Our new exhibition The anatomy of a building: Denys Lasdun and the Royal College of Physicians will open on September 8, and installation is currently underway. The exhibition is part of our building’s 50th anniversary celebrations. It will tell the story of why the building looks as it does, and of the architect who designed it, Sir Denys Lasdun. 2014 is also Lasdun’s centenary, and September 8 would have been his 100th birthday.
Perhaps unusually for an architecture exhibition, our displays will showcase items of memorabilia that Lasdun used during his working life in a busy architect’s office. We are delighted to be showing the typewriter that Lasdun used for typing up a plethora of lively memoranda. These memos recorded Lasdun’s interactions with his clients, and include often pithy remarks that indicate both what Lasdun thought about the RCP’s Building Committee, and what they thought about his work.
On 12 May 1960 the committee met to view a model of the proposed building. Notes were taken of each committee member’s reaction:
Leonard Wolfson thought the building was functionally satisfactory but disliked the roof on the main building, disliked the roof of the Lecture Hall and thought the link with the building in St. Andrew’s Place was aesthetically bad. He considered the entrances inadequate, the toilets inadequate and the whole building looked like a battleship.
Alongside these evocative personal objects, and of course the wonderful drawing and sketches you would expect, we will be exhibiting some excellent and rarely-seen architectural models that are being loaned to us from the Royal Institute of British Architects. These include an enormous model of Lasdun’s original unrealised scheme for the National Theatre on London’s South Bank, and his university accommodation block for Christ’s College, Cambridge, otherwise affectionately known as ‘the typewriter’.
Come along and learn more about typewriters, an extraordinary architect, and how to design a building for a 500-year-old medical college at our new exhibition.
Sarah Backhouse, exhibition coordinator
Visit the exhibition: The anatomy of a building: Denys Lasdun and the Royal College of Physicians, 8 September 2014 – 13 February 2015
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