Chapter 9 Richmond project thus speaks different languages inside and out. This design dichotomy has prompted some critics to suggest that the design’s beauty is only skin deep; it is, however, a very thick skin. In keeping with the classical commitment to traditional modes of construction, the outer walls of the development are built using load-bearing masonry with no internal cavities or expansion joints; in places they are eighteen inches thick.
Ralph Erskine: The Ark The third project to be considered, Ralph Erskine’s 1992 speculative office building dubbed The Ark, occupies a site in Hammersmith as ugly as Richmond Riverside’s is attractive (images). Wedged between an elevated motorway and railroad tracks, there is little reason to face outward and try to engage the surroundings. Instead, Erskine turned the building in on itself and organized the interior around a central atrium (images). The outer walls wrap around the interior like a protective carapace and the building’s volume expands as it rises. The result is an ungainly shape that lacks the precise machinelike image of Lloyd’s of London or Richmond Riverside’s picturesque charm. What The Ark does offer is a distinctive approach to the design of office space. Erskine is keenly aware that space shapes experience and that corporate hierarchies and organizational structures are encoded in the arrangement of offices and work-stations. In recent decades, however, new attitudes to office planning have emerged and corporations have adopted planning models designed to promote more free-form types of interaction within organizations. Rigid chains of command and strict compartmentalization are giving way to more flexible spatial arrangements that allow working groups to be reconfigured quickly. The Ark’s central atrium provides a variety of areas to 300