Michael Spens on Colin St. John Wilson plus ClareGuestonDavidCoffin'sfinalstudyofLigorio

摘要

In his book Buildings and Ideas (Cambridge University Press, 1983), Leslie Martin stated with prescience: 'The history of development of the architecture of the last half century could now I think be written with a different emphasis. With the benefit of historical perspective it is possible to see that the narrow limits and classifications that have been used to describe modern architecture were wholly inadequate'. Martin could never at this stage have anticipated the long-term 'stealth' effect that the monumental British Library at St. Pancras, London, completed by Wilson in 2005, could have had in bearing out this forecast and its ramifications for Modern architecture in the twenty- first century - literally re-writing the canon. The library stands now as a massive pack of dealable cards for the elucidation of the real narrative of Modern architecture in Britain. Crafted as from another era, the shadow of this undoubted masterwork looms over British performance of the second half of the twentieth century. Roger Stonehouse and Gerhard Stromberg have already provided a detailed description and critique of the building in The Architecture of the British Library at St. Pancras (Spon, London, 2004) and in this new publication Stonehouse proves to have been the essential choice as author partly on account of the fact that he has already so thoroughly analysed the building. Even within this new publication the Library significantly outweighs in pages the allocation for any other project: it is given 71. Now at last colour is allowed to give it full justice; colour transforms the reading of materiality, so vital to Wilson's thinking here as in so many of his buildings.