One of the unexpected pleasures of lockdown has been the ability to view London unhindered by people and traffic. Recently, I was almost run over by a delivery moped when staring up at one of the new high-end residential buildings in Knightsbridge. The experience made me feel reassured that life may just be returning back to some level of normality. It seems that quite a few of these residential buildings in the more salubrious parts of central London have been designed by David Chipperfield.
Chipperfield is popular with many of the top-end residential property developers and manages to navigate a way through the minefield of permissions with designs that are both sensitive to context, but still remain overtly contemporary. He comes from that generation of AA trained architects who were all nurtured by Alvyn Boyarsky, its head at the time. All of them seemed to have so much character. Zaha Hadid was a large and powerful personality who did the most striking drawings you might ever see. Rem Koolhaus was tall, Dutch and intellectual, and always took the unexpected position in his writings and buildings. However, ‘Chippie’ just wasn’t any of these things. I have asked colleagues about him and they all scratch their heads and tell unrelated anecdotes where there is only a passing reference to him. The story usually ends with something like, “Oh, and David was quietly drafting in the background”. It seems that Chipperfield is just not that charismatic a person; however, he is one of the most successful British architects of his generation.
After working at Norman Foster, he set up on his own and started to get work abroad. Germany has a fairer, more open system of competitions, so this route is not untested by British architects. After his successful rowing museum at Henley, he received some heavyweight commissions quickly (the Neues Museum in Berlin, for example) and this led to some smaller regional museum commissions in the UK, such as the Hepworth Wakefield and the Turner Contemporary in Margate.
I think we can understand him more if we look at some specific buildings. He stems from the modernist tradition and it is possible to discern some influences from expected sources. His recent one-off house in Knightsbridge has echoes of Corb’s Villa Savoye, for example, but in the now very fashionable yellow brick with matching yellow flush mortar (a fad that he started, but now copied by many).
“The use of flush architraves, lintels and copings without overhang or drips is an indulgence in the British climate”
There is also the recently constructed One Kensington Gardens (pictured), which reminds me of Giuseppe Terragni’s fascist headquarters in Como. This building, despite its difficult history, remains a modernist masterpiece. Shared design elements include repetition, almost to an extreme, and overtly simplified detailing. Although in reality, the use of flush architraves, lintels and copings without overhang or drips is an indulgence in the British climate that can be accommodated only in a market that is happy to pay for a look without an eye to future maintenance costs. This sort of carefree attitude is also seen in super-yacht refurbishment, for example, now so popular with the world’s numerous billionaires.
Another Chipperfield designed development can be seen around the corner at Princes Gate, where, counterintuitively, and against every developer’s mantra (which is to maximise floor space), Chipperfield has managed to do away with a floor and thus increase floor-to-ceiling heights. At this end of the market there is a premium for the luxury and feeling of space, so this all makes sense for the developer who can charge higher prices overall for the sumptuous volumes created. The sadness is that this unique Art Deco building has now been adulterated so much, first in the 1970s with a horrible brown glass insertion and now with Chipperfield’s admittedly more sensitive conversion, that the essential rhythm of the facade has been lost forever. A case for spot listing this undeservedly unlisted building was undoubtedly missed.
Let us, instead, turn to a Chipperfield success story. The Hepworth Wakefield is a museum dedicated to the eponymous 20th-century female artist and is situated in her home town. Wakefield is an unprepossessing northern industrial town with large swathes of nicely detailed Victorian brickware and row houses with a river running through it. Chipperfield bravely chose to ignore the context and designed a series of connected concrete volumes. The siting on the river bend is a plus, and despite the greyness and hard edge of the flush fenestration, there is a certain charm to the arrangement of volumes. The prospect from the approach bridge reminds me almost of a cubist sketch of a cluster of houses in a French village. The real success of the building is, however, on the inside, where unlike many current museum designs, there are constant views to the outside through large windows. This lets natural sunlight (hated by museum directors because of its deleterious effect on artwork) into the rooms, enlivening the spaces and the artwork. Also, most importantly, it enables a sense of context. The importance of natural light cannot be underestimated in appreciating art and, in this case, the art is worth visiting.
David Chipperfield, through his own version of polite modernism, has been incredibly successful. Another example of this is the recently completed Kunsthaus in Zurich. Again, the use of repetitive grids and a singular approach to materials results in a respectful urban solution. When I visited, I was not able to see the interior, as the building was under construction, but I would not be surprised if it was a delight from the inside.
Chipperfield’s architecture is not an iconic ‘look at me’ architecture that is flashy or selfish. It is, however, well thought through, sober and crisply detailed and in the context of the city, it is dignified while also being integral. Perhaps that is all that we should demand of our buildings and perhaps that is enough to propel Chipperfield into the higher echelons of the starry architectural firmament.
