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(Below, from top) Justine Frischmann of Elastica; Brett Anderson of Suede; poster for ‘Jonah’ by Factory Fifteen; Writtle Calling/2emmatoc by Post Works, 2012
TIM BROTHERTON
FACTORY FIFTEEN
THE FACE
Image makers
The doyen of Bartlett alumni who make images of architecture is cartoonist Louis Hellman. An institution in his own right, his sympathetic but acute commentaries on the plight of architects and architecture have graced the AJ and Building Design for decades. As a student, he spanned the Hector Corfiato and Llewelyn-Davies eras, spending a year at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris before returning to The Bartlett and its new regime for his final year. Several recent graduates share the spirit, if not the method, of Hellman’s work. Lynn Fox emerged from Kevin Rhowbotham and Nic Clear’s design unit a generation after FAT. Graduates Christian McKenzie, Patrick Chen and Bastian Glaessner began working as computer graphics artists, establishing their reputation with their debut work Hayling for FC Kahuna. They
KEN ADAM 1921-2016 BARTLETT STUDENT 1938-1939
COURTESY OF VICE
Sebastian de la Cour, who work as benandsebastian, also met at The Bartlett as Unit 12 students. They take the language of architecture into the context of the art gallery as a strategy to explore the condition of physical and psychological spaces. Another alumni practice emerging in this area is Post Works led by Melissa Appleton and Matthew Butcher, whose temporary radio station, Writtle Calling: /2emmatoc, and forthcoming The Flood House are temporary built projects that consciously sit between event, performance, art and architecture. On occasion Slade students have contributed to architecture. The Honourable Eileen Gray, designer of a couple of magnificent Modernist houses and some of the most recognisable Modernist furniture, enrolled there in the years either side of 1900 at a time when the walls between the Slade and the architecture department were very porous. In addition, George Grey Wornum, another Slade graduate, won, from hundreds of entries, the competition to design the RIBA’s headquarters completed in 1934. He was also the institute’s Gold Medal laureate in 1952. For several years up to 2014, The Bartlett’s end-of-year show took place in the Slade’s studios.
‘I
never wanted to be an architect’, says Ken Adam, the Oscarwinning film production designer famed for his work on Bond films and with Stanley Kubrick. ‘But in 1934 I met Vincent Korda, the great set designer, when he was working on Knight without Armour. I said I wanted to do what he did. He advised me to train as an architect.’ Adam (born Klaus Adam) signed up for evening classes at The Bartlett while articled to CW Glover & Partners. Glover had proposed a circular airport over the sidings at King’s Cross in 1931 and, 30 years on, also devised plans for a new Covent Garden market there, complete with rooftop heliport – this sci-fi world was the antithesis of Albert Richardson’s at The Bartlett. ‘I was a fan of the Bauhaus’, says Adam, ‘but The Bartlett was all fussy Beaux-Arts classicism. A teacher taught me architectural drawing and introduced me to the MARS group for whom I did a lot of sketches.’ Before he could graduate, Adam found himself designing air-raid shelters. Although still a German national, in 1943 he joined the Royal Air Force, serving in the thick of it before, during and after D Day. It wasn’t until 1947 that his film career took off with superb designs including the war room in Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) and the stupendous villain’s lair in You Only Live Twice (1967). ‘It was the largest set ever built for a European film. Blofeld’s secret chamber in an extinct volcano, was 400ft long by 120ft high, requiring 700 tonnes of steel. The lake on top was real and the roof did open. It cost $1 million – a lot of money then. I had to be production designer, engineer, quantity surveyor and, yes, also architect.’ Jonathan Glancey