Denys Lasdun

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Royal National Theatre

Sir Denys Louis Lasdun,

Brutalist design in the United Kingdom
.

Lasdun studied at the

Peter and Alison Smithson, Lasdun was much influenced by Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, but there was a gentler, more classical influence, too, from the likes of Nicholas Hawksmoor. Lasdun was elected a Royal Academician on 29 May 1991.[4]

Family

Lasdun's grandfather, the Australia-based tobacconist Louis Abrahams (1852–1903), was an important patron of Frederick McCubbin, Arthur Streeton and other artists associated with the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian Impressionism. His art collection was passed down to Lasdun.[5] His mother Julie Lasdun was a pianist who accompanied the Hungarian violinist Adila Fachiri.[6] In 1930 she played in the first chamber performance of Constant Lambert's The Rio Grande, alongside Arthur Benjamin.[7] The Royal College of Music commemorated her through the Julie Lasdun Prize.[8]

Lasdun married Susan Bendit in 1954 and there were two sons and a daughter.[9] One is the author James Lasdun.[10]

Early work

Keeling House in 2008

Before and after

Tecton practice, becoming a partner. During this period he also completed one private house in Paddington, in Le Corbusier's style. After the war, Lasdun worked with Lindsay Drake on the Hallfield Estate
, which had been planned by Lubetkin and Tecton in a similar patterned, tightly planned idiom to his Spa Green and Priory Green Estates. Lasdun's Hallfield School was the first clue to his mature style, in its use of bare concrete and angularity, as well as its more human scale.

In the 1950s he was a partner with

Narkomfin Building
.

The Royal College of Physicians building is one of very few Grade I-listed post-Second World War buildings

Lasdun completed what may be regarded as his breakthrough masterwork in the

Brutalist aesthetics of the era, yet developing a personal idiom of opened cantilevered volumes, long perspectives, triangulated form, and clarity of concept and structure that is entirely Lasdun's own. This building, however, is finished in luxurious white Sicilian marble, Murano glass mosaic tiles, polished brass and black engineering brick, and was one of the first post-War buildings to be awarded Grade I listing for national and international significance and influence on the work of others.[11][12][13]

University buildings

Norfolk Terrace halls of residence at the University of East Anglia

Elements of Lasdun's most famous style, which combined cubic towers, bare concrete and jutting foyers, which was compared by some to

Brutalist language. The expressed fire escape staircases make references to Wells Coates and Louis Kahn
and Lasdun's masterplanning created a new semi-public square over car parking. The building is now listed Grade II*.

Late work

Institute of Education

The most celebrated of the architect's work is his Royal National Theatre on London's South Bank. King Charles compared it to a nuclear power station but it was popular with other traditionalists, with John Betjeman writing Lasdun a letter in praise of its design. Lasdun (or his firm Lasdun, Softley and Partners) designed the neighbouring IBM headquarters (finished 1985) as a low-rise setting for the theatre. His European Investment Bank in Luxembourg deployed a similar layered low-rise design approach. The last works produced by the firm were an office block, Milton Gate, Chiswell Street, London clad in green-tinted glazing and 10 Fenchurch Street, London clad in aluminium; Lasdun's design involvement with these was very slight.

Lasdun was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1977. His drawings and papers are available for consultation at the RIBA Drawings & Archives Collections. Despite the controversy of much of his work, most of Lasdun's surviving buildings are listed, although his 1958 Peter Robinson department store on London's Strand was demolished in the 1990s.

Lasdun died on 11 January 2001 aged 86.

National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C467/9) with Denys Lasdun in 1996-97 for its Architects Lives' collection held by the British Library.[14]

Projects

New Court, Christ's College, Cambridge (1966–70)

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Denys Lasdun.
  1. ^ Diana Rowntree (12 January 2001). "Obituary: Sir Denys Lasdun | News". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 22 October 2013.
  2. ^ "findmypast.co.uk". search.findmypast.co.uk. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
  3. ^ "findmypast.co.uk". search.findmypast.co.uk. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
  4. ^ "Sir Denys Lasdun | Artist | Royal Academy of Arts". www.royalacademy.org.uk. Retrieved 29 January 2020.
  5. ^ "One of the greatest early patrons of Australian art" (12 December 2017), Christie's. Retrieved 31 July 2018.
  6. ^ Joseph Macleod. The Sisters d' Aranyi (2021)
  7. ^ Lloyd, Stephen. Beyond the Rio Grande (2014), p. 120-1
  8. ^ Register of Charities
  9. ^ 'Forthcoming Marriages, The Times, 23 March 1954, p.10
  10. ^ [1] Book review by Jenny Turner in The Guardian
  11. ^ "Architecture". rcplondon.ac.uk. 15 January 2015. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
  12. ^ England, Historic. "ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, Camden - 1246159- Historic England". historicengland.org.uk. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
  13. ^ "The anatomy of a building: Denys Lasdun and the Royal College of Physicians". rcplondon.ac.uk. 8 September 2014. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
  14. ^ National Life Stories, 'Lasdunm Denys (1 of 10) National Life Stories Collection: Architects' Lives', The British Library Board, 1997. Retrieved 10 April 2018
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