Architecture + Urbanism recommends: Stirling and the North

At the time of his death in 1992, James Stirling was widely regarded as the leading architect of his generation, not just in Britain but worldwide. Born in Glasgow, he spent much of his childhood in Liverpool and trained at the Liverpool School of Architecture. The rich urban fabric of Liverpool and the North, combining industrial and vernacular buildings with some of Europe's grandest neoclassical monuments, exerted a powerful fascination for Stirling and had a profound influence on the rich architectural language that he was to develop.
Held in Stirling's only Liverpool building - Tate Liverpool, located in the Albert Dock - this panel discussion and debate will re-consider the role of the North in Stirling's development and oeuvre, from his thesis design for Newton Aycliffe to late projects like the Lowry at Salford.
Organised by RIBA NW in association with the University of Liverpool and Tate Liverpool, the event will be chaired by Mark Swenarton, James Stirling professor at Liverpool University.
Speakers:
Robert Maxwell (Emeritus Professor, Princeton University) - 'Stirling the Northerner'
Elain Harwood (English Heritage) - 'The Housing at Preston and Runcorn'
Brian Hatton (Liverpool John Moores University/Architectural Association) - 'Stirling as photographer of Liverpool'.

The event forms part of Architecture Festival 2011 and takes place on Saturday 25 June 2pm-4pm . Tickets cost £5/£3

A brief review of the current exhibition James Stirling: Notes form the Archive at Tate Britain appears here

Vidler on Stirling

Anthony Vidler, Dean of the Cooper Union School of Architecture in New York discusses his exhibition James Stirling: Notes from the Archive which will be on display at Tate Britain between 5 April and 21 August 2011.

Architecture + Urbanism recommends: Notes from the Archive

Notes from the Archive: James Frazer Stirling, Architect and Teacher
14 OCTOBER, 2010 — 2 JANUARY, 2011

at the Yale Center for British Art

Stirling's work has been interpreted by historians and critics in a number of varied, and often conflicting, ways. Some have seen it move through a series of eclectic modern styles; others have insisted that Stirling was a steadfast Modernist; while still others have proposed a fundamental break with Modernism in the mid-1960s. Stirling himself contributed to these diverse views through his own writings. Notes from the Archive, curated by Anthony Vidler, Dean and Professor of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union, will deepen our knowledge of Stirling's unique approach to the design process and demonstrate continuity in his work from his early days as a student to his final projects. According to Vidler, "This exhibition offers the potential for the re-evaluation of Stirling's career as an architect, revising the often contradictory assessment of his work from the 1960s on, through the evidence of the notebooks, sketches, presentation drawings, photographs, and original models the office."

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication authored by Anthony Vidler. The book will interpret the James Stirling/Michael Wilford fonds at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, as a living document of Stirling's attempts to broaden the language of Modernism while remaining faithful to his twin precepts of accommodation and association. While not a catalogue of the exhibition, this publication follows the themes of the exhibits and develops the interpretation of Stirling's contribution to the history and vocabulary of modern architecture that is presented in the show. It is published by the Yale Center for British Art and Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, in association with Yale University Press.