James (Frazer) Stirling

James Stir­ling, 1926-1992, of Great Bri­tain was one of that country's best-known ar­chi­tects par­ti­cu­larly since his 1963 project at Leices­ter Uni­ver­sity, the en­gi­nee­ring buil­ding. Born in Glas­gow, Scot­land, he took his ar­chi­tec­ture de­gree at Li­ver­pool Uni­ver­sity, but set up his prac­tice in Lon­don.
In ad­di­tion to the Leices­ter project al­re­ady men­tio­ned, his other major works at the time he was awar­ded the Pritz­ker Prize in­clu­ded a trai­ning cen­ter for Oli­vetti in Hassele­mere; a His­tory Buil­ding for Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity; an ex­pan­sion of Rice Uni­ver­sity in Texas, and nu­merous low cost hou­sing projects, and re­si­den­ces. Since 1981, he has com­ple­ted a major so­cial sci­en­ces cen­ter in Ber­lin; a Per­for­ming Arts Cen­ter for Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity; and such major mu­seum projects as the Clore Gal­lery ex­pan­sion for the Tate Gal­lery in Lon­don; the Ar­thur M. Sack­ler Mu­seum, an ad­di­tion to Harvard's Fogg Mu­seum; and the Staats­ga­le­rie in Stutt­gart, Ger­many.
In an ar­ti­cle writ­ten in 1979 for Con­tem­porary Ar­chi­tects, Stir­ling said, »I be­lieve that the shapes of a buil­ding should indicate—perhaps display—the usage and way of life of its oc­cup­ants, and it is the­re­fore li­kely to be rich and va­ried in ap­pearance, and its ex­pres­sion is un­li­kely to be simple…in a buil­ding we did at Ox­ford some years ago, it was in­ten­ded that you could re­co­gnize the his­to­ric ele­ments of cour­ty­ard, entrance gate towers, clo­is­ters; also a cen­tral ob­ject re­pla­c­ing the tra­di­tio­nal foun­tain or sta­tue of the col­lege foun­der. In this way we hoped that stu­dents and pu­blic would not be di­sas­so­cia­ted from their cul­tu­ral past. The par­ti­cu­lar way in which functional-symbolic ele­ments are put to­ge­ther may be the «art» in the ar­chi­tec­ture.«
…»If the ex­pres­sion of functional-symbolic forms and fa­mi­liar ele­ments is fo­re­most, the ex­pres­sion of struc­ture will be se­con­dary, and if struc­ture shows, it is not in my opi­nion, the en­gi­nee­ring which counts, but the way in which the buil­ding is put to­ge­ther that is im­portant.«
Udo Kul­ter­man, wri­ting in the same pu­bli­ca­tion, said »Stirling's con­cept of con­tem­porary ar­chi­tec­ture is con­cer­ned with the hu­ma­niza­t­ion of the en­vi­ron­ment. Hu­ma­nis­tic con­side­ra­ti­ons do­mi­nate all tech­no­lo­gi­cal, eco­no­mic and aes­t­he­tic pre­con­cei­ved ideas and ideo­lo­gies. Ar­chi­tec­ture has to re-establish its own cri­te­ria for eva­lua­tion; for Stir­ling this ob­viously means crea­ting in har­mony with com­mon sense, tra­di­tion, the exis­ting en­vi­ron­ment, and a con­cern for people.«