Quinlan Terry
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Quinlan Terry (born 24 July, 1937 in Hampstead) is an English architect. He was educated at Bryanston School and the Architectural Association. He was a pupil of architect Raymond Erith, with whom he formed the partnership Erith & Terry.
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[edit] Work
Quinlan Terry is a deeply conventional architect who reacts against the Modernist style and its variants. He works principally in a classical retrospective Palladian style. He holds the Philippe Rothier European Prize for the Reconstruction of the City of Archives d'Architecture Moderne (1982). His design for the library at Downing College, Cambridge won the Building of the Year Award in 1994. In 2003 Terry won the Best Modern Classical House 2003, awarded by the British Georgian Group. In 2005 Terry won the 3rd Annual Driehaus Prize the most prestigious award for outstanding Classical and Traditional architects.
One of his best known works is Brentwood Cathedral in Essex. This rebuilding of an earlier Roman Catholic church utilises the Italian Renaissance style, mixed with the early and short-lived English Baroque style. It has a portico based on the south portico of St Paul's cathedral designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Unusually, all five classical orders of architecture were used in the design.
During the 1980's he was also appointed by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher to renovate the interiors of 10 Downing Street.
Terry's domestic work, while retrospective, employs quality materials: where possible, indigenous stone is used, and modern construction methods are favoured.
In Gloucestershire, he designed Waverton House, where he used the style made popular by Matthew Brettingham in the 18th century, featuring a central staircase lit from above, surrounded by rooms on both floors.
Terry has said that he enjoys working for American clients because:
...apart from the fact that [they] have got the money [they have] no moral hangups against building a building in an 'outdated style,' as they put it... To Americans, morality is morality, architecture is architecture. [1]
His works in the USA include the Abercrombie Residence. This classical mansion is based on Marble Hill House, Twickenham, England. Complete with a piano nobile approached by an external staircase, it has a pediment supported by Corinthian columns. The house is constructed of Kasota limestone, with Indiana limestone dressings.
In 1989, he employed the Gothic style to create a mansion in London's Regent's Park. Ironically, the plan was based on Palladio's Villa Saraceno, which it was felt would convert to the Gothic style.
In the mid-1990s, he designed the restoration of St Helen's (London) after the church building was severely damaged in two IRA bombings. He reworked its previous Tractarian-inspired design into an open Georgian plan informed by the precepts of Reformation theology.
Terry's architecture has been highly praised by David Watkin, who wrote the monograph Radical Classicism: The Architecture of Quinlan Terry (2006), and by Roger Scruton who called it "one long breath of fresh air" [2].
[edit] Criticism
Terry has been called "our most controversial architect - precisely because he is so uncontroversial"[3] and his work has attracted much criticism even from conservative quarters. Gavin Stamp remarked that after the death of Raymond Erith, Terry was left "to hold aloft the torch of classicism--something he was, I fear, quite unfitted to sustain"[4] and he has also been called "exquisite but impractical."[5]
In October 2007 Terry was fined a total of £25,000 by Westminster City Council for demolishing two gate lodges by John Nash in Regent's Park. Westminster City Council’s Cabinet Member for Planning, Cllr Robert Davis, said:
Westminster has a rich architectural heritage and it is the council’s duty to protect this for future generations. For one of the country’s pre eminent architects to fall foul of the law is disappointing, but I hope the size of the fine will send a very clear signal to anybody who thinks they can damage or destroy listed buildings without regard, whoever they may be.[6]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ [1]Ralph Blumenthal "Roll Over, Moses: It's a Centrum Lincolnensis", New York Times November 8, 2000 - retrieved 6 December 2007.
- ^ Roger Scruton, "Hail Quinlan Terry: our greatest living architect", The Spectator Apr 8, 2006.
- ^ Lynn Barber, "Shock of the old", The Observer, Sunday March 7, 2004.
- ^ Gavin Stamp, "The curse of Palladio", Apollo, Nov, 2004.
- ^ Robert Locke, "America’s Greatest Architect Is A Conservative", Front Page Magazine, May 6, 2001.
- ^ Renowned architect fined after demolition of two listed lodges Westminster City Council Websiteretrieved 8 November 2007.
