I'm going to show some slides of the work of our practice which I hope has a consistent theme in that in all cases the architectural expression relates directly to the way the building is built. The first slide that I'm going to show is a house built in Norwich in the mid-50s. But it does note the interests that have stayed with me all my life. On the outside of the building, that which is structural is brickwork, that which is not structural is glass. On the inside of the house, you can see on the picture, the partitions that are not structural are plywood. So it's very clear what holds the roof up. The architecture is made out of the means of construction, and that is the formula - if formula is the right word - that I have kept to all my life. It's a way of communicating to the people who will see the building.
Two architects that I worked for after I left architecture school have had a great influence on my subsequent work. The first of these is Erno Goldfinger, seen here on his housing development in West Kensington. From him I learned a commitment to the quality in architecture to go far beyond that which is reasonable; that one has to endlessly search for a better solution, and that the better solution, in the true Modern movement tradition, is based on function and on the means of building. I have always found this a way of holding on to ones sanity in a world obsessed by applied style.
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