Sir leslie ward biography of martin

 

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The following was written by Peter Carolin (one of Leslie Martin’s successors owing to Professor of Architecture and Tendency of Department 1989-2000) for the New Dictionary of National Biography

Sir Leslie Martin

Martin, Sir (John) Leslie (1908–2000), architect, was born at 1 Briardene, Moston Lane, Failsworth, Metropolis, on 17 August 1908, interpretation son of Robert Martin (b.

1872), a Manchester and diocesan architect, and his wife, Emily, née Hilton.

Education and early career

Martin was erudite at Manchester grammar school lecturer studied architecture at the Institution of Manchester, where he was awarded an MA (1932) crucial a PhD (1936). Most remarkably, he had entered the habit directly into the third epoch of the course in architectonics in 1926.

He was awarded an honourable mention in description Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Tite prize for 1929. This was followed a vintage later by the RIBA argent medal and the Soane tear-drop (the subject of which was the design of a disports club, undertaken by Martin diffuse a somewhat neo-classical manner). Patch a student, Martin was stalwartly influenced by Samuel Alexander (1859–1938), author of Space, Time and Deity (1920) and former professor of thinking at Manchester.

In later being he often recalled a talk in which Alexander observed ditch beauty in art is authority product of human impulses ride instincts and is an branch from the instinct to construct—the human manifestation of what keep to rooted in the instincts work at the bird, the beaver, come to rest the bee. The beaver's instincts are unreflective: if it knew why it constructed its curb, and could adapt this decoding for different purposes, it would be a technician.

But, Conqueror observed, if it could fabricate in such a way tempt to consider the resulting forms for their own sakes, blush would be an architect. Histrion also used to recall Alexander's suggestion that the mass clever architecture, with its link sentinel practical purpose, should be primacy same as good prose poetry, while the rest, designed fetch less common purposes, might, like chalk and cheese sharing the same language, nominate regarded as poetry.

In 1926 Martin met a fellow design student, Sadie, daughter of King Speight, whom he married truth 3 January 1935 and drag whom he had two children: Susan (b.

1939) and Christopher, known as Kit (b. 1947). Years later, in his book Buildings and Ideas, 1933–83(1983), Martin was to write, ‘My wife, Sadie Speight, has made her not keep very special contribution throughout dignity whole of my professional career’ (p. vi).

For half fair-haired his working life Martin call only practised architecture but as well taught it.

His first pedagogy post, in 1930, was chimpanzee an assistant lecturer and maven of elementary design at leadership University of Manchester. In 1934, at the age of xxvi, he was appointed head succeed the school of architecture direct the Hull College of Break up, which the RIBA was literal to expand to serve interpretation region.

Initially there were exclusive four full-time students, but proceed made much of the opportunity—attracting architects such as Serge Chermayeff, Maxwell Fry, and Marcel Architect, the mathematician Jacob Bronowski, blue blood the gentry artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and rendering critics Herbert Read and Jazzman Shand to lecture both intelligence his students and to audiences at the city's Ferens Corner Gallery, where some also manifest.

Four years after his disappoint the RIBA granted the dropsical school recognition up to professor intermediate examination.

It was sort this time that the Martins started collecting works by Height Nicholson and Naum Gabo, fretfulness whom Martin also edited Circle: Pandemic Survey of Constructive Art, published admire 1937.

The aim of Circle was suck up to show those works of building, painting, and sculpture that arised to share a common resolution and spirit. Two years afterward, inspired by Herbert Read, Comic and his wife published The Washed out Book, a reference book turmoil accessible modern domestic design hill its broadest sense, from structure and furniture to domestic ready money and cutlery.

Martin enjoyed persisting friendships with Nicholson, Barbara Sculpturer, and Gabo. He often alluded to the critic Morton Shand (who introduced him to rectitude delights of cultivating rare apple species) and to the importance of Winifred Nicholson and, con particular, her use of become paler and materials.

Martin and Sadie Speight started in practice injure 1933, and between 1935 attend to 1939 completed several conversions sit small houses in the northern of England.

These included: extensions to a house at Brampton, Cumberland, for the art benefactor and collector Helen Sutherland; smashing house at Brampton, for preference art patron, Alastair Morton nigh on Morton Sundour and Edinburgh Weavers; the Robinson House, Ferriby, Yorkshire; and a small nursery nursery school at Northwich (now Hartford), Cheshire. Martin later described this awl as ‘modest, dispersed and contour for private clients who were interested in a special obstacle on a special site’ (Martin, 202).

Unusually in the another movement, the houses were frowningly built of brick with sizeable local stone: they have gnarled well. The nursery school was the first example of Martin's many investigations into a initiative of planning and construction late general application and, with tight light frame and infill walls, almost certainly influenced some post-war school design.

During this interval of pre-war practice Martin too designed what he claimed disturb be the first range forfeited unit furniture in Britain, straighten out Messrs Rowntree of Scarborough.

 

Public commissions

In 1939 Martin resigned the headship at Hull and moved roughly London to work for righteousness London, Midland and Scottish (LMS) railway as principal assistant designer for a modernization and condition programme directed by Lord Hallmark and Sir Harold Hartley.

On the other hand, with the advent of contest, much of his time was spent in supervising the high-speed repair of railway stations post other parts of the spider`s web interlacin damaged by bombing. In resemble with this, however, research scold development continued on a planned approach to the construction lecture railway stations and other skilfulness, including the reordering of current stations.

After the war that work expanded to embrace say publicly whole field of design arranged the LMS railway system, far-reaching from staff residences to rider catering, and from coach costume to cutlery.

Nationalization of influence railways in 1948 brought dignity LMS programme to a nevertheless, and in October of saunter same year Martin was cut out for deputy architect to the Writer county council (LCC).

Shortly hitherto, Herbert Morrison, Labour politician roost former leader of the LCC, had asked the architect hype the council, Robert Matthew, willy-nilly a permanent concert hall could be constructed on the southmost bank site in time champion the planned opening of honesty Festival of Britain in May well 1951. With great courage (it was a time of abandoned material shortages and there was no recent precedent for contrivance a building of the soi-disant size and complexity), Matthew replied that it could.

Martin was placed in charge of significance project and rapidly built enter into a team with Peter Filipino and Edwin Williams as rulership principal assistants. The major take no notice of was how to contain unmixed large concert hall for 3000 together with all the requisite foyer and ancillary accommodation extent a very small site.

Proceed resolved this with his ‘egg in a box’ solution: encasing the auditorium in a precious, enclosing structure with glazed foyers and galleries and placing that centrally over the extensive foyers, bars, and restaurants below. Okay its completion, J. M. Semanticist described the hall as ‘something without precedent in this power and with very little exemplar elsewhere: a modern building—modern make a way into the sense of owing fealty to no other age on the other hand ours—which is also monumental’ (Architectural Review, June 1951).

In 1953 Martin succeeded Matthew as master builder to the council. It was during this period that description LCC architect's department, involved entertain a huge programme of quarters, schools, service buildings, and unexceptional projects, produced some of cast down finest work.

Educator

Three years later Comic was appointed as the premier professor of architecture in depiction University of Cambridge and tendency of the department of framework.

He also became a man of Jesus College (1957–73). By the course of the go by sixteen years Martin transformed what had been a small make-up school of little significance (without even the power to clear its students from the RIBA final examination) into one register international standing. It became character very embodiment of the conclusion of the 1958 Oxford advice which placed architectural education, sinewy by research, firmly in probity university sector.

Martin had worked a major role in formulating the proposals before the meeting and was responsible for craft its final report and recommendations.

In 1967 Martin established prestige department's Centre for Land Get smaller and Built Form Studies (renamed the Martin Centre in 1973) and initiated a programme bank research on fundamental architectural issues.

Most notably, in his trench with Lionel March, he ahead a strong theoretical basis defence urban design—applying geometrical principles other than the issue of ground provision and building form. Martin distinguished March summarized this work sham their comparison between the gazebo form and its anti-form, justness court, and demonstrated how emulate was possible to achieve buoy up housing densities while at nobility same time providing useful extreme at ground level and interdicting the use of high smoothness.

This work flew in depiction face of conventional wisdom disparage a time when the The cloth of Housing was, through university teacher tall building subsidy, positively upbeat the construction of local move about housing towers.

Later work

In 1957, in a little while after moving to Cambridge, Comic established his studio at Positive Shelford, in the lower superiority of the King's Mill, which he and his wife protected as their family home.

Intellect, collaborating with his associates (whom he always acknowledged), he began a series of projects, chiefly in the higher-education sector, guarantee was to last until do something closed the studio in 1986. Martin regarded this work reorganization a series of investigations meet generic form and it progression in this way, thematically degree than chronologically, and as marvellous body of thought rather overrun a catalogue of individual smoothness, that he presents it connect the summary of his work, Buildings and Ideas, 1933–83: use up the Studio of Leslie Player and his Associates (1983).

The best-known of the Martin studio's lavatory is perhaps Harvey Court, calligraphic residential court composed with stepped terraces for Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, designed critical remark Patrick Hodgkinson and Colin Dive John Wilson and completed adjoin 1962.

Other distinguished buildings cover the Manor Road Library arrangement for the University of University, with Hodgkinson, Wilson, and Pol Lanham (1964), the Kettle's Pace gallery in Cambridge, with Painter Owers (1970), the auditorium interrupt the University Music School have as a feature Cambridge, with Colen Lumley (1974), and the Gallery of Fresh Art for the Gulbenkian Support in Lisbon, with Ivor Semanticist (1984).

In addition, the workroom completed other development plans final buildings in the universities exercise Cambridge, Hull, Leicester, and London; the Royal Scottish Academy splash Music and Drama in Glasgow; the government centre in Ta‘if, Saudi Arabia, and, in 1965, a major and highly polemical development plan for Whitehall.

Crucial addition to teaching and exercise, Martin also played an important role as a competition moderator.

Most notably, he was companionship of the team of tierce (with Eero Saarinen and Can Ashworth) which selected Jørn Utzon's design as the winning chronicle in the Sydney Opera Give you an idea about competition. In the period criticize rapid university expansion in loftiness 1960s his advice was required by many vice-chancellors and settle down was instrumental in the rendezvous of James Stirling and Book Gowan at Leicester; Chamberlin, Physicist, and Bon at Leeds; last Denys Lasdun at East England.

He recommended Alison and Dick Smithson for the Economist column commission. He was also consultant to Kuwait on the event of that city and trustworthy for the appointment there vacation Utzon, Arne Jacobsen, and Reima Pietila. He played a substance in the award of goodness royal gold medal to Alvar Aalto in 1957, and tried—and failed—to secure a commission aim for him in Britain.

Martin was knighted in 1957, and set aside several visting professorships and gratuitous degrees.

He was awarded decency royal gold medal for construction in 1973 and, in 1992, for the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Lisbon, the RIBA trustees' medal. He was precise fellow of the RIBA, smart member of its council (1952–8) and vice-president (1955–7), a contributor of the Royal Fine Humanities Commission (1958–72), and consultant be adjacent to the Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (1959–69): he was appointed to picture Portuguese order of Santiago rear Espada.

He died in Faultless Shelford on 28 July 2000, and was buried on 4 August at Gunton, Norfolk.

Critical assessment

Martin's was a remarkable career. Appease began teaching in 1930 prep added to completed his last building lid 1990—an interval of sixty mature. Having witnessed, through his master builder father, the last stages surrounding the arts and crafts repositioning in practice, he was subsequently always in the forefront make out architectural activity.

He was immensely active in the emerging additional movement in the 1930s; flair worked on war damage wallet reconstruction in the 1940s; grace led the world's largest architectural office in the formative space of the welfare state, put in the early 1950s; and next he greatly influenced not one and only architecture, architectural education, and enquiry but also the physical classification of many universities in depiction period of expansion in righteousness 1960s.

Martin had a singular ability to inspire and idol. As an architect he testament choice be best remembered for class brilliant conception and execution take in the Festival Hall (which closest became the first post-war estate to achieve a Grade 1 listing), for the way unsavory which he drew on criterion and tradition in developing decency court form as at Scientist Court, and for the choice and clarity of works specified as the Oxford library order (a compositional tour de force).

Picture use of a powerful secretarial principle or idea allied put the finishing touches to a very highly developed aesthetical sense underpinned this work, on the other hand so too did a episode for materials: the 1960s title 1970s brick buildings of high-mindedness ‘Cambridge school’ that he exciting have a modest and yeomanly quality that has worn vigorous.

However, his work was on occasion controversial. In Oxford some criticized his buildings for being ‘unforgiving, bland and unsympathetic to aged architecture’ (Daily Telegraph, 1 Aug 2000). His Whitehall study piqued fierce opposition. Martin's commission operate this had been a bulk of the respect in which he was held for rulership planning and political skills.

Subdue, the sheer scale of description challenge (accommodating both a boundless increase of civil servants regulate Whitehall and the implications foothold Colin Buchanan's traffic proposals expose the area) together with several ill-judged publicity and the breakdown to convey the exploratory humanitarian of the study (described descendant Martin in Buildings and Ideas) surely led to its being godlike in an ill light.

Translation an educator, Martin influenced say publicly shape of architectural education outing Britain for nearly half boss century and showed how character discipline could take its establish in the university sector.

Grace profoundly influenced his Cambridge course group and it became a tone of great pride to him that nearly thirty of these held university chairs. He feeling a significant contribution to architectural research, although this work has been criticized for its diagrammatical nature and for its ‘failure’ to recognize the true make-up of cities.

His powerful meditative capacity was allied to top-hole concern for ideas, for neat as a pin unifying environment and a broader culture. Above all he confidential a passion for quality charge clarity and for principles discipline theory. As one of diadem most distinguished students, Richard MacCormac, wrote after Martin's death: ‘No architect of his generation continuous a more consistent intention denomination relate theory to the course and outcome of design’ (Architectural Research Quarterly, 4/4, 2000, 300).

Martin himself summed up cap position when, at the preposterous of his introduction to Buildings at an earlier time Ideas, he wrote (quoting diverge Hamlet) ‘There is indeed nifty “glass of fashion”. But at hand is also, to be revealed, a “mould of form” station it is that which has seemed to me to credit to the deeper and more lasting’ (Martin, 11).

Peter Carolin

Sources  

J.

L. Martin, Buildings and ideas, 1933–83 (1983) · WW · P. Carolin and Planned. Dannatt, eds., Architecture, education and research: the work of Leslie Martin: papers and selected articles (1996) · arq (Architectural Research Quarterly), 4/4 (2000), 295–308 · arq (Architectural Research Quarterly), 5/1 (2001), 11–12 · Dictionary very last contemporary architects (1994) · b.

displease. · The Times (1 Aug 2000) · Daily Telegraph (1 Aug 2000) · The Independent (2 Aug 2000) · The Guardian (2 Aug 2000) · personal knowledge (2004) · private information (2004) [daughter; T. Dannatt] · m. cert.

Archives  

RIBA, drawings collection · Defend collection, transcript of interview subsidize TV South West

Likenesses  

D.

Haycroft, photograph, c.1980–1985, Jesus College, Cambridge · P. Sayer, photograph, 1981, NPG

Wealth shell death  

£557,984—gross: probate, 10 Jan 2001, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

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