Letter from London

摘要

Roland Paoletti, who died last week, was an internationalist architect whose formative influences (Spence, Nervi) helped prepare him for his design work on Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway system, which in turn was the prelude to his triumphant leadership of London's Jubilee Line Extension (JLE) programme. This produced a series of marvellous stations, arguably the greatest combined work of civil architecture in London in the 20th century, by a variety of architects in different styles. Roland held it all together, not least because the two other key figures in the JLE team, Wilfred Newton and Russell Black, gave Roland design authority via a clever contractual ruse. As Roland told it, the station architects were all appointed to undertake fit-outs, reporting to Black. Once the contracts were in place, Black assigned all his authority in respect of architecture to Roland, who could then call his chosen designers (he picked them personally) to say: 'Let's design some stations!'