Cullinan draws for AJ100

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AT the AJ100 Awards evening, Ted Cullinan explained his view of life as a general practitioner architect through drawing. Watch him draw, read his presentation and see the results.

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I made up the phrase 'General Practitioner in Architecture' for the sake of the speech at the Gold Medal. But I think what it means is that you just leave architecture school, and start being an architect. And in my case I left architecture school and became an architect for my uncle, which I'm going to tell you about in a minute. This particular event I find quite deeply frightening… because you're all so big.

And it reminds me of a time recently when I was sitting opposite the most gigantic body builder or rugby player on the tube. And next to him was a little boy – and this is the 100 biggest architects so I'm not making any kind of deliberate comparisons – this little boy, whose arms were on the seat beside him and his legs were hanging over the edge, just gazing in astonished admiration at this creature who was sitting opposite me on the tube.
And I wondered if that was me in this situation.. and I decided it wasn't, I decided I was a mixture of the professor who sat on the next seat down here, quite contentedly; the two old ladies who were gossiping… one of them, or part of her, actually touching him.. The two old ladies were sitting gossiping to each other, trying to ignore the gigantic business of the body builder, or rugby player, on the tube.

So it made me think of tonight, basically, as I was travelling to meet the 100 biggest people in the business. I then realised that general practice in architecture is actually something quite different, and consisted in doing what all these people ask you to do. And they are all incredibly different, often very difficult, and strange, your clients in general practice in architecture.

My  general practice in architecture began when I started doing conversions for people, then my uncle asked me to do a house for him in the late 50s on a south facing site. I made him a house but I insisted on three different planes. And they were mounted together on posts, and it was facing south… and it was for my uncle Mervyn, who absolutely loved to sunbathe.. which was something we used to do in the fifties.. You've all been prevented from doing it ever since.

My uncle Mervyn used to sit in this house, playing his Beckstein piano.. in the nude.. because he didn't like clothes much, he like sunbathing.. so he used to like sitting in the nude, on a stool, like this.. until the fact the house faced due south and let in all the sun in the world and my uncle Mervyn ended up, not playing the piano, but exhausted on the floor in his enormously overheated house. So south facing  turned out to be not absolutely perfect, and we had to devise a system of bamboo screens, to shade my uncle Mervyn from the sun, so that didn't die of over-heating in his house.

I'm calling this house the House of Cards, because it's just these planes on another plane, just mounted together on another plane.. because I'm an old fashioned cubist. I LOVE cubism, I LOVE the inter-penetration of planes & sticks, and places, and inside-outside mixing up and all this. This house was done at a time when they were making CLASP schools like this, with softwood sills sticking out of them dependant on the paint to keep the rain out.

I wondered if it would be possible to create a self sheltering house; a house that would shelter itself against the sun and the rain, and the elements.. And this is the house my wife and I built for each other during two years of weekends in the early sixties So this is all hard stuff here, and this is wood, soft stuff.. and it's hanging here and dangling downwards, and here's the sun.. because my poor little brain put it together, that in winter the sun was low, and it would heat the house, and in summer the sun was high and would stay out of the house.
General practice in architecture consists of not going to work for a huge firm straight away..it consists of waiting till things come along.

And then I have to say, the next thing I'm going to show you is a medieval church. These are the walls of the medieval church, and this is a cobweb on the side of the medieval church.. and this is in the 80s.. We made a truss across the medieval church, upon which grew ridge trusses…which created a  new church back to the north. So that the lateral construction in this direction became a construction in this direction, of which the (roots) descended. Sitting up here a lantern, the south sun is here, and back here, the altar of the church.. so the cross truss turns into a ridge truss and the whole thing is like a cat's cradle over the top of a single space, that goes from the 11th century to the 20th century.

Then I want to show you a construction called a scallop. This is a Yorkshire stone roof.. and this is another Yorkshire stone roof here.. and they face outwards to the surrounding villages, which are all made of Yorkshire stone and so on.. and this is glass, and this is the courtyard; this is a wall.. and this is dry-stonewalling, used as a rain shield over the insulation.

My next picture is called Leaves of Trees; all of you in rainstorms waiting for the bus, have stood under the leaves of trees..  And we've made a building in Cambridge called the Faculty of Divinity, in which in which we made low roofs, with tricky details.. and detached walls.. and shades – huge shades, on the north side and many shades on the south side; according to our building services engineer's computer: Many different shades on different aspects of the building, all the way round. Here it is, the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University. Here is the entrance; it's next to Jim Stirling's wonderful library.. and I've taught – I've been teaching for centuries – and I've always used Jim Stirling's library as an illustration of great architecture that doesn't necessarily have to work.. us architects are so conceited, we love that don't we? .. the Pantheon leaks..

But, here's an office.. This building is a chimney, and here is an office with a fixed window here and an opening window here and an opening window here.. in the Faculty of Mathematics at Cambridge.. with an opening window here and a fixed window here.. and huge shades, like this.. and a roof, and a lantern.. and.. da-da-dum, dum, dum-dum.. stairs there.. and things like that.. and the air going up the middle, and in and out of the offices like this, all the way. 

So a naturally ventilated, highly computerised, very technical(ly) organised building is ventilating vigorously... just like the old Medieval moot hall.. where the chief sits here with his woman and all the way down all the others like this, eating and feasting and enjoying themselves, with the dogs howling and screaming and the hay either side.. and the moot hall like that and the ventilator at the top.. it works! This diagram works! Boom – boing! Like that.. I call this a chimney.

Finally, my next building is an armadillo.. Here's an armadillo. I'm sure you've all met more; none of you will ever have met my version of an armadillo.. and I love the way he has a detachable external framework. I think it's fantastic; extra-skeletal creatures are completely wonderful and a very great way for us to begin to think about how to make gridshells and things like that.. that aren't covered in elephant plastic.. which they usually are.. You can put one big plane over the top, which sinks down to there and goes back up to there, sinks down to there and goes back up to there, and sinks down to there and goes back up to there.. and three layers of English-grown western green cedar, and insulation in there. So , the building, like an armadillo, is always spanning and exceeding and shedding.

I'm talking about an architecture which does this, which you learn, when you try to do buildings for not very rich people, small houses for not very rich people, or build at the beginning of your life. Where you are using sweet thick white wood, 'deal' as we know it, and stuff like that.. and all you have to do, is to keep the bugger dry!
And we have been stuck for so long with an architecture that does that, which can only be done with expensive materials.. so this is the heart of what I wasn't to say... flying up and down like that.. here is the Maths building at Cambridge, I showed you before.. here is the Museum, and finally here's this interior.. which is just about taking the great tradition of cubism and modernism to which we belong, and allowing the whole of these expressive possibilities towards sheltering from the rain and sun, and in future, making a terrific, honestly energetically and sustainable architecture.
So, thank you.