Chapter 1 of 24
John Menzies Offices, Edinburgh
I thought I would concentrate on three buildings rather than scatter thoughts all over all of our work because it would penetrate very little. And the three buildings are all office buildings. And that allows me to develop a theme in some depth which is perhaps preferable, but it risks Bennetts Associates being typecast as office designers, which I don't think we are. We have done many other things as well. Now the three buildings are called The Imperium in Reading which was built for a developer; the Powergen offices in Coventry, which is an owner-occupier building of course; and also the John Menzies (or Menzies) building in Edinburgh which again was built as a head quarters building for an owner-occupier. Now those three buildings demonstrate a number of themes which are consistent. I guess we've always been concerned with the engineering of buildings, and the way they're put together and that's certainly very important to us. A second theme I suppose is the function of buildings, and that doesn't just apply to office buildings. But the function of office buildings is fantastically important, and very neglected in my view by many good designers. And the third thing, of course, is a sense of I suppose what one might call - at the risk of a cliché - architectural space. The space that you get in work places is usually pretty poor. So we've taken some trouble to make sure the spaces in these buildings are rather nice, and that includes the work place and any ancillary spaces. So those are the three themes and I think they probably give rise to a particular type of visual expression. It's not ostentatious, there's an absolute minimum of decoration; and despite a degree of sophistication in the design process, they're very simple buildings, and that allows us to put them together very well and use really high quality materials without overdoing the budget. It's far better, in my view, to build simply and build well than be over-ambitious and always find oneself compromising by lack of achievement, lack of achieving the goals perhaps. That also gives rise to another theme which kind of over-rides all our work. I'm personally very interested in the idea of the architect as a master builder first and a tine artist second. I think all buildings need qualities that a master builder can bring to bear on them. But perhaps it's not the same as needing the qualities of a tine artist. All buildings do not need to be great works of art. They didn't start like that in history and I don't see why we are any different. I'm often reminded of the buildings of the early industrial revolution. They are now considered to be beautiful buildings in many ways, utterly born of their function, beautifully put together for a particular purpose and now seen as great works in their own right. And I think they came from the qualities of the master builder rather than the fine artist. And I think we're in the same sort of category. Moving on to those buildings in a little more detail, it's important to track where these came from. I mean, I personally have always been interested in the relationship between space and structure and services, always have been. It was something that was of great interest at college, and it's one of the reasons why I personally had wanted to work for a firm like Arup's when I left college, and I was lucky enough to get a job there. And at Arup's I stayed there for...