introduction
THE AR EXPLORES the ethos behind the SUCCESS of architectureplb as THE PRACTICE looks AHEAD to the FUTURE writer
will hunter
ArchitecturePLB
has been in the news a great deal recently. At the start of the year, the practice won two major projects in the UK: at the end of January it secured the commission for an innovative design and technology building at Merchant Taylors’ School in Middlesex; the next month it scooped a £30m tower, nicknamed ‘the Blade’, for Portsmouth University. Consolidating this success, in May the practice was named Employer of the Year in the AJ100, the annual league table of the hundred largest British practices published by our sister magazine The Architects’ Journal. This is the second year in a
row that the Winchester- and London-based firm has won in this prestigious category, which recognises the architects’ sense of decency in everything they do, from treating colleagues to how they think about architecture. However, the accolade was not ArchitecturePLB’s only success in the AJ100: it also climbed seven places in the rankings to 67 – no small feat during a global economic recession. This growth is surely a reflection of the significant body of work that the practice has built up over the last four decades.
004 ArchitecturePLB / 1971–2011 / Introduction
It is this commitment to architectural integrity that gives The Architectural Review such delight in publishing this monograph, which celebrates the 40th anniversary of the practice and looks forward to its future. A brief look at ArchitecturePLB’s
history goes a long way to explain the embedded values of the practice that we see today. In 1971, Plincke, Leaman & Browning (as the practice was first known) was founded as a collaboration by three like-minded architects, who wanted to build well in their community while enjoying bringing up their families in Winchester. Indeed, this ancient cathedral city frames many of the prominent projects by the founding partners, including the Winchester City Museum, Winchester School of Art and, indeed, projects for Winchester Cathedral itself (pages 20–25). It soon became apparent, however, that this approach reached well beyond the Hampshire borders and, in due course, led to the opening of offices in London. In many ways, the success of
ArchitecturePLB – a practice that has continued to grow in the last decade, to reach a staff of 60 today – is based on the dynamic relationship between
the two offices; and, as a corollary, the dynamic relationships that it builds with its clients. From these dual bases, there is also a desire to be relevant on both local and global scales, an attribute of increasing relevance to an ever-changing world. The positive influence of
Modernism is clear throughout the practice and has also played an important role in this success. However, in its work, there is no easy deployment of its stylistic traits, but a sense that its architecture is rooted in an English version of the movement that could be described as Romantic Pragmatism. This relates most closely in the AR’s archives to the handful of education projects we reviewed that were commissioned by Hampshire County Council, and led by Colin Stansfield Smith, during the early to mid-1980s. To this day, education is still a
sector where the practice flourishes. It is no coincidence that the two other Building Studies in this monograph are for educational clients, which are based in London. The first is a profile of the Royal Veterinary College (pages 8–11), where the Guardian’s architecture critic Jonathan Glancey
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