Obituary.

DENYS LASOUN 1914-2001

Trevor Dannatt writes a personal memoir of Denys Lasdun, the Grand Old Man of English architecture, who died last month.

We exchanged Christmas cards for years, met at gatherings from the Mars Group to the Royal Academy of Arts, gossiped and talked seriously about issues we both cared for. These occasions were a source of pleasure and for me often brought a renewal of commitment. Once by chance meeting in Tuscany, characteristically DL enthused about the Benedictine Abbey Church of S'Antimo, and demanded we visit, which we did and were rewarded. Similarly he insisted one should read Panofsky's Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism. The historical dimension of architecture was a potent generator for him evidenced in his lifelong interest in the architecture of Hawksmoor 'so singular and so profoundly concerned with the roots of architecture and the nature of space'.

There was so much to admire in the man and the buildings. Admiration was reinforced on a recent valedictory tour of his London buildings, especially in the core space, the central circulation of the Royal College of Physicians, a building esteemed and loved by all -- especially the President of the RCP at the time of its making, 'Bill' Hoffenberg, who paid immense personal tribute to DL. He must have been a good client as its consonance seems to indicate and DL's return years later to build an extension is a credit to client and architect relationship.

There is an architectural density in that generative central space of great potency, a similar density in the core space of the National Theatre, and surprisingly in the Claredale Street housing where at the confluence of access galleries there is an extraordinary poetry of space and material with slots of view extending into the city -- designed as social housing, at risk for a while, and saved by the efforts of DOCOMOMO, the Twentieth Century Society and English Heritage: admirably restored by Lincoln Holdings as Keeling House. Not so far away at Usk Street there are two earlier examples of this pattern and these 'cluster blocks' exemplify the search for new housing patterns with which Lasdun was much engaged in CIAM and MARS and the TEAM X dialogues to which Lasdun made considerable personal contribution.

After leaving the Architectural Association school, Lasdun worked for a period for Wells Coates (DL's 'temporary artistic mentor') on Palace Gate (the 3:2 section), and he joined the Tecton practice led by Lubetkin in 1938. William Curtis quotes Lasdun as saying of Tecton, 'Here I found a professionalism, a classical attention to detail and a continuity of attitude to concrete which had its roots in the work of Auguste Perret.' The Lasdun Lubetkin relationship is an engaging area for speculation. No man is an island and Lubetkin by all accounts was a powerful influence on the Tecton members much younger, much less experienced. Lasdun, some 13 years junior, must have recognized in Lubetkin an authority that was based on clear principles and critical awareness, qualities that he also embraced.

Lubetkin was a very strong character and Lasdun equally so. Two close friends of mine were partners and both have spoken of the authority which DL possessed. Only such authority could have achieved projects like the National Theatre, and the European Investment Bank building. Behind that authority was the powerful discipline of a committed and loyal office. Graham Lane has said there was a constant questioning of aims and achievements and. DL was certain 'true architectural art could only be achieved by struggle'. There was debate and fierce argument and in reality there was nothing so simple as the common practice of producing a valid sketch design and then working it up.

Lasdun saw every building as a piece of true research intensively conducted at every stage. From John Allen it is clear that the Lasdun method was close to that established by Tecton. Lane speaks of five distinct stages in which Lasdun participated to a greater or lesser extent. The study of all those facts which impinge on a building project objectively and subjectively. The stages not dissimilar to those that are current ideals of practice, but more intensive and always with critical assessment of design alternatives. The objective was to find the genius loci of a place and in Lasdun's words 'the soul of the building'. At some stage all the main elements of the building were put into model form. From this emerged a clarification of the concept and its development in greater detail, so that functional and architectural needs were reconciled and the language of the building was completely coherent and expressive of content, the elements of space, structure and form brought into harmonious relationship: the se arch for a certain inevitability at every scale. Only then the detailed model for presentation, and then the production information and construction.

Excepting Luxembourg and Norwich, London has enough building by Lasdun to satisfy any architectural enthusiast. From Bethnal Green, Bloomsbury, South Bank, St James's Park, Regent's Park to Paddington with the Hallfield Estate, and its lively coda Hallfield School (diminished somewhat by adjacent educational accretions) and in Newton Road the 1937 House, sadly now rather down at heel. I remember its pristine freshness (well captured in AR March 1939), its sophisticated character and much more considered construction than most houses of that period. And this by an architect in his early twenties! It was job number two out of some 30 realized projects, five listed in London alone, apart from a range of outstanding competition entries. It seems fitting that his last work should also be domestic, the major extension of his earlier Hill House in Berkshire, as yet unpublished.

Although my lazy predilections are for a looser sort of architecture, especially in the domestic field, I cannot but hold my breath in awe of his achievements, his singleness of purpose, the outstanding ability to extract a formal architectural order out of so many diverse building tasks and heighten it to the level of eloquent dominance, as is so evident at the National Theatre. A timeless architectural language exemplified, in Corbusier's magical sentence 'Lejeu, savant, correct et magnifique des volumes sous la lumiere'.

For me, from days of awe I moved on to days of deep personal respect and affection for a great architect and a most lovable man.

Et lux eterna luceat eis.