"Notes from the Archive: James Frazer Stirling, Architect and Teacher"

"Notes from the Archive"is an exhibition of an archive rather than a monographic retrospective. It emanates from the CCA's first public presentation of material from the Stirling/Wilford fonds in 2003 – 04, with the exhibition "out of the box: price rossi stirling + matta-clark". As stated by Vidler, the exhibition, "brings together the heterogeneous materials from the work of the office in such a way as to present the viewer with an inside look at the process of design, the working methods of an architect and a firm whose struggles to define an authentic approach to contemporary architecture in the wake of the heroic figures of the Modern Movement are marked in every sketch."

Venuew.- Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel Street.
Tuesday-Saturday, 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
Sunday noon to 5:00 PM.

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"Notes from the Archive: James Frazer Stirling, Architect and Teacher"

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Venue

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Exhibition. Yale Center for British Art. Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel Street.

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Dates

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14/10-2010.2/1-2011.

JAMES STIRLING

James Stirling. Born in Glasgow in 1924, James Frazer Stirling grew up in Liverpool. From 1946 to 1950 he studied architecture at the Liverpool School of Architecture, where Colin Rowe was among his teachers. After attaining his degree he took a position at the School of Town Planning and Regional Research in London.

From 1953 to 1956 he was on the staff of the influential firm of Lyons, Israel and Ellis. In 1955 he began teaching at the Architectural Association. From 1966 onwards he also taught at the Yale School of Architecture as Davenport Visiting Professor of Design. Later he was appointed to teach the architecture class at the Düsseldorf Academy. He received various distinctions in the course of his career, including the Aalvar Aalto Medal (1978), the Golden Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (1980) and the Pritzker Prize (1981). Shortly before his death in 1992 James Stirling was knighted by the Queen.

James Stirling worked with a number of partners, among them James Gowan from 1956 to 1963, and from 1971 onwards Michael Wilford, who carried on the firm James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates after Stirling’s death. A number of his projects such as the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart and the Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg could only be realized posthumously.

Throughout his life, the interpretations and assessments of Stirling’s works varied greatly, and architectural critics assigned them to a range of different styles and currents. Terms such as Brutalism and Post-Modern – which Stirling had rejected for his work – were repeatedly proposed as a means of categorizing his various work phases. Actually, however, the new survey of his oeuvre clearly reveals that James Stirling’s architecture defies unequivocal classification and constantly oscillates between the poles of “abstraction” and “representation” which, according to Stirling himself, can also be defined as the “monumental informel” in his oeuvre.