Random architectural rambling

I was looking at some archive footage featuring the architect Sir Basil Spence talking about some of his projects. The one that caught my eye was the British Embassy in Rome, a building I confess I've never seen in the flesh (I always get too distracted in Rome by things ancient to go in search of things modern).


His concern was to reflect the "rhythms" of a nearby Michelangelo construction.

While he may indeed have succeeded at that task, I can't say I'm overwhelmed with desire by the end result.


Spence is an interesting architect: very much a second leaguer, the designer of Sussex University and Coventry Cathedral (and much of my old university, at Southampton), as well as the Knightsbridge Barracks and all manner of prestigious projects -- at one time he was the go-to architect for the Establishment.

Coventry Cathedral -- a rather simple design, to replace the Medieval job destroyed by German Nazi bombing:


His rather elegant buildings and master plan at Southampton University, which neatly incorporates earlier red-brickwork by Giles Gilbert Scott. Spence was in Mies van der Rohe mood, but snow doesn't really suit the campus:


A little later, at Sussex University, he was in Le Corbusier mood, all heavy concrete arches on rustic brick-work (some people regard this as his best work):



All of which has got us a long way from embassy buildings.

Anyway, I was reminded by the Rome job of what I think must rank as one of the worst British embassy buildings of recent times -- the new complex in Berlin:


I have never been a fan of James Stirling, and here his primary coloured, random blobs look, to me, utterly ridiculous.


The way they are smashing through the building is oddly reminiscent of some of Spence's work at Sussex, but here the effect is trite and cramped. Just what is he trying to say? That, perhaps, in a savagely ironic comment on Nazi bombing, here we are destroying one of our own buildings before they can do it themselves?

Utterly mystifying.