I have just been to the lecture which Annabelle Selldorf gave at the RIBA under the title ‘The Work We Do’, but essentially an opportunity for her to explain her thinking behind the changes she has proposed to the Sainsbury Wing, which she did extremely carefully and – to me at least – very persuasively.

Some initial thoughts:-

1. The original stepped entrance to the Wilkins Building is exceptionally inhospitable and was perhaps designed to be. There was a barracks just to the north of where the National Portrait Gallery now is from which troops could pour through the basement of the National Gallery to quell riots in Trafalgar Square. The original portico may have been designed to keep the public out, not to welcome them in. So, there is a logic, as Selldorf described, to making the Sainsbury Wing into the main entrance, not least for security purposes.

2. Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones proposed steps down from the Wilkins Portico as part of their work on the Wilkins Building, following the model of the steps which were added to the Metropolitan Museum in the mid-1960s. But this was not part of the brief to Selldorf and would probably encounter huge opposition.

3. The plans for subtly changing and enhancing the public space between the Sainsbury Wing and the Wilkins Building are exemplary, getting rid of the odd courtyard garden which was originally planned, I think, when the Keeper was resident in the south-west corner of the Wilkins Building.

4. The plans for the ground floor spaces in the Sainsbury Wing have evolved significantly. Instead of being designed as a contrast to the Venturi Scott Brown building, they have now been designed with much greater sympathy to Venturi Scott Brown’s original monumental vocabulary, including keeping their Egyptian columns, the same ceiling detailing and rustication. The original ground floor spaces were severely compromised by the bookshop and much extraneous clutter and it will be a great benefit that these spaces are cleaned up and restored to a version of their original appearance.

5. There is a great deal about the project which has not really appeared in the public domain, including a proper entrance from Trafalgar Square to new research facilities.

Over the summer, there has been much opposition to the scheme. I hope that the lecture will be published. It should be because it made so clear how much care and thought has gone into the scheme, including more effective illustrations than the hideous CGI which made the entrance look like an airport terminal.

I see that the Art Newspaper is reporting the availability of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry for rent (https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/11/01/everything-has-a-price-estate-agent-lists-historic-foundry-that-once-cast-big-bens-bells). It’s a wonderful site and I can see that it could potentially be turned into an art gallery. But I am still hoping that the relevant heritage agencies – most notably, Historic England, Tower Hamlets and the National Heritage Lottery Fund – will see the benefit in retaining its historic use which is at least as much a part of its historic interest as the building. There was a feeling from some of the heritage agencies that London did not need to protect a place of manufacture. But manufacturing is part of London’s history as well as banking.

For some reason I don’t understand, the article I have written for the November issue of The Critic has already been posted online (Fit for a king | Charles Saumarez Smith | The Critic Magazine), maybe because it is a bit more topical than usual. It should be free to view, unless you have already looked at other articles this month. The death of The Queen already seems another era.

I admit that the garden is a bit overgrown, but I have been enjoying it in the autumn sunshine:-

I have received a very helpful note from Celia Maxwell, the widow of the late Robert Maxwell, architect, architectural historian and the former Dean of the Architecture School at Princeton, about Douglas Stephen, who I described, as it turns out quite wrongly, as ‘somewhat mysterious’ only because I couldn’t find out much about him from my limited searches online and had a vague memory that quite a few people had worked for him in the 1960s.

She has allowed me to post it here where it will be more read than in the Comments section (not least, it is a way of encouraging people to go to the Maxwell exhibition in Dublin):-

There was nothing mysterious about Douglas. He was larger than life and had great style. A fellow student of Maxwell, James Stirling, Colin Rowe, and Thomas (Sam) Stephens at Liverpool, he set up an architectural practice with Margaret Dent in London and the firm designed many modernist buildings. Douglas himself favoured Terragni and designed a fine residential block in Kensington.

The practice was a hotbed of thinking-practicing architects in London during the late 1950’s and 60’s. Other notable architects who worked at Douglas Stephen were Alan Forest, Adrian Gale, Birkin Haward, Edward Jones, Panos Koulermos, David Wild and Elia Zenghelis. Kenneth was editing a journal the time and my late husband Robert Maxwell teaching while designing buildings at DS & P.

Maxwell was a partner in the firm for many years and designed several projects. His best project being the Southwood Park Flats, about which Kenneth Frampton made some glowing remarks at the symposium relating to the Maxwell Scott exhibition currently on at the Irish Architectural Archive in Dublin.

The November issue of The Critic has just appeared with an article I have written about my experience – and enjoyment – of Dumfries House in early September. Since then, a host of articles have been written about the King’s involvement in Poundbury and, more recently, Highgrove and what this tells one about his architectural interests and tastes. What I found impressive about Dumfries House was not just the conservation of the Adam house, but the use of vernacular design in the grounds.

Till recently, I could rely on the article becoming available online, but they have – no doubt sensibly – introduced a restriction on the number of articles they make freely available. So, you may have to wait or even buy a copy….

I walked round from the back of Tate Modern this evening and was confronted by the smoke stack. I remember David Chipperfield wanted to take it down, but it’s impressive:-

I put in a brief appearance on the PM Programme to talk about the increasing tendency of the Just Stop Oil protests to attack not just oil depots and motorway petrol stations and – today – 55, Tufton Street, but works of art. Of course, the attacks are planned and they choose works which are glazed; but I am not convinced that chucking a tin of Heinz Cream of Tomato soup over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers does much to change the government’s attitude towards climate change. Indeed, under Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Suella Braverman, the government’s stance towards legitimate public protest and preventing climate change has radically hardened.

Rishi Sunak started out as Housing Minister. Maybe he could introduce legislation to encourage home insulation and low carbon retrofitting. It would be a good start to his administration.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001ddsk

I have been meaning to have a look at this somewhat nondescript block of flats known as The Corringham at the top of Craven Hill not exactly for its architectural quality, but because it is one of the small number of recorded works by the architectural historian, Kenneth Frampton, designed 1960 to 1962, completed in 1964 when he was working for Douglas Stephen, a somewhat mysterious architect, not in the DNB, who had established his architectural practice in 1954 and later employed Carl Laubin:-

I read this morning about the recent extension to Lea Bridge Library and thought that I would go and see it. The original library is 1909, funded by Carnegie, a fine bit of municipal classicism:-

Studio Weave have added a pavilion behind it – a place to work and have coffee, a modern-day pavilion:-

It’s nice to find a library so busy and expanding.