HIGH-TECH — THE BIRTH OF STYLE

Статья раскрывает механизмы формирования понятия «стиль хай-тек». Как архитектурный стиль он представляет собой локальное явление в британской архитектуре между 1967 и 1987 годами и ограничен определенным кругом архитекторов. Однако новые внестилевые подходы, разработанные его лидерами, сегодня нашли широкое применение и активно используются, оказав огромное влияние на развитие современной архитектуры. В статье прослеживается процесс интенсивных поисков концепций и профессиональных методов, которые привели к созданию иной, соответствующей времени прорывных технологий архитектуры. Article reveals mechanisms of the formation the concept of “Style high-tech”. As an architectural style, it is a phenomenon in British architecture of the local time between 1967 and 1987 and limited to a certain circle of architects. However new out-of-style approaches of its leaders are widely used and had a huge impact on the development of modern architecture. The article traces the process of searching for concepts and professional methods that led to the creation of a new architecture, corresponding to the time of breakthrough technologies.

‘The Towers of Terror’: A Critical Analysis of Ernő Goldfinger’s Balfron and Trellick Towers

When J. G. Ballard published his masterpiece High-Rise in 1975, many readers in London automatically identified the apartment building that is the protagonist of the dystopian novel as the infamous Trellick Tower at Kensal Town, certainly one of the most controversial and ambiguous figures of British architecture after World War II. Designed by Ernő Goldfinger, the tower, which had recently been completed, was already considered a symbol of the brutality of contemporary architecture, to the point of gaining the nickname ‘Tower of Terror’ coined by its own inhabitants. Actually, in public opinion the nearly twin sister of the earlier Balfron Tower at Poplar embodied all the ills of urban planning and of the housing policies of the post-war reconstruction. The large size of the project, the uniformity of its facades, the presence of bulky stairwells separated from the main volume, connected by elevated bridges and brandishing the big chimneys of the heating system, the complex apartment layouts on multiple levels, and the intensive use of fair-face reinforced concrete are the factors that shape the extraordinary character of this work of architecture, examined in a relatively small quantity of critical writings, despite the building’s widespread notoriety. The Balfron Tower, commissioned in 1963, and the Trellick Tower commissioned in 1966 have become, for better or worse, icons of British public housing policy, and today they are inseparable parts of the London cityscape. Critical analysis of the original project documents reveals how the typological and constructive reflections at the end of the 1960s had reached a level of extreme sophistication and quality, also in the development of large social housing complexes created for the urban proletariat. Thanks to their outstanding constructed quality and the efficacy of their residential typologies, the towers have stood up to the destructive fury of the last few decades, even becoming Grade II* listed buildings. In recent years, they have gone through a remarkable process of social and generational turnover, coveted as investment properties and involved in processes of real estate speculation.

All Roof, No Wall: Peter Boston, A-Frames and the Primitive Hut in Twentieth-Century British Architecture, c. 1890–1970

A very particular type of modern house in Britain — A-frames of the 1950s and 1960s — emerged from a much longer history of British and Scandinavian-German primitivism centred on the cruck-frame. This article focuses on a small number of architect-designed examples and introduces one of the main proponents of the type, Peter Boston (1918–99). The tension between the A-frame's familiarity as a universal dwelling type and its adoption as a signifier of modernity is a central theme. In the British twentieth-century context, the ‘modern’ included a strong vernacular element, and the new A-frames, which formed part of the ‘timber revival’ of the 1950s and 1960s, were informed by a long-standing interest in the history of cruck-framed construction from the Arts and Crafts onwards, which in turn was part of a wider pan-north European building culture.