public buildings, he also did more than any other architect to make Modernism acceptable, or at least comprehensible, to a wider public. This he achieved through the buildings themselves and by what might be regarded as self-promotion through lectures, public events and films. He became – and certainly regarded himself as – a famous public figure.

The exhibition was drawn from the architect’s archive, recently given to the Royal Commission for the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, which includes drawings and models as well as films of Sir Basil smoothly explaining his work. But it is dominated, above all, by his perspective drawings. Spence drew like an angel, producing ravishing ‘artist’s impressions’ – in oils and gouache as well as watercolour – of his buildings to captivate his clients. His assistant and later partner, Anthony Blee, recalls that ‘if they wanted to be reminded of what Basil had in mind for them, when travelling with them in a train or plane he would grab the nearest piece of paper (on several occasions this would be a boac airline sick bag) and he would rattle off a quick sketch using a felt pen with astonishing fluency and graphic clarity’.

Sometimes, he seduced too much, for some of the built designs fail to live up to his painterly vision. But what is also impressive is the range of work that his offices produced: not only a cathedral and churches but an airport, a foreign embassy, a parliament house, a university, commercial offices, exhibition buildings, a barracks, country houses and public housing. Perhaps the greatest failure was the pair of reinforced-concrete high-rise housing blocks in Hutchesontown, Glasgow, built as part of the (disastrous) redevelopment of the Gorbals in the 1960s. Here, for once, Spence adopted a powerful Brutalist aesthetic. They look magnificent in early photographs – typically, Spence charmed the Glasgow Housing Committee by telling them that ‘on Tuesdays, when all the washing’s out, it’ll be like a great ship in full sail!’ – but were not much fun to live in and were blown up, in a squalid public gesture, in 1993.

Other than Coventry, perhaps Spence’s greatest success was the University of Sussex (Fig. 5), where he adapted the rough Corbusian aesthetic of shallow concrete arches – as at the Maisons Jaoul – to give that trendy new university a suitably modern image, while removing the pejorative associations of a ‘red-brick university’. Equally impressive is the British Embassy in Rome – the replacement of a building blown up by Jewish terrorists in 1946. On a sensitive site next to Michelangelo’s Porta Pia, it is a richly textured and modelled modern palazzo faced in travertine and raised above elegant gardens (Fig. 4). Less successful perhaps is the Cavalry Barracks in Knightsbridge, with its controversial residential tower looming over Hyde Park. Oddly, the officers’ mess was placed at the summit, and it is good to learn that it is true that it contains a specially strengthened lift to take a heavy ‘drum horse’ up there on certain special occasions.

Such jobs indicate that, by the 1960s, Spence was an establishment figure. He was knighted and was awarded the Order of Merit – and it was rather pathetic that, at the end of his life, he dwelt on his honours when his design for the exterior of the Home Office tower in Queen Anne’s Gate, London, was widely and loudly criticised. Indeed, there was a less attractive side to Spence, who brusquely announced his arrival to the receptionist at the riba Drawings Collection as ‘Sir Basil Spence, Royal Gold Medallist’.

No matter. Spence should be judged by his buildings, and the best of them are some of the best of their time. Above all, there is Coventry Cathedral, which seems all the more convincing and moving as time passes, full of resonant symbolism. What also deserves respect here is that Spence commissioned seriously good works of art that are an integral part of his overall concept – not just the great tapestry by Graham Sutherland and the sculpture by Jacob Epstein but also the powerfully colourful abstract stained glass by John Piper and Lawrence Lee, the etched figurative glass by John Hutton, the carved lettering by Ralph Beyer and the rest. Not only is it the last modern building the public queued to see, it is also the last great work of the Arts and Crafts movement.

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