Notes from the Archive: James Frazer Stirling
The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) is currently exhibiting the work of British architect James Frazer Stirling in their Main Galleries from May 15 – October 14, 2012. In addition to practicing, Stirling was a Yale School of Architecture professor as well as a Pritzker Prize laureate. The work showcased encompasses a variety of mediums employed by Stirling throughout his career. See samples of the exhibition after the break.
Video: Stirling in Stuttgart
‘James Frazer Stirling: Notes from the Archive’ provides a rare glimpse into the works of James Stirling, renowned British architect, Pritzker Prize laureate (1981), and Yale School of Architecture professor, the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Montréal and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven have co-organized this impressive exhibit on display at Stirling’s own Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart until January 15th.
Featuring the exhibition curator, Anthony Vidler Dean and Professor of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union, the video highlights Stirling’s works: the Engineering Building of Leicester University (1959-63), History Faculty Library in Cambridge (1964-67), Florey Building for Queen’s College at Oxford University (1966-71), along with the 1970 competition entry for the New Civic Centre in Derby, Nordhein-Westfallen Museum (1975), and Wallraf-Richartz Museum (1975). The works ‘reveal Stirling’s wide ranging approach to architectural composition and language, as well as the fundamental importance of historical and modernist architecture to his work.’ On display are more than three hundred original architectural drawings, models and photographs.
AD Classics: Florey Building / James Stirling
The Queen’s College Florey building is the third and last building of “The Red Trilogy” (the Leicester Engineering Faculty building and the Cambridge History Faculty building being the first two) designed by James Stirling, solidifying him as an irreplaceable facet in modern Architecture.
AD Classics: Neue Staatsgalerie / James Stirling
In 1977, as part of a city wide planning initiative, the Prime Minister of Baden – Württemberg, Hans Filbinger, held a private international competition to design the Neue Staatsgalerie that would revitalize and reinvigorate the cultural influence in Stuttgart, Germany. The competition posed the issues of making a connection to the older Staatsgalerie that dated back to 1843, as well as traversing the sites dramatic slope. By 1979, the jury unanimously chose a design by James Stirling of Michael Wilford & Associates in London.
Completed in 1984, Stirling’s design incorporated the sloping site as part of an architectural promenade that moved the public walkway through the museum that embodied the transitions of the classical art of the Alte Staatsgalerie and the modern art of the Neue Staatsgalerie into one seamless architectural response.
More on the Neue Staatsgalerie by James Stirling after the break.
