Buckminster Knows 071

pics by www.ioanamarinescu.com

Upper Lawn Pavillion (1959-62) by Alison and Peter Smithson

'It would be an understatement to say we feel indebted to Alison and Peter Smithson. Their example has helped us understand the relationship of modern architecture to a northern European situation and they consistently demonstrated that it is possible to combine a practice that is committed to building with teaching and writing. By attending to these three disciplines simultaneously they were able to adopt a forceful critical position: an architecture of ideas based on acute observation.

I cannot precisely recall when I first encountered the work of the Smithsons. As a student of architecture I was intrigued by the reaction the mere mention of their names provoked. It was never neutral. references to the Smithsons made in conversation among architects and teachers who were then in their fifties generated either displays of reverence or a form of dismissal that suggested underlying respect.'

-Jonathan Sergison in Lessons learnt from Alison and Peter Smithson-