Social Structures: Gillespie, Kidd & Coia's Halls of Residence at the University of Hull

摘要

The Lawns shared the Team 10 hope that architecture would create community and deployed many of Team 10's aesthetic methods to express the nature of that community. Although Team 10 polemicists often denied any Utopian inclinations, their view of the social potential of architecture was undeniably idealistic. At the same time, Gillespie, Kidd & Coia's scheme was economical and therefore pragmatic, and clearly revealed the stringent economic conditions behind its creation. The Lawns can be viewed and understood in both ways, as economic and pragmatic aspects were connected with Utopian currents in contemporary architectural discourse. The Lawns represents a particular response to these ideas. If the design seems to switch off or ignore some of the features used by other architects (such as the pedestrian decks of similar schemes), the result is a greater formal coherence and sense of unity. Because of its strictly logical application of this narrower range of ideas, the design for the Lawns bears a direct relation to its social historical context.