Stirling’s career fits mainly into two parts — the first a robust revival of Modernist abstraction and materiality found in his Engineering Building at Leicester University (1963). At the time, it appeared to be a shockingly raucous cacophony of Russian Constructivist and Victorian-like shapes of brick and glass. Although a series of related buildings such as the History Faculty Building, University of Cambridge (1968), and the Florey Building at Queen’s College, University of Oxford (1971) — followed, Stirling soon abandoned this line of endeavor and merrily embraced the exploration of historical form. In retrospect, some of these works look suspiciously close to the worst excesses of Postmodernism, rivaling those of Michael Graves, FAIA , or Robert Stern, FAIA . None of these projects approached the classic finality of Leicester, except perhaps the Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart (1984).
Meanwhile, a number of his buildings, including housing in England at Runcorn (1977) and Preston (1962), have been torn down, and even those at Leicester, Oxford, and Cambridge have been plagued by faulty workmanship. Today, when one is either thoroughly modern, à la Rem Koolhaas or Herzog & de Meuron, or traditional, like Allan Greenberg, few attempt an architectural synthesis, and therein lies the retrospective’s appeal.
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