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Sagrada Familia /  by hugo keene

Location: Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Architect: Antoni Gaudí
Completed: 1882 - Ongoing

12 Photographs

“There is no reason to regret that I cannot finish the church. I will grow old but others will come after me. What must always be conserved is the spirit of the work, but its life has to depend on the generations it is handed down to and with whom it lives and is incarnated.” – AG (the OG)

Architectural history has a kind of progressive order, or neatness, to it. You can usually trace the overlapping strands of building technology and style across the ages, like mapping a river system. Architects and buildings fit somewhere along the map, usually with recent forebearers, and the successful ones usually have future generations following neatly after. Antoní Gaudi has never really fitted into this pattern. His architectural precedents were primarily from the natural world, and his architectural descendants followed mostly almost a century behind. Of contemporaries, he had few, true peers none.

The Basílica Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família is not just Gaudi’s masterwork, it is in some ways the masterwork. In the tradition of European cathedrals that took centuries to build, it is perhaps the last of its kind. I have never claimed to be an architectural historian or critic of any kind, but it seems to my untutored eye, to be the culmination of more than a thousand years of religious building tradition.

Along with the other architectural classic resident of the Catalan capital, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s ‘Barcelona Pavilion’, this was one of the first buildings I visited in Europe after studying architecture. The main purpose of the trip to Barcelona was to see these two buildings and to experience this legendary city, about which I knew little of substance beyond the architectural highlights.

That first time that I walked through the streets of Barcelona to visit the Sagrada Familia, I recall an overwhelming sense of excitement about what was to come. I have always loved construction sites and this was the most famous of them all. An extraordinary building being built under extraordinary circumstances. While much of the façade and its celebrated stone friezes were in place, the main hall was full of scaffolding, few of the windows were in and it was hard to get a sense of the space. While the genius and grandeur were undeniable, wandering up and down what was something of a skeleton at the time, you had to close your eyes and get a glimpse of this thing that was to come. I noted to myself to return at intervals over the years and watch construction progress unfold.

The building story is as fascinating as the architecture and it has been controversial for almost as long a time as it has been under construction. Much has been said over the years, since the restarting of construction, about the necessary compromise and inevitable dilution of Gaudi’s vision, but I am rather less bothered by all this, feeling like Gaudi knew enough to know that it would not be entirely his and his alone. To me, it is a unique building, unparalleled in its richness of detail and grandeur, most of which is impossible to replicate in photos, much less my own.

I have been to Barcelona several times since and it is a city that has changed a lot over the years with all the tick-tack and artificial life that goes with an influx of mass tourism, and no part has been more over-run than the stairways, floors and spires of the unfinished masterpiece in the Eixample, once on the outskirts of town.

Each time I return to Barcelona, there is always something to enjoy, a previously undiscovered gem of some delight or another, a sample of one or two of the many things about Barcelona which are unique and wonderful, or just another trip down to the construction site to check on progress.

HWLK

Coventry Cathedral /  by hugo keene

Location: Coventry, England, UK
Architect: Basil Spence
Completed: 1962

10 Photographs

Once upon a time, a friend needed something collected from Coventry, another friend was playing ice hockey in an arena had never been to, and I’d heard about this old ruin of a cathedral alongside a new one, that was apparently quite something. Armed with a triumvirate of reasons, friends, ice hockey, and architecture, it was a road trip asking to be had. And thus, we found ourselves setting off late in the day, in a small, rented Fiat 500, up and along the motorway and off into wider England.

I did not train as an architect in Britain, so at the time, I wasn’t really aware of how many buildings Basil Spence had designed, nor really of his importance to the development of 20th century design. If I’m being honest, I still don’t know a lot about his specific work, just that I like what work of his I have witnessed, most of which has been beautiful, considered, and crafted.

The old ruins, bombed during the 1940 Coventry Blitz, remain as the Luftwaffe left them, the whole spire and much of the walls remaining intact. What remains is a grand roofless space, with the new cathedral, hewn from a similar stone, nestling in from the north. The two buildings feel very much like they belong together, displaying the sort of congruity rarely seen in buildings constructed 500 years apart.

In this case, the decision to insist on the ruins being retained and the new cathedral built alongside is a masterstroke, providing the kind of unique building and space impossible in any other circumstance. Inside the cathedral does not disappoint, providing opulence, showmanship, and grandeur, suitable to this unique and exceptional building. The ribbed folded plane of the roof echoes the great European cathedrals, not in a superficial way, but deep within its very bones. It’s a very special building, full of the sort of stuff that you expect to see in a building like this, but each with its own unique twist. Like a lot of great epoch era straddling pieces of architecture, it feels like it’s simultaneously from the future and the past.

Later that afternoon, went to watch our Cambridge friends defeat the Coventry University team, and then took another stroll back through the roofless cathedral that evening before departing back to Cambridge that night.

HWLK

Rijksmuseum /  by hugo keene

Location: Amsterdam, South Holland, Netherlands
Architect: PJH Cuypers/Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos
Completed: 1885/2012

15 Photographs

The first time I visited the inside of the Rijksmuseum, we just happened to be in Amsterdam on the weekend it re-opened, after one of the longest and most publicly awaited renovation projects in Dutch history. Since I first visited the city, it had always been closed and sat quietly at the head of the Museumplein, the mix of gothic and renaissance themes intimately familiar to anyone who has spent time in the Netherlands yet presented with a composition and grandeur unmatched in the city. In a city like Amsterdam, so overflowing with great buildings and interesting things, it was easy to overlook the dark quiet stranger at the end of the park. Being designed by the same architect as the Amsterdam Centraal Station, which followed the Rijksmuseum, the two distinctly similar buildings sit at either end of the old city like an old pair of bookends, romantic revivalist celebrations of Golden Age.

I always loved the story that of the many delays and issues encountered in the renovation project, one of the most hotly contested, was down to a desire for the inhabitants of the city, to be able to continue to cycle through an existing road through the middle of the ground floor of the museum instead of around it as initially proposed. I’ve been a cyclist, in a cyclist’s city and I feel very deeply that it’s a thing that should be encouraged and protected at all costs, especially the majesty and dignity of the cyclist’s experience when it is seamless, safe, and relatively direct.

The renovation of the Rijksmuseum is brilliant. As an afficionado of fine architecture, I’ve visited many museums of the world, a building typology that would be the centrepiece in any architect’s portfolio and one of the crux architectural problems of any young architect in training, be that right or wrong. The solution here is particularly clever in overcoming the challenging problem of how to provide contemporary visitor standards and architecture, within an examplar historical building. By dropping the entry concourse below and under the road, and covering the whole courtyard with a deep, layered set of roof structures, this allows for a generous entry space filled with dappled light, while allowing the functional back of house relating to entry and security to tuck neatly under the stairs, without disrupting the existing gallery programme above. This alows the gallery spaces to function more or less as originally intended while adding a stack of new space. The original courtyard feels like it is simply dropped down and draped across the functional requirements of the building. The cycleway through the building and the campaign to retain this thing of value to the cyclist city (citizen) has been a positive design contribution rather than a constraint.

Despite the radical adjustment to the conceptual diagram of the museum, it retains much of the qualities of the 18th-century building, with the new parts fitting neatly in with the old, each part feeling familiar and unimposing on the next. The existing spaces themselves are beautifully restored and the new insertions meticulously placed and considered, such that it is not immediately apparent where the junctions are between old and new.

There are many good museums around, I have visited quite a few and waxed lyrical about some, but the Rijksmuseum is up there as one of the most interesting and unique of them. It rightly sits comfortably at the heart of a city and in the heart of its citizens.

HWLK

Barcelona Pavilion /  by hugo keene

Location: Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Architect: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich
Completed: 1929

11 Photographs

As ‘architects in training’ during the 90s in Australia, the crisp clear buildings of architects like Glenn Murcutt and Tadao Ando played a very prominent role in our discussions and learning. From them, we can draw a line back to the obvious influence of the work of Mies van der Rohe and the evolution of construction technology he embraced in the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition (colloquially known to architects as the Barcelona Pavilion). You can see a similar influence in one of the earlier buildings in this series, the Stahl House, the structural system and the whole philosophy of the of which is constructed off the metaphorical foundations laid by buildings like this pavilion.

My initial encounter with the Barcelona Pavilion was in a competition during my third year of architecture school back in Australia. The competition brief was to design a gallery and offices for the Fundació Mies van der Rohe, perched somewhere on the hill above and behind the original pavilion. We never visited the site for obvious reasons, proposed a sweeping set of concrete curved planes, open at both ends, and did not win the competition.

I have visited the pavilion several times in the years since and photographed it twice. The photographs here are from the first visit. At the time, it was also the first time I had visited one of the more exalted of the masterworks of modern architecture. I had seen great buildings by master practitioners in Australia, some more in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan, but to see one of the epochs defining buildings was another kettle of fish entirely.

I have recognised over the years that I get quite emotional when approaching and viewing significant buildings, especially ones I have long admired, but this time the emotional landscape was new and surprising to me. Here was something I felt like I knew intimately, but also not at all. I felt like I was supposed to understand it, to be able to read the architectural manoeuvres, and, most terrifyingly, to be able to verbalise it to my intrigued travelling companion. At this point, I realised that I knew nothing at all about the history or theory of modern architecture and kicked myself for not paying more attention in my History of Architecture classes with Sean Pickersgill.

I struggle sometimes to comprehend what the idea of ‘modern’ really is, to the point where it loses any kind of meaning. Coming on to almost a century since it was first built, yet the pavilion is crisp, clean, and designed in such a way that the simplicity and optimism feel contemporary and relevant, rather than naïve or old.

The reconstruction of the pavilion, more than 50 years after it was demolished, is controversial, but I do not have overly fixed opinions about what constitutes authenticity in architecture. I am happy to enjoy it for what it is and for what it represents, comfortable in the knowledge that it was years after I visited that I even remembered that it had been demolished and rebuilt.

I still don’t feel like I know a lot about the history of architectural theory, but by visiting these places and experiencing them myself, I am starting to understand at least why certain buildings are important within it. I think some buildings are more important to architects and architectural history than to the public, and this one feels a little like one of those. Not obviously spectacular or profoundly moving, just a simple, beautiful, and vitally important part of it all.

HWLK

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Kimbell Art Museum /  by hugo keene

Location: Fort Worth, Texas, USA
Architect: Louis Kahn
Ccompleted: 1937

15 Photographs

There is something timeless about the Kimbell Art Museum, almost like it could be a hundred years old, or a thousand, the way it rises out of the earth like a stone formation, left alone by the hand of the wind. It has a character quite suited to becoming a ruin, and will no doubt be a highlight in post-apocalyptic tours of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area if it survives the churn.

Henry and I had come to Texas at the end of a long road trip through the deserts of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico and we had experienced many wonderful places, people, and events along the way. Only weeks before, we had stood in Monument Valley, admiring the mesas in the dusty purple evening light after dusty day on the road. Having lived as desert rats for the weeks leading up, it is no surprise that when we come to talk about the Kimbell so many years later, Louis Kahn’s masterpiece evokes a similar kind of connection to this place for the both of us.

In the days after our visit, Henry described it as ‘The most complete building, I have ever visited’. In the years before and since, I have seen a lot of concrete buildings, old and new, from the good to the great and all the way down to the terrible. I have been involved in the construction of a few of our own as well. Amidst all of this, I still can’t think of another building that compares. There is a level of craftsmanship in the Kimbell that makes it feel like a piece of furniture as much as a building, and when you understand how in-situ concrete of this type is made, this makes perfect sense. To make a building like this, the liquid concrete is poured into a negative formwork, made of steel or timber, and then that formwork, almost like a cabinet shell itself, is stripped away to reveal the concrete.

I have always been intrigued by how we as humans inhabit the desert. It is such a hostile but beautiful place and from Sedona to Uluru, humans have struggled with how to inhabit the hot dry parts of the world, providing protection from the elements, and embracing the beauty. There is a lot of learning from those attempts in the result at the Kimbell, both in the form of the building and its response to the elements. Like all desert dwellings, the primary objective is to bring in the light, while protecting from the sun and in doing so, this is the great success of the building, above anything else. The way the ceiling vaults reflect light is just divine, the shape and finish carefully crafted to express this as primary to the function of the building.

Like all profound artistic works, the Kimbell Art Museum feels simple enough to be drawn by a child. An architect I admire once claimed that good architecture is obvious in retrospect because where it is successful, it is drawn out of its context in such a way that it feels almost inevitable. The Kimbell is a building that does this, a perfect example of Oliver Wendell Holmes concept of ‘the simplicity the other side of complexity’, sitting neatly at the intersection of a mud hut and a Stradivarius.

HWLK

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Kings College Chapel /  by hugo keene

Location: Cambridge, England
Master Masons: Reginald Ely, John Wolrich, Simon Clerk, John Wastell
Completed: 1515

11 Photographs

For a bloke from a small town out the back of Australia, spending a decade living in Cambridge, where the buildings are almost a thousand years old, felt at times like a fairy tale. I will always remember cycling recklessly along the narrow Cambridge streets in the wintertime, the slippery cobbles glistening in the lamplight, passing wooden portals in stone walls to strange worlds beyond, sometimes open, usually not. Beyond each of these gateways, I soon learned that all sorts of wonders lay waiting to be discovered, and of these that I know, the ‘little chapel’ at Kings College is my most beloved. The most extraordinary building in Cambridge and one of my favourite buildings in the world.

I do not remember exactly the first time I entered, I think it was the first time I visited Cambridge, but I found myself returning time and time again over the years. Every chance I had to take someone new, I would. It used to be free to visit if you were a resident of Cambridge and I loved to wander in on occasion and sit quietly while the tourists milled about. The experience of being a resident in a tourist town can be frustrating, but equally one is able to visit something like this over and over again when its beauty is enough to draw people from all corners of the globe to just see it once.

I cannot effuse enough about the chapel itself, so I will not even try but instead recollect the first time I met my good friend and collaborator, Peter Salter. We discussed two things that stand out amongst many, fly fishing and fan vaults. Peter had recently written an article about fan vaults, the miraculous stone vaulting system ingeniously employed in at Kings College to extraordinary effect, and we discussed the similarities between the two, the nature of tension, compression, and suspension. I was already in love with the chapel and I recall pondering the two interlinked discussions. I did learn to fly fish rather badly but like with a lot of what I learned from Peter, it will take me another decade or so to figure out what it really meant.

I contemplated not including this building, not because it’s more than 400 years older than nearly every other building I love, nor because my perspective may be clouding my favour, but because of just how little justice photographs can possibly do to a place like this. The grandeur of the exquisite stone ceiling is impossible to convey, much less the light from the stained glass coming in from all sides. I cannot do it justice, no matter how my photographs might try.

HWLK