14 C O N T E X T 1 1 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 0 media pressures and designers’ motivation not only produced an outbreak of well-funded, one-off cultural buildings across the country, but these tended to have the attributes favourable for listing, being photogenic and well-provided with verbal narratives. If listing proposals are researched by building type, as happened during English Heritage’s epic post-war listing campaign in the 1990s, the period from which we are now emerging will be far from balanced. There will be a lot of cultural and educational buildings, a scattering of high-profile transport structures, very little housing and probably not a single hospital. That was one part of the price we have paid for PFI. The architectural profession in this country flourished, with a greater variety of styles and approaches than at any time since the second world war, and some individuals of high talent and dedication to their work. It may turn out to have been something of a golden age. Recently, when showing a group of students round his refurbishment of the Royal Court Theatre, Steve Tompkins remarked that his practice would probably never again be able build anything with such freedom of budget and lack of upper limits on quality. Looking ahead from 2010, the same talented architects are still producing some buildings in which ingenious ideas are matched to the highest quality of materials and craftsmanship available. Some of the best work, such as the Royal Court, involves interventions in older and in many cases listed buildings, a convergence of modernism and history that has been sparking more consistently in the past two decades than before. We still seem to be in a phase of design ideas that began in the 1970s, when high modernism gave way to a more eclectic approach, sometimes described as post-modernism, but including everything since then that has passed as late modern or neo-modern. The historian Robert Thorne has called it ‘the architecture of metaphor’, or the period of ‘individualism and conscience’. It is an architecture of metaphor because it feels compelled to deal with narratives and meanings in a way that older architects, such as James Stirling, although adept at using these qualities in their work, would not have deigned to explain. Now, from the architecture school crit to the public consultation The Royal Court Theatre: exterior corten and cedar cladding to the new extension (Photo:Andy Chopping) The Royal Court Theatre exterior (Photo: Andy Chopping) The Royal Court Theatre: detail of upper bar showing the patina of found surface (Photo:Andy Chopping) The Royal Court Theatre: front of house upper bar with vermilion mural by Antoni Malinowski (Photo:Andy Chopping)
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