CUBE
09.04.99 - 25.05.99
Lord's Media Centre (1999)
Future Systems, led by Jan Kaplicky and Amanda Levete, was one of the UK's most innovative and influential architectural practices: known internationally, their name is synonymous with pioneering and technologically creative design. The work of Future Systems first made an impact through the powerful imagery of its unbuilt work, which reached an international high point with the second-placed scheme for the French National Library in 1989. Their built work of the 1990s attracted media acclaim and public interest, and the exhibition at CUBE in 1999 attracted unprecedented numbers for an architectural show. Over thirty of their projects were on show, including their then most recent built projects, the Hauer-King House, London;
the Media Centre at Lords Cricket Ground, and a private house on the
Pembrokeshire coast, Wales. Other works under development at the time included the
Earth Centre, Doncaster, UK, and Comme des Garcons shops in New York,
Paris and Tokyo.
An extract from the Architects Journal review by Kenneth Powell:
"Kaplicky (born Prague 1937 and
sometime assistant to Rogers, Foster and, more surprisingly, Lasdun)
insists that 'you don't need to build on a large scale to be an
important architect - look at Charles Eames', but he is clearly thrilled
by the process of building. Both he and Levete (they teamed up in 1989)
are still heavily involved in every project, but there is now an office
of six, with two associates, Angus Pond and David Miller. Kaplicky is
adamant that 'everything we design is intended to be built', but
the advent of Levete (ex-Richard Rogers) introduced, perhaps, a greater
element of pragmatism - though not at the expense of experiment. There
have been no compromises.
Kaplicky comments that 'we seem
to be very much on our own - we don't really 'belong' anywhere', yet he
concedes that the mood of British and European architecture has changed,
towards a greater freedom and concern for the expressive and the
'organic', so that Future Systems increasingly does 'belong'. Not that
organic modern architecture is anything new - Kaplicky sees Scharoun,
the 'totally undervalued' Mendelsohn, late Wright, Corbusier's Ronchamp,
and Niemeyer as part of his own tradition. Future Systems' work was
once prone to interpretation in terms of technological determinism, but
Kaplicky has no qualms about declaring that 'we are about the art of
architecture. Why shouldn't a building be beautiful as well as
practical?' (Twenty years ago, he admits, he wouldn't have used the word
'beauty'. ) Levete believes that if something is beautiful, it
generally works well too. 'What could be more efficient than a flower?'
Coincidentally,
Future Systems has just completed a modish flower shop in Notting Hill,
but the issue of flowers is important. Natural forms provide the
inspiration for everything that Future Systems does. There is no
conflict, for Kaplicky and Levete, between nature and technology. Nature
provides the model, technology the means to emulate it. Far from being
irrational or wilful, Future Systems' architecture has a certain
inevitability that comes from being at one with the natural world.
'Instinctive' is the adjective that Levete tends to use. High-Tech, she
says, was never an adequate description - 'we let ourselves in for it, I
guess, with all that techno-language!'
What still links
Future Systems with the world of High-Tech (and sets it apart from
Hadid, Libeskind and others) is its total rejection of rhetoric and
theory. 'We tend to explain our work in practical and technical terms, '
says Levete. There was no great theory behind the design of the jumbo
jet.
Future Systems operates from an inauspicious 1950s
block in Paddington, even gloomier than its previous eyrie off Charlotte
Street. Once inside the office door, however, you are in a different
world and it's hard to feel, here as in the couple's Kensington house - a
radical and colourful remodelling, in the mould of Rogers' Royal Avenue
at a fraction of the cost - anything but exhilarated and cheered. For
years, Future Systems seemed to be obstinately individual, heroic
outsiders determined to go down in history as legendary non-builders
(like Archigram).
But Future Systems' determination to
'tell it how it is' has paid off. There have been setbacks, like the
apparent collapse of the brilliant, low-cost scheme for extending
Lasdun's 1950s Hallfield School, but nobody these days dismisses Future
Systems as impractical. They still like to excite and even shock -
goading the heritage lobby with an organic tower on the site of
Battersea Power Station, for instance - but they are pragmatic
visionaries with a clear role in the future of world architecture."
Organised by Graeme Russell
Curated by the ICA
Curated by the ICA